#SanJose Can Protect Immigrants by Ending #Flock #Surveillance System

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/op-ed-san-jose-can-protect-immigrants-ending-flock-surveillance-system

#privacy #ICE #immigration #politics

Gamers shouldn't be ignoring what's happening across the country.

This goes doubly for Black and Brown folks!

Fighting Game Community member Ludovic reportedly detained by ICE, fundraiser started for legal fees and support

https://www.eventhubs.com/news/2026/feb/18/fgc-ludovic-ice-detainment/

#FGC #ICE #ACAB #Gaming

PERSONAGATE: Investigation reveals OpenAI's verification partner Persona is directly integrated with government surveillance.

Findings:
→ FINTRAC (Canada) programs: SHADOW, LEGION, ATHENA
→ FinCEN (US) reporting
→ ONYX—ICE's $4.2M AI tool for face recognition & social media scraping
→ 269 biometric checks per verification
→ 3-year data retention without consent

Your ChatGPT selfie may be in ICE's database.
https://newsgroup.site/personagate-%d1%8f%d0%ba-chatgpt-%d1%81%d1%82%d0%b0%d0%b2-%d0%b7%d0%b1%d0%b8%d1%80%d0%b0%d1%87%d0%b5%d0%bc-%d0%be%d0%b1%d0%bb%d0%b8%d1%87-%d0%b4%d0%bb%d1%8f-ice/
#Surveillance #Privacy #OpenAI #ICE #US

"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has relied extensively on Microsoft’s cloud storage and artificial intelligence products while escalating its campaign of mass arrests and deportations in recent months, files obtained by +972 Magazine, Local Call, and The Guardian reveal.

ICE more than tripled the amount of data it holds on Microsoft servers between July 2025 and January 2026, at the same time as the agency’s crackdown on migrants broke new records and sparked mass protests across the United States. Whereas last July the agency was storing around 400 terabytes of data in Microsoft’s cloud platform, Azure, by the end of January that had risen to almost 1,400 terabytes — equivalent to approximately 490 million images.

The leaked documents do not specify the kinds of information stored by ICE on Microsoft servers, but they do indicate that the agency has used Azure to house large amounts of data, in addition to making use of AI tools that search and analyze images and videos.

ICE employs a powerful arsenal of surveillance technology, reportedly using facial recognition software, drones, phone location tracking, mobile spyware, and even tapping school cameras. The leaked documents show ICE is using Microsoft’s AI video analysis tools including Azure AI Video Indexer and Azure Vision, which enable customers to analyze images, read text, and detect certain words, faces, emotions, and objects in audio and video files."

https://www.972mag.com/ice-microsoft-azure-leaked-files/

#USA #Trump #Immigration #ICE #Microsoft #Surveillance #AI #Azure #CloudComputing #Spyware #FacialRecognition

#SanJose Can Protect #Immigrants by Ending #Flock #Surveillance System

As #ICE and other federal agencies continue their assault on civil liberties, local leaders are stepping up to protect their communities. This includes pushing back against automated license plate readers, or ALPRs, which are tools of mass surveillance that can be weaponized against immigrants, political dissidents and other targets.
#civilliberties #privacy #alpr #rights #civilrights

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/op-ed-san-jose-can-protect-immigrants-ending-flock-surveillance-system

Ring cancels its partnership with Flock Safety after surveillance backlash

Following intense backlash to its partnership with Flock Safety, a surveillance technology company that works with law enforcement agencies, Ring has announced it is canceling the integration.

#surveillance #DHS #ice #FlockSafety #ring #amazon #privacy #technology #tech

https://www.theverge.com/news/878447/ring-flock-partnership-canceled

"As U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have swarmed cities across the United States, American politics has appeared to enter a new phase, one in which armed federal forces turn civilian neighborhoods into active conflict zones. Part of what is driving this political shift is a potent technical infrastructure: ICE operations are now expedited by mobile surveillance and targeting systems, where agents’ most powerful weapon can fit in the palm of their hands.

Recent reporting has revealed ICE is relying on at least two applications to guide its crackdown. The first is ELITE (Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement), a new geospatial system built by the data analytics firm Palantir for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and designed for use on smartphones and tablets. ELITE “populates a map with deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address,” according to a user manual published late last month.

