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Comment by chinathrow | Hacker News Reader

Why is noone stopping them?

Because it's not really illegal. People are voluntarily sharing their data with corporations via social media and apps, and those corporations are voluntarily selling it to data brokers, who are then voluntarily selling it to the SaaS that ICE is using here to track people.

The problem here is a lack of data protection laws. It's entirely legal for any private citizen who wants to to purchase huge amounts of mass location data/history for billions of people.

"voluntarily"

i consider myself fairly knowledgeable about tracking techniques and countermeasures. despite constant effort and techniques that are extreme or impossible for the average individual, i believe my evasions are minimally effective.

it's also increasingly difficult to use the internet or even exist in public at all without some kind of compromise that invalidates most of that work.

> the Department of Homeland Security had suspended the purchase of commercial location data after the Inspector General found the agency had violated federal law, but that temporary safeguard has now been dismantled.

Sounds like it is still illegal. They just don't care.

Notably, this administration illegally fired (ignored a notice-to-congress period, and IIRC also didn't state a cause, both of which are required by the law) all the Inspectors General as one of their first acts.

These were positions set up after the Watergate scandal to make it harder for the executive to engage in blatant criminality for long periods without anyone noticing. One ought to read that as a statement of intent to commit lots of obvious crimes.

Inspector Generals are not judges.

Maybe I should follow the example of ICE and assume everything I do is legal until a judge specifically tells me it is not. I know other people have gone to jail for murder, but how do I know the murder I want to commit is illegal until a judge rules on my particular case.

Well there's also common sense.

Is there?

ICE has done a lot more than just buy location data. They have bought phone hacking tools that use exploits. Hacking without a court order is illegal.

https://www.rsn.org/001/ice-obtains-access-to-israelimade-sp...

I still consider my web footprint and yours to be copyrighted work product.

Assumed it was already happening.

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