ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree | Hacker News Reader

ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree

eff.org

312 pointsBeetleB260 comments

There have been quips for many years about the dragnets of intelligence services and that "Stasi couldn't even dream about having such vast data" and similar.

But now we aren't talking about intelligence services anymore. ICE truly is Stasi for America, employing tactics such as "isolating them, depriving them of sleep and using psychological tricks such as threatening to arrest relatives." (From Wikipedia about Stasi.)

This year ICE will also become the "armed wing of the Party" thanks to fresh funding.

The Stasi needed a significant segment of the DDR's population to be snitches. ICE just needs Palentir.

Oh, the snitches are there too, just check some of the comments in this thread. They only need a few percent.

I fear we are at the point where descendants of ICE employees will be embarrassed to acknowledge the relation.

Keep in mind that some Americans still proudly fly the Confederate flag.

The first and second Reconstruction eras didn't go far enough.

The irony about that is that a lot of the Confederate flag-flyers (ironically enough, overlapping with the Don't Tread on Me crowd) seriously hate the government.

The administration's kept them on side with culture wars red meat so far...

But the further ICE / police militarization goes, the more awkward the situation with right-wing militia types is going to get.

They hate the "government" which is an abstract evil entity. They love Trump, the police, and ICE.

MAGA was chanting "president of peace" only a few months ago, and did anyone complain about Venezuela? Not a peep. They thrive on logical contradictions.

It really is bizarre to behold when you share some of their supposed values.

They don't have values, that's just you projecting part of yourself on them. They have a tribe, and anything they say is in support of that tribe.

We're well past the point that they should be, I would be more concerned their descendants won't be, based on, let's say the last 250 years of this national experiment.

there are plenty of people who are children of cops or military who have no shame, so I doubt it

Or be proud once the history has been rewritten

“It says here in this history book that luckily, the good guys have won every single time. What are the odds?”

-- Norm MacDonald

Or we make it impossible to inflict such North Korean, Soviet, or Chinese style harassment such that the sins of one have no ability to propagate.

Nah, they'll still be able to kick down your door.

It might not be the right door, but that doesn't matter to them.

Grandchild: "Grandpa, what was it like back then, when ICE was snatching innocent people off the streets and the President was putting some them in dictator prisons without trial? Before the super bad stuff started?"

Grandpa: "It was a very controversial time, yes. Lots of people doing what they believed was best."

Grandchild: "Did ICE ever go after you?"

Grandpa: "I worked for the--it was only office--I mean, I was unemployed then. Yes, that's right! Tricky economy, don't you know. Only odd-jobs. I lived in a place where those things weren't happening. In fact, most of us didn't really know about it until it was all over. You remember that, right dear?"

Mother: <frustrated death-glare> "...Come along, let's wash your hands before dinner."

That's if they ever face a "truth and reconciliation" commision like after Apartheid South Africa.

If not, and if you have 3 hours, there's a documentary you can watch. The director said "It was like I went to Germany 40 years after WW2 and found out the Nazis had won".

There was an "anti-communist" massacre in Indonesia in 1965. The killers were sanctioned by the government who remained in power/are still very powerful nowadays. (When a reformist president said "maybe we can look at this part of the country's past", the rumour was, the army was going to let protesters (who are still gung-ho communist-hating) protest near the presidential palace, and not intervene if/when they invade it.

This documentary follows one old killer and his "journey" from being able to talk about it casually until he ends up meeting his conscience.

Here he is in the beginning: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZqEzIEWzPk

And the full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TDeEObjR9Q

Spain ended up the same way. The Franco regime just petered out and the ghouls got to keep their swanky digs in Madrid.

Same in former east Germany. Poland did did much better though, they kicked most of the bastards out but it was a dime on its side for a while, a lot of Polish pensioners were yearning back to the good old days and even today there is still a remnant of this.

So did Romania. Afaik Ceausescu was killed by his own employees in a rush bid to take over power while pretending to give people what they wanted.

e.g. post-WW1 Turkey following the Armenian genocide.

Arnold Schwarzenegger had a very heartfelt story about his childhood. It went more or less as you describe, except it was his dad, not his granddad and there was a lot of alcohol and abuse involved as well.

Hopefully that play ends as tragically or more as The Death of a Salesman.

>ICE will also become the "armed wing of the Party"

interesting that the ICE is performing that hallmark of 20th century - mass removal of "undesirable" people from society and placement them into the camps without criminal charge and judicial oversight, etc. thus totally undermining the main contract between government and society - due process.

