I don't think it's a coincidence that identity masking of deputies starts happening the moment that deputies start doing illegal things. They are jumping to the very end of "what can we do if we remove every means of accountability, present or future?"

I think ICE is in fact setup / groomed to be ... lawless. Just thugs for the federal government.

Biometrics are more protected in IL than an other states as well. Facebook settled a big lawsuit just for automatically tagging people (actually the suit was about storing the biometric face data at all without consent)

I'm somewhat morbidly curious how many citizens we're going to deport to random countries. It happened fairly often before this administration.

Lots of lawsuits forthcoming. Who’s going to pay for them? We are.

Cops be cops: https://denverite.com/2025/10/27/bow-mar-flock-cameras-accus...

In that case it's Bow Mar, a small town in Colorado, relying on flock cameras to issue tickets for petty theft.

We as a society just aren't capable of using these toys right.

People can look identical, that's the reason we started using finger prints. Faces are not unique.

At this point, the US is a failed democracy and a facist state. I would definitely advice people from other countries to leave ASAP.

The facist American government is even sending their dissident citizens to detention camps in Africa .

Good luck to Americans that cannot go somewhere else.

> the person is an alien

The dehumanizing language is absolutely disgusting and it's use is an important milestone towards genocide.

> This is completely lawless.

They don't give a **.

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/the-rule-of-law-i...

Birth certificates and driver's licenses can be and are routinely faked by everyone from high school students to foreign agents. Faces cannot be faked.

Fingerprint is individual surveillance, face scanning is mass surveillance. I'd expect governments to always favour the latter if given the choice.

When are citizens’ fingerprints normally put on file, in the US? Or, for that matter, noncitizens who entered irregularly?

Didn't happen. A frantic appeal by the Administration to the 7th circuit court of appeals postponed it.

Did some research, biometrics specifically for facial ID for DHS/CBP seems to be awarded to NEC and Thales.

https://www.nec.com/en/global/solutions/biometrics/face/neof...

Very likely an array of hackers, soon.

Not Palantir. Their CEO has explicitly said that they don't collect data on US citizens.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-IH7EVrBbQ

what is the database being compared against?

I wonder if Oracle is going to become the next IBM with respect to their Nazi past.

It's about this app, they won't tell anyone who developed it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mobile_Fortify.

One of that article's top sources is Vogue (https://www.vogue.com/article/computer-vision-dazzle-anti-su...).

I remember in college my magazine journalism prof surprised me by pointing out that Vogue a bad-ass journalistic enterprise in its own right. That was 35 years ago and it's cool to see they still have it.

Can we do stickers that people can print out and wear?

I stopped hearing claims that it was about illegal immigration almost instantly after the debate where he claimed “they’re eating the dogs, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” It was eerie.

This reality feels like someone had their monkey paw wish granted.

“I wish I could play Wolfenstein in real life.”

Always has been.

Biden's CBP goons stripped me naked, imprisoned me, ran up an ER bill for which I'm still being chased for by debt collectors, and tranported me by prisoner van all over the state, while they were enforcing Biden's (and now continue with Trump) insane war on drugs. I did not have drugs, I am not involved with drugs.

Of course nothing was found, and the allegation was hearsay by an HSI detective that some unnamed dog alerted to an unnamed officer, neither of which I have any idea what they were even referencing.

Very much so. There's multiple videos of them standing in Walmart parking lots and as shoppers walk out with their carts, anyone vaguely Hispanic is being questioned. "Where were you born? Are you American?"

Probable cause is out the window. This is, firsthand, Steven Millers White America policy starting to take effect.

It is absolutely insane that the party who tried on the Libertarian mask less than 20 years ago and rode high on a wave of "don't tread on me" individual liberty is now suddenly ok with masked thugs scanning everyone's faces for their master database of enemies of the state.

> that is just an excuse for what has become state sponsored KKK style racial terrorism

This sounds like some nonsense white people say to defend their own choices and exclusive clubs. Black Americans have always been under this level of surveillance, and you couldn't pry stop-and-frisk from Democrats. They love it. I've had guns drawn on me for walking down the street at least four times in my life, and at least fifteen times have been searched while multiple cop cars pulled in to surround me. Once, in Arkansas, they all pulled in around me while I was walking down the street with white friends, and their harassment of me was so drawn out and boring that my white friends just left. The cops didn't even look over at them while they left; they weren't interesting.

They don't remember when they were calling Giuliani America's mayor; I do, and I remember it was because he was mean to black people. They don't remember Laquan MacDonald; I do, and I see how that wasn't career ending.

So what you mean is that they're harassing people who are obviously immigrants (or at least English is obviously their second language), and trying to find out if they're legal immigrants. If you mean that, just say it and stop bringing black people into it. The KKK isn't about them. It would be nice if everyone would stop characterizing their problems as them being like black people's problems. They just got here, they're nothing like us. America doesn't even think it owes us anything for centuries of birth to death slavery, it certainly doesn't owe them anything. They don't even like us, they're statistically more racist than the natives (who also don't like us.) They only want to be us when they think they can get something out of it.