The second is Mobile Fortify, a facial recognition application manufactured by the biometrics company NEC that allows immigration enforcement officers to identify both citizens and undocumented migrants. ICE and other DHS agents have reportedly photographed and scanned the faces of Americans in cities like Minneapolis and Chicago — images that are cross-checked with biometric databases, compiled into dossiers, and stored for up to 15 years.

It’s no coincidence that, reporting on ICE’s incursion into Minnesota, New York Times columnist Lydia Polgreen described an “occupation designed to punish and terrorize.” The technologies supporting their operations illustrate how thoroughly ICE is following in Israel’s footsteps: both ELITE and Mobile Fortify bear a striking resemblance to mobile targeting applications Israeli forces have..."

https://www.972mag.com/ice-immigration-israeli-occupation-surveillance/

#USA #Trump #Immigration #ICE #Surveillance #PoliceState #Fascism #Palantir #Israel #FacialRecognition

Cobourg pier, Ontario, Canada #Photography #Winter #Cobourg #Ice

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A frozen pier stretching off towards a small automated lighthouse. A big hill of snow melting into ice is in the foreground.

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Frozen melting hill of snow and ice from snow clearing sitting at the end of a pier under a grey sky with the sun trying to peek through.

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A lighthouse and a buoy(?) on or past a distant berm with another ice rimed berm in the foreground all against Lake Ontario's hazy grey backdrop.

Discord Age Verification System Linked to Palantir

The Discord age verification controversy just keeps getting better. This thanks to the systems links to Palantir.

https://www.freezenet.ca/discord-age-verification-system-linked-to-palantir/

#Censorship #News #Privacy #Security #AgeVerification #Discord #ICE #Palantir #Persona #PeterThiel

Homeland Security Wants #SocialMedia Sites to Expose Anti-ICE Accounts

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html

#DHS #politics #ICE #privacy #FreeSpeech #surveillance

DHS monitors Reddit users calling for peaceful ICE protests, per leaked intelligence bulletin. 🔍

No violence indicated, yet agency flags it for "operational and reputational risks" near Border Patrol sites—raising free speech concerns ⚠️

Surveillance without warrants erodes user privacy and civil liberties 🛡️

🔗 https://boingboing.net/2026/02/10/dhs-is-stalking-reddit-users-online.html

#TechNews #Privacy #DHS #Surveillance #Reddit #FreeSpeech #Cybersecurity #DataProtection #CivilLiberties #ICE #Censorship #Government #Protest #Violence #Police

Homeland Security Seeks Social Media User Data Amidst Anti-ICE Content Scrutiny

US government agency asks social media companies for information on users who post content critical of ICE. Concerns about free speech and privacy.

#DHS, #ICE, #SocialMedia, #FreeSpeech, #Privacy

https://newsletter.tf/dhs-social-media-user-data-critics/

US Homeland Security Seeks Social Media User Identities Linked to Anti-ICE Content

The US Homeland Security wants to know the names of social media users who post things against ICE. This raises questions about privacy and free speech.

#ICE, #Privacy, #FreeSpeech, #USGovernment, #SocialMedia

https://newsletter.tf/us-government-social-media-ice-names/

The US government wants to find out who is posting online about ICE. They are asking social media companies for names. This is causing worry about people's privacy and their right to speak freely.

#ICE, #Privacy, #FreeSpeech, #USGovernment, #SocialMedia

https://newsletter.tf/us-government-social-media-ice-names/

Ring Boasts About Power to Surveil Entire Neighborhoods

Ring doorbells can now surveil living beings throughout every neighborhood the devices might be found and their latest data sharing agreement with surveillance company Flock has many activists up in arms, as that startup has no qualms with working closely with federal agencies like Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

#FlockSafety #ice #ring #searchparty #pets #Amazon #surveillance #privacy #technology #tech

https://futurism.com/future-society/ring-doorbell-surveillance-dog

The DHS and its components want to find non-white people to deport by any means necessary. Of course, “necessary” is something that’s on a continually sliding scale with Trump back in office, which means everything (legal or not) is “necessary” if it can help White House advisor Stephen Miller hit his self-imposed 3,000 arrests per […]