I don't think Stasi is the most apt comparison, rather the Gestapo, where the "Geheime" did not refer to their existence being secret, rather their standards of operation, chain of command, and general accountability being beyond oversight from the electorate.

Apples and oranges, though, and it's all fruit.

The difference for me is that the Stasi seemingly had more competent people and more people that actually believed in what they were doing and thought it effective. With none of that, these are the actions of an organization that is failing and full of incompetence. It is even more alarming how effective they could be if anyone actually believed in them, including their own leadership or if the cause actually attracted worthwhile participants.

Such competent participants flock to these terror organisations only after it has proven itself a viable career path. Compare the chaos and mayhem of the brownshirts in Germany before the war, vs the Gestapo later. Very chaotic evil vs lawful evil.

At this point in time, it's not apparent if the current regime will prevail. Thus, it's time for brownshirt tactics. When Presidential/King/Dictatorial power is fully consolidated, States' Rights are just a memory, and all nonloyal judges are fired, it's time for the disciplined Career Bureaucrats to join ICE.

You're not wrong that that's the intent, I'm just not even seeing stupid bigots that are happy with it and they also don't seem to care about that either. So, once they lose even the hateful for not being hateful enough they're just as likely to be embarrassed by all of this or fracture amongst themselves with various no true bigot fallacy infighting. This has been the more recent mini patterns at least.

We're still in 1932. Night of the long knives was in 1934 after the Nazis had consolidated power. In 1932 they were still a party of block-headed street thugs with the SA terrorizing people. One of the reasons why they had all their rallies at night (the torchlight marches) is so people couldn't see that the SA were a bunch of meatheads who did not look good in Hugo Boss.

I don't know if you're right or not, but a lot of people who would otherwise be fans of meatheaded thugs are laughing at these people. I do worry the spectre of some unstoppable idiocy is myth. People at the time weren't used to mass media at all, and there were many other dynamics that may not sum up to a succinct conclusion. Perhaps people saying they were like the new Hun or whatever made people less likely to laugh at them, but, I know these people today are also pretty hilariously inept. Like for instance they all think facial recognition doesn't work with your lower face covered, and they don't realize that they actually don't have good discipline on their mask usage, and the tools they use on their phones to try to id people aren't nearly as good as the tools regular people use to track them.

One can always hope it continues like that.

It's a question of incentives. From what I've heard: ICE agents are incentivized to the tune of $5000 for every immigrant deported. So they go after the low-hanging fruits: the immigrants coming in for their periodic immigration court hearings, the Home Depot parking lots, etc.

This is why you hear about old grannies being arrested and deported and random immigrant workers with no criminal history being nabbed.

Basically, ICE is a group of bounty hunters and they have no qualms about breaking the law if it leads to a nice payday.

Interesting ; Do you have any official or investigative links regarding incentives per deportation?

I understand their recruitment incentives are out of this world, but have not found reliable source for per-deportation incentives, and want to make sure I argue with 100% factually supported data.

I do not, unfortunately. It's just something I heard; though it would explain why ICE is going after law-abiding immigrants instead of criminals as originally intended.

That would certainly explain the lack of publicized confrontation. If they were mostly deporting actual criminals / gang members, one would expect more stories akin to the events today.

Actual criminals may have guns and know how to use them. That's bad risk / reward ratio. They should know, many of ICE are (pardoned) criminals!

What's the source on ICE being mostly pardoned criminals? I was under the impression this administration was against criminal gangs.

I'm afraid this will come across as bad faith but it's not: ICE is indistinguishable from a criminal gang to the people they encounter.

It sounds like you’re unfamiliar with January 6th. Many of the people active in J6th were prosecuted. Most were pardoned by Trump. I understand the GP is saying these same people have joined ICE. I’ve seen a picture of one ICE officer(?) with an SS tattoo below their ear. That should bar employment in the law enforcement but there he is.

He is not enforcing laws, just following orders. So it tracks.

Nowhere did I say ICE is mostly pardoned criminals. I was under the impression the administration was against criminal gangs the President isn't currently friendly with, such as newly whitewashed and perfumed ISIS leaders, former South American pardoned drug dealing ex-presidents, and such.

Got it, thanks for the clarification. I'm surprised the President of the US is friendly with criminal gangs to be honest - this forum has always said that the US espouses justice with a stern, firm hand.

That Presidential hand is pretty bruised lately.

ICE should be disbanded and most of its leadership jailed for their crimes.

I won’t be shocked if the next president includes defunding ICE as a major campaign promise.

Yeah by whom?

> ICE is specifically the enforcement arm of the U.S. immigration apparatus.

If you add up the budgets of all the various "police" forces in the US, how much money is spent each year keeping the domestic population in line?