Here's the question: pretend that a majority of people want illegal immigrants (not just criminal illegal immigrants, like Trump propaganda makes them all out to be) deported, and that majorities consistently say that in polls, and that they voted for a presidential candidate who has always clearly advocated for that.

How exactly can they do it if every Democratic-run state and city refuses to comply? How can the democratic will of citizens be carried out? If we're not going to do democracy anymore, do we have a country at all? What benefit is there to citizenship? An illegal immigrant erases their past, how can a citizen do the same? Why can't citizens drive, work, get loans from banks, or even in extreme cases vote and hold office without identifying themselves?

If you're going to answer all these questions with "Screw you!" do you see how you're ushering in a police state with popular support? How it's inevitable? And they'll just take off and go home, while we have to live in it because we don't have anywhere else to go.

Western elites are stupider than they have ever been. They're just going to usher in nativist demagogues who will administer the totalitarian states they've built, and suffer no consequences. They'll be richer than they ever were, and having stupid taste arguments about their consumption while what they've ushered in is immiserating the vast majority of people. Feudalism is coming, and the landlords and their children are cosplaying as workers.

What's ironic about it? That's like saying it's ironic for soldiers to fire their guns while in a trench. They're doing things unto others that they would not have done unto them.

That's about as ironic as carrying a gun while wearing a bulletproof vest. If the tech exists and works it changes both defense and offense.

> The irony of doing this while covering their own faces

    It’s best to understand that fascists see hypocrisy 
    as a virtue. It’s how they signal that the things 
    they are doing to people were never meant to be 
    equally applied.
    
    It’s not an inconsistency. It’s very consistent
    to the only true fascist value, which is domination.
    
    It’s very important to understand, fascists don’t
    just see hypocrisy as a necessary evil or
    an unintended side-effect.
    
    It’s the purpose. The ability to enjoy yourself
    the thing you’re able to deny others, because 
    you dominate, is the whole point.
    
    For fascists, hypocrisy is a great virtue—the greatest.

* Via: https://kottke.org/25/03/for-fascists-hypocrisy-is-a-virtue

It's not ironic, it's saying "the rules are for you, not for me, fuck you".

That's fine, as long as they aren't making anyone remove face coverings. People are allowed to cover their faces in public places. And we can't tell from this biased article whether they had probable cause to stop anyone that they did.

I think a lot of tech needs to go through that struggle.

From the perspective of a long career in infosec, what’s occurring now was enabled a longtime ago by broad-based industry consensus. Concerns then, which == awful stuff occurring now, were robustly dismissed by many many many devs with s/strong viewpoints/paychecks.

The only silver lining I can see is we’re taking our medicine now, but there’s a lot more to go through still, on the back of many significant tech capabilities.

For example, Flock was kept out of many cities, but Amazon was not, Flock just signed a data sharing deal with Ring. That’s a no-nonsense, nationwide, warrantless vehicular and pedestrian tracking network mechanism.

Not great, Bob! But RSUs for building it all sure was great.

It's true now as in the past. Technology or science aren't inherently good or bad, just a matter of how you use it. Personally I enjoyed much more working on medical devices at a university than typical commercial software, simply because there's an ethical component to that software that was quite fulfilling.

How certain are we that the photos being taken are going to a Palantir database?

Asking because the FBI has been assembling biometrics databases since the mid-20th century and providing access to other law enforcement agencies since the 1990s.

Physicists have Pugwash, which started after they saw the culmination of their decades of work in the actual evaporation of two entire cities.

We already live in the social credit dystopia. https://www.thenexus.media/your-phone-already-has-social-cre...

Those systems depend on enforcement. If a private system keeps score and gate keeps you usually have alternatives (utilities excluded), if it’s the gov and they decide to enforce it, then things get dire…

"American" "social" credit scores were instituted long ago. Distracting from this was the whole reason the media added the word "social" to the term - to other the idea as something that happens over there, never here.

That was the carrot. This new development is the stick.

thanks awesome. thank you for making this.

Can you go into any detail on what technologies you used? Is there enough differentiating data in their attire to actually match agents? None of them are showing their faces so I wonder how many false positives would occur

Thank you for doing this! Great work.

What's your policy for complying with the patchwork of national biometrics laws?

They, of course, wear full face masks.

I wonder why people downvote. Many western countries now couldn't be more obviously fascist. State responsibilities are being offloaded to multinational corporations, de facto private policing is around the corner, surveillance (digital ID tracking your movements and what you talk about, chat controls and whatnot). It's creeping in and people pretend it's not happening.

Ask Pastor Niemöller how well that's likely to work out.

The lack of safeguarding is shocking. Kids should not be hassled at all much less strip searched without their parents.

You almost had me for a moment.

My understanding is that the only thing keeping this from happening is that the data is far more valuable for traffic monitoring than law enforcement. As a trivial example, these cameras can already determine is a vehicle is speeding based on its number plate sightings between any two cameras. They can hence start issuing tickets, no radar or police needed.