Gov Loses Hard Drives It Was Supposed to Put #ICE #DetentionCenter Footage On

The legal saga over #surveillance footage from within an #Immigration & Customs Enforcement #detention center in suburban #Chicago has reached new levels of absurdity, with the federal gov losing 3 hard drives it was supposed to put footage on, refusing to provide footage from 5 critical surveillance cameras, & delivering soundless video of a highly contested visit from #DHS Sec #KristiNoem

https://www.404media.co/government-loses-hard-drives-it-was-supposed-to-put-ice-detention-center-footage-on/

"Several recent #books paint a stark portrait of the uniquely expansive regime of #USpolicing and punishment, revealing what conventional wisdom gets wrong about its origins and scale and clarifying the obstacles to changing it."

Marie Gottschalk reviews #TheMigrantsJail, #TheHighestLawInTheLand, #TheMinneapolisReckoning, & #Copaganda

https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-making-of-the-deportation-machine/

#USpol #USpolitics #stateRepression #ICE #police #immigration #migrants #deportations #massDeportations #carceralIndustry @bookstodon

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[rubrics] LAW, POLITICS The Making of the Deportation Machine The pillars aren’t new. They were built over decades, with bipartisan consensus. Marie Gottschalk image (photo, at left): Outside New Mexico’s Torrance County Detention Facility in March 2025. Image: courtesy of Daniel J. Chacón / Sante Fe New Mexican

#Google Fulfilled #ICE Subpoena Demanding Student #Journalist’s Bank and Credit Card Numbers

https://theintercept.com/2026/02/10/google-ice-subpoena-student-journalist/

#privacy #politics

How ICE agents are using facial recognition technology to bring surveillance to the streets

Using smartphones loaded with sophisticated facial recognition technology, in addition to professional-grade photo equipment, agents are photographing faces of people they encounter in their daily operations, including possible enforcement targets and observers

#facialrecognition #biometrics #surveillance #privacy #ice #technology #tech

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/security/ice-agent-facial-recognition-video-protest-movile-fortify-photo-rcna257331

#MarcBenioff 'Jokes' #ICE Is Watching #Salesforce Employees Who Traveled to the U.S.

https://www.404media.co/marc-benioff-jokes-ice-is-watching-salesforce-employees-who-traveled-to-the-u-s/

#privacy #politics

The Guardian: Local police aid ICE by tapping school cameras amid Trump’s immigration crackdown. “Hundreds of thousands of audit logs spanning a month show police are searching a national database of automated license plate reader data, including from school cameras, for immigration-related investigations.”

Open Letter to Tech Companies: Protect Your Users From Lawless #DHS Subpoenas

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/02/open-letter-tech-companies-protect-your-users-lawless-dhs-subpoenas

#ICE #politics #privacy

"By housing TikTok’s data on Oracle’s cloud infrastructure—a firm whose multibillion-dollar existence is owed in part to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement contracts, and whose co-founder Larry Ellison recently bragged about AI ushering in an era where “citizens are on their best behavior”—the government has finally achieved its aim of securing the app by integrating it into its domestic surveillance dragnet. Considering the drive to secure TikTok was driven by fears of what the notoriously repressive nation of China might do with our private data, this outcome is, at the very least, highly ironic.

The technical wizardry of this surveillance relies on your Mobile Advertising ID, or MAID, a unique string of alphanumeric characters assigned to every smartphone. Every time an app, be it TikTok or a simple weather tracker, makes a bid to show you an advertisement, if your location services are enabled, it shares both your MAID and your precise GPS coordinates to thousands of private bidders. In the past, this metadata has been used by the Pentagon to identify targets.

