ICE's interest in high-tech gear raises new questions: 'What is it for?'

91 pointsposted 10 hours ago
by standardUser
(politico.com)

62 Comments

daheza

10 hours ago

I've been thinking a lot about ICE and how quickly we are escalating. I attend some minor protest and rallies against them but its not enough.

I do like how Illinois has setup a commission to track accountability. https://ilac.illinois.gov/

I feel like those of us in the technology sector have a obligation to assist in the counter balance to the police state that is rapidly building up. After all the executives of our companies have clearly chosen their side (Musk, Thiel, Ellison, Cook, Zuckerberg).

One idea is creating a site to track incidents, collect testimony, video evidence of events as they happen. If we can't be physically there to confront them at least we can share evidence and put it in front of as many eyeballs as we can. It wouldn't be a pleasant project, being a sin eater has its own costs. It would at least be something though.

Does anyone else have projects or ideas that can be contributed to?

SimianSci

9 hours ago

I see this as a downstream issue of a greater issue needing to be solved.

Many American's risk homelessness and violence outside of the corporate world. The control over money used for housing and healthcare lies entirely within the hands of corporate intrests driven by these executives. Until a viable alternative can be discovered for addressing housing and healthcare issues, no reasonable resistance amongst tech workers can be organized.

Many within the tech world, would love to build and produce technology that competes with the corporate interests you described, but lack secure housing or healthcare to do so.

Please note, that this does not require a 'solution' to the problem, but rather an alternative.

Ritewut

9 hours ago

Consider joining your local Code For America chapter or contributing to whatever local group handles mutual aid. Civic coding and mutual aid will be vital in the near future.

HNisCIS

9 hours ago

There are plenty of opportunities but many rely on what are effectively "zero days" (some actually are) that aren't suitable for posting on a public forum.

Rather, go find leftist groups and get vetted to participate with them. You'll find like minded people, including other people working on technical countermeasures.

The groups are messy and sometimes incoherent (leftist infighting is a meme) but as of late they've become much more focused on a being pragmatic so nobody is going to make you quote marx or anything.

manbart

10 hours ago

ICE is being used as the tip of the spear to complete the transition of the USA to a police state

Ritewut

10 hours ago

This is really the only answer. ICE is a Trojan Horse. It's like "protect the children." It's just a justifiable means to get what they really want which is more control. America is desperately trying to turn into China in more ways than one.

azinman2

10 hours ago

“America is desperately trying to turn into China in more ways than one”

Except without the long term thinking and investment.

CSSer

9 hours ago

Oh they're thinking long-term about someone. It's just not you or I.

AnotherGoodName

10 hours ago

I cannot comment on whether America is becoming a police state or not because i am a greencard holder subject to cancellation of the greencard at any time at the whims of the current administration.

Someone1234

9 hours ago

Unfortunately even if you naturalize, they're now floating the concept of denaturalization for people opposed to the regime. It is wise if you are or were a legal immigrant (or have family members who are), to keep your head down.

morkalork

8 hours ago

>It is wise <snip> to keep your head down.

Everyone is making the comparison to China but when I see comments like this, I think of countries like Russia where street interviews of the average citizen invariably result in answers like "I'm not political" and "I have no opinion"

expedition32

9 hours ago

I would advise people from EU or Canada not to become US citizens. When shit goes bad you always have an exit.

Meanwhile Americans who "vote with their feet" will be stopped.

shafyy

9 hours ago

But that's exactly wrong. The people have the power, but only if enough people resist.

Someone1234

9 hours ago

Suggesting that the most legally vulnerable group be careful isn't wrong, it is the reality for which they find themselves.

66%~ of the US either voted for this, or were indifferent about it, and are a group which cannot be deported/denaturalized. Perhaps that group should step up instead of the <1% who are most at risk from legal administrative threats.

I think it quite telling hearing born-Americans asking green card and naturalized citizens to be their "resistance" for decisions they themselves made. Reads like looking for cannon fodder, who can just be trivially deported/denaturalized while the immune citizenship sits back and points at how bad things are.

Ritewut

9 hours ago

The group of people who voted for this needs to stand up against it and I don't see that happening because it requires admitting you were wrong and got conned and people would rather die than do that.

itsdrewmiller

9 hours ago

If true there would be no one term presidents

tomrod

10 hours ago

At the rate they are also arresting citizens, I think there is no one truly safe.

throw-12-16

9 hours ago

The US has been a police state since the Patriot Act was passed.

vkou

44 minutes ago

Oh? Really? Has this madness been happening in the other 23 of the 24 years since its passage? At this scale? Were there a lot of masked men disappearing people in broad daylight?