I'm interested, as it seems that lots of groups in the US have their own overlapping police force rather than relying on "the" police. Apart from the total budget, it would be interesting to see a list of all the various police type forces at work in the US.

Following up my own comment, it turns out that Wikipedia has a lot of information on this subject. This article seems like a good jumping off point.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_enforcement_in_the_United_...

Will they murder more or fewer innocent people with better surveillance data?

Well they don't care if you're innocent or not, so I'm wagering 'more'.

Less. More surveillance will mean more opportunities for parallel construction, so they will be able to "justify" more murders.

> More surveillance will mean more opportunities for parallel construction, so they will be able to "justify" more murders.

— Sent from my Palantir employee device

(Satire, if not obvious.)

More. It's always more.

You can also kill guilty people and that can be murder.

You can also not kill any people and that will be absence of murder. That's not what is being discussed.

Been doin that for a while.

Check out Indeed.com and search for IT gigs in Northern VA or MD or DC, or a couple other federal-ish locations.

Lots of "180k for 6 month contract supporting DHS client deploying next gen cameras"

not sure this can be stopped as long as it's legal to record in public

There was a time when police were banned from putting a tracker on people's cars without a court order.

The argument was, yes it's legal to put a tail on a person when they're out in public because that's just a cop observing a person of interest out in public. But electronic trackers are something quantifiable different due to the ease of tracking many people without having to use manpower to do it. It's the thin-edge of mass, casual surveillance of the population.

In other words, putting a tail on someone should be manpower intensive because that's a check on police power, they have to really want to track someone to invest potentially several officers' time to it full time, whereas sticking a bug on a car is something they can do to dozens of cars per day per officer.

Of course now they don't even have to do that because our police state has normalized centralized cctv camera databases, license plate trackers that continuously track the movement of every vehicle in a city into a database. Now they're doing the same with facial recognition.

Now it's even a felony in Florida to do anything to block license plate trackers from tagging your vehicle (so you can't obscure your plate in a way that leaves it readable to humans but not to the automatic tracking software). No doubt we'll have such laws for facial recognition software soon as well.

In general I agree, but thinking of counter-arguments -- criminals are not playing by the same rules and use every manpower-reducing technologies. So if police to keep to their traditional methods, then criminals will have upper hand, and more so with technological advances.

If "criminals" are now are the mass population then we need to think about how we're defining "criminal."

Police were always allowed to bug a vehicle with a court order. They weren't allowed to just casually bug random people's cars because that's mass-surveillance. Now mass-surveillance is completely normalized. Every citizen is treated as a potential criminal and surveilled into a database.

You could say the same thing about all those pesky rules police have to follow around probable cause, evidence collection, letting people have lawyers, etc. Criminals don’t have to do any of that.

Average Republican, fine with that.

I'm about 1000x more concerned with gangs of armed thugs kidnapping & murdering my neighbors than I am about criminals.

I can fight back against criminals. I cannot fight back against cops. I'd rather be surrounded by criminals.

You probably meant the other way around, no? You can legally fight back against cops, but criminals be criminals, you cannot "fight back" against someone stealing your car forever.

ICE doesn't have any shortage of blatantly illegal behavior to point to. I don't think many people realize how far gone the rule of law is already.

I am endlessly frustrated about that.

A good friend of mine who also works on tech is utterly disconnected from current events. Whenever I offer a discussion or say “hey did you hear about X?” his response is always skepticism that such a thing could occur. He has a newborn and now he’s even more disconnected (somewhat more understandable given the child).

It seems like a lot of people in tech are like that, or increasingly like that. I have a diverse stable of publications, journalists, subject matter current events podcasters, and other sources in my feed readers and my circle. Sitting between these things, it seems like there is a widening gulf.

by that logic it is perfectly legal for AMZN to openly publish the whole vast-vast trove of Ring videos. I do think it is legal, just wondering what would government do it if AMZN actually does it. I also think the governments at all levels should publish all the license plate readers data because it was collected/bought on the public dime and thus a public property.

there are plenty of sites at least in the USA where you have live cameras of public areas, hosted by the governments themselves.

lets suppose you collect those feeds and do image recognition and integration of data across those multiple feeds, add cross-referencing with other public data of photos, names, addresses, etc. - would it be legal? would it be legal to publish the results in the open?

there are already sites where again you can put it anyone's name and it will show you where they live, where they lived, people they've lived with, and no I will not link them because they're already too widespread and I don't want more to know about them, but someone on here can trivially find one

Everyone should spend a little time looking at the DHS twitter.

Nobody should spend time on twitter.