Data brokers like Venntel and Babel Street harvest these “bid-stream” crumbs into massive, searchable oceans of movement. For ICE, this means they no longer need a wiretap; they can access a digital twin of your life, where your TikTok scrolling habits are pinned to a physical map of your home, workplace, and your child’s school or day care."

https://newrepublic.com/article/205956/americanized-tiktok-backdoor-ice-surveillance

#USA #SocialMedia #TikTok #Oracle #Surveillance #Censorship #ICE #Immigration #Trump

I attempt to explain the rationale behind things like the political divide. All over social media, I see factions supporting and condemning events and activities. Each side claims the other side is stupid, ignorant, or uninformed, but this misses a fundamental point: our realities differ. This activity is not rational, but rather pre-rational and rationalised post-hoc.

https://philosophics.blog/2026/02/09/legibility-and-ontology/?utm_source=masto&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=essay
#philosophy #politics #factions #ice #grammar #failure #blog #podcast #essay #ontology #epistemology

Inspector General Investigating Whether #ICE's #Surveillance Tech Breaks the Law

https://www.404media.co/inspector-general-investigating-whether-ices-surveillance-tech-breaks-the-law/

#politics #DHS #privacy

Documents Reveal Real Reason for Raid on Chicago Apartment Building
---

The DHS arrest records make no mention of the Tren de Aragua gang even though officials repeatedly cited its presence in the building as motivation for the raid, in which agents descended from a Blackhawk helicopter and zip-tied U.S. citizens.
https://www.propublica.org/article/chicago-venezuela-immigration-ice-raid-landlord-tren-de-aragua?utm_source=mastodon&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=mastodon-post

#News #ICE #Chicago #Immigration #Venezuela #Immigrants #DHS #USPolitics

Ars Technica: “ICE Out of Our Faces Act” would ban ICE and CBP use of facial recognition. “A few Senate Democrats introduced a bill called the ‘ICE Out of Our Faces Act,’ which would ban Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) from using facial recognition technology.”

NBC News: How ICE agents are using facial recognition technology to bring surveillance to the streets. “Using smartphones loaded with sophisticated facial recognition technology, in addition to professional-grade photo equipment, agents are photographing faces of people they encounter in their daily operations, including possible enforcement targets and observers. Some of the images are being […]

In the grand scheme of things — the wanton cruelty, the routine violations of rights, the actual fucking murders — this may only seem like a blip on the mass deportation continuum. But this report from Dell Cameron for Wired is still important. It not only explains why federal officers are approaching people with cellphones […]

"ICE Out of Our Faces Act" would ban #ICE & #CBP use of #facialRecognition

The bill would make it "unlawful for any covered #immigration officer to acquire, possess, access, or use in the US—(1) any #biometric #surveillance system; or (2) info derived from a biometric surveillance system operated by another entity." All data collected from such systems in the past would have to be deleted. The proposed ban extends to cover other tech, such as #voiceRecognition.
#privacy

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2026/02/ice-out-of-our-faces-act-would-ban-ice-and-cbp-use-of-facial-recognition/

#InspectorGeneral Investigating Whether ICE's #Surveillance Tech Breaks the Law

#DHS’s #IG is investigating potential #privacy abuses associated with #Immigrations & Customs Enforcement’s surveillance & #biometric data programs, according to a letter sent to two senators.

Last week, we reported that Senators Mark Warner & Tim Kaine demanded that DHS inspector general Joseph Cuffari investigate immigration-related surveillance programs across DHS, #CBP , # #ICE.

https://www.404media.co/inspector-general-investigating-whether-ices-surveillance-tech-breaks-the-law/

Amazon's friendliness with the Trump administration is paying off, both to advance founder Jeff Bezos's personal projects and to advance the company's business interests. @brianmerchant says we need a consumer boycott, and for the company's white collar workers to step up.

https://flip.it/3YCmxG

#Amazon #ICE #Technology #Tech #TrumpAdministration

Solidarity Learning Hour: #Palantir and the Architecture of Surveillance
#ICE #Surveillance
Thursday, February 12, 2026, at 5:00 PM MST
https://actionnetwork.org/events/solidarity-learning-hour-palantir-and-the-architecture-of-surveillance

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are

„ICE has used #MobileFortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn't built to work like that—and only got approved after #DHS abandoned its own #privacy rules….“

https://www.wired.com/story/cbp-ice-dhs-mobile-fortify-face-recognition-verify-identity/

#ICE #Surveillance #USA #Fascism