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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: 3, Insightful) by aafcac on Friday October 03, @06:44PM (3 children)
I've definitely seen a significant amount of abuse of the "slipper slope fallacy" being used as a justification for why we just need to cool our jets, that these horrible things that he says he's going to do aren't going to happen. And to some extent, I do think a little bit of wait and see was appropriate early on, just because there were so many horrible things that he was promising and it wasn't clear the extent to which the entire system had been hollowed out to enable him.
But, it does get a bit old hearing people insisting that Trump isn't really going to do that and we're very sure that one isn't something he'll follow through on when nobody really knows. I doubt most people thought that most of this stuff would happen because normally a less corrupt SCOTUS would be putting a stop to at least the most egregious abuses of power.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 03, @10:33PM
Well it's either shut 'er down or get shut down when the Epstein files drop. Pepperidge Farm remembers.
(Score: 2) by gnuman on Saturday October 04, @10:02AM (1 child)
By that, I hope you meant Congress instead. The courts are not meant to stop anything, maybe just delay
Yes, in 2016. Currently, you have Peter Theil creation as VP. The same one that is taking over government technologically via Palantir. This "wait and see" was almost 10 years ago -- have people been under rocks all this time?
(Score: 2) by aafcac on Sunday October 05, @04:34AM
That's some early 19th century thinking. Yes Congress is supposed to intervene, but SCOTUS has decided what constitutes permissible actions and legislation with respect to the constitution since it gave itself the power in Marbury V. Madison. It's checks and balances which a considerably minority of the population only seems to care about when the government wants to do good things for people that aren't robbery barons or corporations.