ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials slam it

engadget.com

378 points·doener··5 comments

Comments moved to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445646.

It's a fantastic way to avoid crowds at Wal-Mart, the county fair, car shows, etc. Just a few clicks and the lines shrink. Great app!

Sarcasm aside, with no gates to avoiding spoofed ICE sightings the usefulness of the app seems questionable at best. This is doubly true when observers in this area have historically been unable to differentiate non-ICE Federal law enforcement from ICE (so even users who mean well are filling the system with bogus data). There have been numerous "ICE sightings" in this area when in fact no immigration enforcement actions have occurred in the county (DEA and HSI have been at work, though).

This might also be hampered by the desire to not store any device info if they stores device info, they might be able to build a reputation system for believing reports. They claim this is for user privacy, but it really just shifts the privacy defense to Apple -- so will Apple fight the gag order and subpoena for names of users of this app? At least if the developer did it themselves there could be a canary[1].

1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary

Sweet, going to use this when I go to the grocery store later.

Probably people will use it when going to baseball games and theme parks as well, to scare others into staying home.

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