I'd have figured that if you were looking at historic examples of the US being a police state, the Jim Crow South would have been a better one, or if you were a homosexual, really, any time prior to the 90s.

bdangubic

34 minutes ago

yes, since uniformed people have gained legal rights to touch my junk in order for me to be allowed to board the plane (not to mention that they took my toothpaste twice) - every year since then. we have lost every ounce of freedom after 9/11 and this “madness” today is nothing new, we just take for granted now what our own “freedoms” have been reduced to

vkou

24 minutes ago

Have the TSA disappeared a lot of people? Flown them out to foreign torture prisons, and thrown away the key? Ignored judicial orders to return them?

(I'm also not entirely sure why they are touching your junk, I've not had that happen in any of my security checkpoint experiences.)

Look, while I'm as happy as the next person to bitch about how awful the TSA is, if they are your best example of the US being a police state... It's not particularly persuasive. Most police states don't limit their capacity for repression to throwing you out of an airport without a refund for your ticket.

SimianSci

10 hours ago

Its pretty clear that ICE is being used as a means of forming an industry similar to that of the Military Industrial complex, but focused on law-enforcement and domestic action.

What alarms me here is that once a certain level of investment and industry is built, it will necessitate a means of self-sustaining itself and will attempt to find this through political investment. I fully expect a domestic version of the "perpetual foreign wars" concept to appear within my lifetime where we go from one domestic emergency requiring huge policing resources to another, ensuring the industry gets funding.

throw-12-16

9 hours ago

ICE is MAGA’s analogue to the SS.

Diehards specifically recruited for their commitment to the cause.

They will be the ones making jokes while digging mass graves.

Teever

9 hours ago

It is far closer to the SA than the SS. The MAGA equivalent of the SS hasn’t seen the light of day yet.

bigbadfeline

7 hours ago

> It is far closer to the SA than the SS.

False.

SA was essentially a militia which functioned manly as the NSDAP's non-governmental terror group. As soon as NSDAP took power, Hitler used the SS to take control of the SA and assume its functions. The transition was bloody, the top commander of the SA was executed by Hitler and its leadership purged or killed, see the Night of the Long Knives.

The SA was never a government entity with any significant functions or budget.

krapp

9 hours ago

It's actually about white supremacy and turning the US into a Christofascist ethnostate but y'all aren't ready to take that conversation seriously. The militarization of domestic policing and surveillance is just a means to an end.

throw-12-16

9 hours ago

Most of these people will keep showing up to their cushy jobs at Google and FB while the data they spent decades harvesting is used to oppress their neighbors.

toomuchtodo

7 hours ago

These people were not ethical before, why would you think they would be ethical or care now?

SimianSci

9 hours ago

I see the Christofascism as more a flavor of the month than a serious unifying ideology. Religion has always been a tool used by those in power to gain favorability with people at scale. But history tells us it is easily manipulated and twisted to serve the needs of the powerful. (Crusades, Colonialism, Slavery, Conservatism)

Whatever Christofascism is today, will be boiled down to its fundamental components the moment it no longer serves the powerful so that it can be remade into whatever they need it to be. Think of it more as the rotting of one religion giving way to the fertile ground of new relgion.

krapp

9 hours ago

It has roots going all the way back to the founding of the country. The core of American culture and of many of its issues has always been the tension between the conflicting desires for a Puritan theocracy with a strict racial hierarchy and a secular progressive Republic.

Slavery was justified by Christian principles, and manifest destiny. Hitler was inspired by America's genocide of native Americans, racial segregation and eugenics (all of which were justified by Christianity.) And after the war, the US carried the torch of Nazism's racist ideas after the rest of the world tried to move beyond it.

Many conservative ideals are backed by Christian belief. They hate feminism because it undermines the tradition Christian ideal of gender hierarchy. They hate homosexuality because they believe the Bible says it's a sin. They hate communists because communism is atheist. And most of all they believe the US was founded as an explicitly Christian nation and should be governed only by Christian principles.

9/11 happens and Bush declares a new "Crusade" against the evildoers. That language wasn't accidental. The connections between the American military industrial complex and Evangelical Christianity run deep.

And now we have Trump, whom a significant number of Americans believe to have literally been sent by God to wage spiritual warfare against demonic forces within the government, citing Christianity explicitly as justification for his militarism.

And it's absolutely not a coincidence that we reached this inflection point and acceleration after electing a Black president. That broke America in ways that I don't think that it can ever recover from. It certainly isn't a flavor of the month. If anything it's the only truly unifying ideology America has ever had.

