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ICE to Buy Tool that Tracks Locations of Hundreds of Millions of Phones Every Day
Documents show that ICE has gone back on its decision to not use location data remotely harvested from peoples' phones. The database is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has bought access to a surveillance tool that is updated every day with billions of pieces of location data from hundreds of millions of mobile phones, according to ICE documents reviewed by 404 Media.
The documents explicitly show that ICE is choosing this product over others offered by the contractor's competitors because it gives ICE essentially an "all-in-one" tool for searching both masses of location data and information taken from social media. The documents also show that ICE is planning to once again use location data remotely harvested from peoples' smartphones after previously saying it had stopped the practice.
Surveillance contractors around the world create massive datasets of phones', and by extension people's movements, and then sell access to the data to government agencies. In turn, U.S. agencies have used these tools without a warrant or court order.
"The Biden Administration shut down DHS's location data purchases after an inspector general found that DHS had broken the law. Every American should be concerned that [the current administration's] hand-picked security force is once again buying and using location data without a warrant," Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Tokolosh on Friday October 03, @03:54PM (1 child)
The Leviathan is going to do what it is going to do. The writers of the Constitution anticipated this, and created the Judicial branch of government, headed by the Supreme Court, to put a stop to such inevitable nonsense. Sadly, the courts have failed abjectly in their duty. And I am not referring just to the present lot, but going back a hundred years or more.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Somehow, "all" men does not include non-men and those born outside the US, and were passed over by their Creator.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by gnuman on Saturday October 04, @09:38AM
Yeah, that's just bullshit. This is same thing that happened in germany in the 20s. The courts always ruled for the nazis because they always ruled against the communists. You see, all the judges had to be nationalistic enough to be allowed to be judges. The nazis didn't just "take over" -- it was decades in the making, by packing the courts, etc.. While one side kept talking about "rule of law", the other side just changed everything about the law to suit itself. A person got killed? Well, if it was Nazis that did it, it's self-evidently self-defense. Maybe even the "dead culprit" has to pay damages.... If a communist-sympathizer did it? Self-evident premeditated, terrorism at hand. Minimum 20 to life sentences. And today's equivalent of DEI and political opposition, were the very first that went to concentration camps.
And now you talk about judicial branch will save you? That's laughable. If anything, they can just delay the almost inevitable at this point. When executive branch runs over the legislative branch, like they are doing, the judiciary is almost meaningless. It will just get worse ... much worse.
As for the constitution, it's just a piece of paper. Deploying federal troops in states without consent of the state is clearly against the constitution. But if your entire feedback is "we'll sue you!", sorry.... constitution becomes toilet paper at this point.