However, they've not gone down this path because they are (rightfully) concerned that there would be an instantaneous and severe backlash that could lead to those cameras being banned entirely, which would cripple traffic control.

This and ezpass readers are already everywhere in cities (even outside toll points) to track movement.

For today's ten thousand https://deflock.me

I'm sure it's already happening!

"You're being pulled over because this licence plate is not registered with a valid REAL ID"

"I'm behind on my beatings."

They're too busy writing brave, orthodoxy-challenging essays about wokeness...

They would call and say what? "Go home you crazy weaponized narcissist, you're drunk on power and delusions of techo authoritarianism." If you're challenging someone who can hurt you, you should not approach until you are highly confident you are going to win, whatever that looks like.

I hope the folks mentioned are, and continue to remain, somewhere safe while this plays out.

that has nothing to do with this

Yes, the republicans doing republican things is the democrats fault!

> lack of cooperation of every Democratic Party run city and state on illegal immigration

It is not the job of state, let alone local, law enforcement to enforce federal law.

Huge numbers of Venezuelans would want to leave Venezuela and immigrate to the US if they legally could, regardless of anything Trump does or doesn't do, because the US is a much richer and better-run country than Venezuela is. Working illegally for poor wages in the US is a better deal for many people than physically being in Venezuela. There's also nothing special about Venezuela in this respect, much of the world is so much poorer and badly run than the US that many people from many different places would prefer to live in the US compared to their own countries.

You can be arrested and charged with a federal criminal law, 18 USC 111 "assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers or employees." The judge wont entertain your arguments about state law.

Fines and up to 8 years in a federal prison, 20 years if you use a deadly or dangerous weapon or actually inflict injury. You can get up to 15% off for good behavior, there is no parole.

We need states to step in and encourage local police to arrest federal agents breaking the law, and allow victims to sue in state courts.

Sort of. You have to look up if your state has "necessity/choice-of-evils” defense and the standard defense-of-others rule - and what scopes it has.

I'll tell you this much, most judges will regard a circumstance for you to exert force against a peace officer - seeming or actual - as an extralegal action, and will very rarely affirm it as a protected action from the books. And even if you beat such a case, it ruins your life in the process. Their qualified immunity will remain longer than you can remain solvent.

They legally can take a photo of you, sure.

But they aren't just taking a photo from across the street. They are also:

1. "briefly" detaining you to make you face a camera and take of hats etc for the app to get a good enough shot.

2. arresting you if it doesn't correctly identify you

3. using protected characteristics to decide who needs to get scanned.

Taking photo is one thing, storing biometrics to compare against without consent is quite another

Illinois has the Biometric Information Privacy Act.

https://www.ilga.gov/Legislation/ILCS/Articles?ActID=3004&Ch...

If they ignore all other forms of evidence that you're a citizen, that goes beyond privacy in a public space

Keep in mind that what "anyone" can do and what "anyone serving in an official government capacity" can do are different.

Most of these people have SSNs and work permits. We let them in and let them work legally and now have suddenly changed our collective mind and are violently letting them know. It's absurd.

Please don't fulminate on HN. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Minors don't have biometrics.

Minors do, in fact, have biometrics. Identification with them may be less reliable for some kinds of biometrics, but... reliability isn’t a hallmark of the current regimes “immigration enforcement” mechanisms.

> They are not obligated to have any sort of ID, especially citizens.

This is also true of adults, who are not obligated to have or carry ID if they are citizens (immigrants, both minors and adults, are a different story, are required to have ID, and are required to have biometrics taken unless they are under 14.)

Obviously, it can’t rule out citizens (though it could compare to databases available to the feds, which I would assume state ID databases are), since not all citizens will have biometrics of any kind, or even ID photos on file, but if they have presumed that the targets are immigrants, then scanning can be used to compare to records of documented immigrants, reinforcing (note I do not say justiying) the conclusion tha they are illegally present if it fails to match.

They can also be used to build intelligence databases of contacts even if not used to support immediate detention.

> Also, what in the fuck would CBP be doing in Chicago?

CBP, and more specifically Border Patrol, the main enforcement agency within CBP, is everywhere the Administration’s immhration crackdown is beig executed, and much of the most violent “immigration enforcement” attributed to “ICE” is actually Border Patrol, not ICE.

> This entire encounter is fake.

No, this entire encounter is illegal. It is a crime, being committed by the republican administration running the federal government and endorsed by every republican in congress who has declined to reign in the illegal behavior of the trump administration.

It is, however, very real. If you reside in American, then this is the reality you live in, imposed upon you by republican voters. You don't get to just plug your ears and cover your eyes.

This entire encounter is fake.

What are you talking about? CBP has been in Illinois for weeks. Greg Bovino, their commander, has been hauled before a judge this week to testify about how CBP (and he, personally) have violated the judge's TRO against unjustified use of tear gas [0].

This is very basic factual stuff that's in the news every day. How do you not know this is going on?

[0] https://abc7chicago.com/post/ice-chicago-news-border-patrol-...

Do... do you think ICE agents would come up to you and just scan the mask you clearly have pulled over your head?

https://xkcd.com/1105/