I think you're correct that religion can be used as a tool by the powerful, but the typical cynical assumption that no one in power actually believes any of it is I think a mistake. Maybe not Trump, I suspect he's too much of a narcissist to believe in anything but himself and is an example of what you're referring to, but I think the people around him whispering in his ear and many of his supporters are true believers.

haritha-j

10 hours ago

Wonder what they'll get up to with all that tech when they run out of (illegal) immigrants to hunt?

thrance

6 hours ago

They're already mostly going after legal residents, some citizens even. Their goal is to terrorize the out-group, nothing else.

theossuary

9 hours ago

That's the neat trick, they won't! They'll always define a class of "illegals" to hunt, their job depends on it

markus_zhang

9 hours ago

Asking as a foreigner who wants to travel to Cali to visit the Computer History Museum sometimes in the future: What is the plan for ICE? Is it going to get more manpower and $$$ to expand its responsibility?

throw-12-16

9 hours ago

ICE has more funding than the USMC.

Go to a country that deserves your tourism, US is not worth visiting.

xiphias2

7 hours ago

As a foreigner travelling inside USA: people are super nice here in real life, and I see much less politics in real life than on Hacker News.

Be sure to create your ESTA a few workdays before though, as long as you have it you will have a great time.

OGEnthusiast

9 hours ago

ICE funding is about to 10x at the new year. I would personally recommend against foreigners going to America.

vkou

42 minutes ago

Half the country violently doesn't want you here, and you should oblige them by taking your money and attention elsewhere. There are plenty of more deserving locations.

thrance

6 hours ago

Depends on the color of your skin, I guess. Also, border agents have the right to search your phone and have been known to refuse entry to people speaking ill of Trump on socials.

stevenalowe

9 hours ago

“…social-media monitoring tools, facial recognition software, license plate readers and services to find where people live and work.“

Pretty easy to switch from targeting “immigrants” to “dissidents“

grim_io

10 hours ago

Every deportation comes with a complementary surplus Nvidia B200.

gtirloni

9 hours ago

It's very simple: follow the money.

As usual, something else is being used as the excuse to distract people from what's really the end goal: enriching some group.

Caius-Cosades

9 hours ago

I don't know, truly a mystery, might have something to do with doing their job or something.

DetectDefect

10 hours ago

Technology is a fundamental political right; asymmetry of power in a polity through a monopoly on technology is the goal of any State, which people have a responsibility to deny.

justonceokay

9 hours ago

Does this line of thinking make you an anarchist?

DetectDefect

6 hours ago

I don't think so. Anarchy is defined as the absence or non-recognition of authority, whereas I do not reject authority, but reason about controls a free market can meaningfully apply on it, namely through decentralization of technology - the means of its power.

I do believe a productive hierarchy of power could naturally emerge if everyone were equally equipped with technology. For example, if all State financial transactions were auditable by anyone (say, via immutable ledger) - would this not lead to favorable outcomes without the necessitating the chaos of anarchy?

baobun

8 hours ago

Does that line of questioning make you an antichrist?

Havoc

9 hours ago

Definitely totally for freedom and democracy!

exe34

9 hours ago

Every Reich needs an omnipotent and omniscient secret police. The Turd Reich is no different.

api

10 hours ago

Remember that the simplest answer for this kind of thing is often: pork for politically connected tech and defense companies.

Not saying it couldn’t be for bigger things, just that there does not have to be a rational need other than handing out money.

throw24817

10 hours ago

They should focus on immigrant CEOs and politicians from South Africa and India who currently enrich themselves and deregulate and enshittify the tech industry.

Even MAGA didn't vote for this.

therobots927

9 hours ago

Oh yes they did. Don’t let them forget it.

Ritewut

9 hours ago

They voted for it and you see them in this very thread.

cess11

9 hours ago

On the face of it, it looks similar to israeli border guards and cops in the West Bank.

Paramilitary, high tech equipment, close to zero accountability. It's not far off that the people they're snatching don't have any legal means to fight it either, similar to how palestinians are held in 'administrative detention' and only have access to extremely corrupt military courts.

I suspect that negotiation is not going to get either states or popular movements very far against this threat.

steele

10 hours ago

Not a mystery; the tech is to assess capacity to harm upon brown populations before scaling out to suppress dissent from the rest.

thegrim000

6 hours ago

Every single story this user submits is political hate. Every comment they make is political hate. And yet they're a multi-year power account with over 10,000 karma. What is the justification for allowing such accounts to exist, other than the mods being complicit with it?