Remember how people used to say "Why did the vast majority of people, non-Nazis, just go along? Why did nobody do anything about the Nazis?". We're seeing it right now. ICE is now an organization acting with violence outside of its jurisdiction, like the SA were for the Nazis.

> Of course, ICE doesn’t just end up targeting, surveilling, harassing, assaulting, detaining, and torturing people who are undocumented immigrants.

Unfortunate timing of this article going live... Some of that seems quaint now.

For those lacking context, ICE shot and killed a woman in Minneapolis today. An agent standing beside a car shot a driver through a car window, killing her and causing the car to lose control and crash into other parked cars.

Allegedly, the agent shot in self defense, but the shot was taken after the car started moving away from the agent.

The woman was identified as a 37 year old US citizen. She was not part of any ICE protest groups.

On the contrary — the timing is perfect. Yesterday, that statement could've been described as hyperbole or a far-fetched hypothetical. Today, it's a different story.

Right, have to add strait up shooting US citizens to the list :/

What witnesses are desribing in Minniapolis is a public exicution, by ordering a woman to drive away, but there was no room to turn around, and he ran up to the car and shot her 3 times in the face as she was trying to manouver and follow orders. The authorities are trying to call him a hero. On topic, for the life of me I realy cant imagine ICE possesing the capability for surveillance no matter what they buy, and it is clear that government and media company are providing direction ,or sometimes specific actions, other than just go fuck some people up in this area code.

There's nothing wrong with that if it's justified.

It was not.

Remember: None of this intrusion would have been necessary if we had simply enforced the border.

Border enforcement is only the excuse to build a paramilitary force akin to the Blackshirts or the Sturmabteilung that will do whatever violence is asked of them.

Dude, every country has borders and most take it seriously. In many countries, such as Poland, they shoot at people crossing the border illegally. A country with no enforced borders is no country at all.

If you want to revise your assessment to include the creation of this problem by having a lax border, I can agree with you somewhat. We should not require border police far away from the borders. But we do require it now, because certain malicious politicians let in a bunch of people illegally.

You're responding under the presumption that the official story about ICE's mission is accurate and sincere. I'm suggesting that it's a ruse to dupe people into accepting paramilitary enforcement of an authoritarian state. If so, arguments about border enforcement are just playing by the terms set by the propaganda.

If you read the second paragraph of the comment you just responded to, I alluded to a potential problem-reaction-solution scheme to create the situation (excessive illegal immigration through unenforced borders) to the final conclusion of expanding federal authority all over the place. It is subtle, so I don't blame you for not connecting the dots.

Despite the fact that I suspect this scheme is in play, we do actually need to get these illegals out. I believe they have let welfare leeches, common criminals, foreign military, and terrorists all through the border to make sure that we would need federal help to get them out. Rejecting federal solutions now is not the answer. The answer is to let them solve the problem and insist that things go back to normal afterward.

> Rejecting federal solutions now is not the answer. The answer is to let them solve the problem and insist that things go back to normal afterward.

If those federal solutions are not intended to solve unauthorized residency but instead to put us in a permanent authoritarian state where we don't have an afterward where we have the power to insist on things?

That's the greater threat than "illegals" at the moment IMHO.

I think it's more of a gradual creep of federal authority and insider deals for government money than an instant authoritarian state. There was a lot of money lost in the housing of illegal aliens and asylum seekers for example. Thousands were put up in LUXURY hotels for hundreds per night, for months or years. They had free everything provided by sketchy government contractors. Many government actions turn out to be fraud or grossly overpriced. Look at the billions lost in the daycare scandals. They're paying for fake daycare and Medicaid for illegals, and cutting benefits for poor US citizens such as my parents.

Federal authority is in fact required to evict people who were allowed to enter in bad faith. There's no getting around that. You either let them stay and suffer higher crime, worse job market, and worse government benefits, or you make them leave. Many Democrats have come out and said that they will not comply with federal law. Now there are Republicans at the top so maybe the law can finally be enforced.

This is another theory as to why the massive illegal and fraudulent legal immigration under pretense of asylum was allowed: https://www.conservapedia.com/Cloward_and_Piven_Strategy Another one is the mere fact that in a democracy, there is always an incentive to expand the voter rolls. There is even this motive on a state level, because seats in Congress are apportioned according to census data that includes all people residing in each district/state. It's very easy to understand that importing millions of people and trying by any means to legalize them and defeat immigration enforcement is one way to try to steal a country. It's treasonous and if we allow this threat then we will not have a country few years from now.

Which intrusion is necessary? The intrusion of a bullet into a brain?

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