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ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team
- viraptor 1y agohttps://archive.is/20251003143338/https://www.wired.com/story/ice-social-media-surveillance-24-7-contract/ https://archive.is/20251003143338/https://www.wired.com/stor...
- lawn 1y agoGotta spend that gigantic funding on something that furthers the party's agenda.
- libraryatnight 1y ago[flagged]
- neuroelectron 1y ago[flagged]
- aaomidi 1y agoI think that is in fact contribution. It’s really just as simple as that.
- nh43215rgb 1y agoPalantir can help with that
- pacifika 1y agoThis is the new there’s an app for that?
- neuroelectron 1y agoCan they? Or is the data just for
- swarnie 1y agoWhy bother with the additional tender, the NSA have been doing it for decades?
- ninalanyon 1y agoYou bother with the additional tender because Palantir is a commercial organization that will pay you handsomely for it.
- jinushaun 1y agoIt’s pretty clear that ICE is the seed of a paramilitary force.
- goda90 1y agoI'd say seedling now.
- heresie-dabord 1y agoA force with significant capability to surveil US citizens. > Together, these teams would operate as intelligence arms of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations division. They will receive tips and incoming cases, research individuals online, and package the results into dossiers that could be used by field offices to plan arrests. [...] The scope of information contractors are expected to collect is broad. Draft instructions specify open-source intelligence: public posts, photos, and messages on platforms from Facebook to Reddit to TikTok. [...] > They would also be armed with powerful commercial databases such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, which knit together property records, phone bills, utilities, vehicle registrations, and other personal details into searchable files.
- Arubis 1y agoWhich capability has been iteratively built out for decades across multiple administrations against the consistent professional recommendation and public outcry of engineers, civil rights advocates, and some citizenry, and has at last landed in the malicious hands we've been warning about. Nothing here is either surprising or unpredicted. It's just ugly because it's finally happening.
- bilbo0s 1y agoIf it makes you feel any better, I can assure you we've been using these technologies all along. Only we used it for people we claimed were "street criminals" and "gang members". It's just that now we're rolling it out to have society-wide control instead of just using it for what we were told was simply "pacifying inner-cities". If I were a man given to being suspicious, I'd swear that the whole time using these technologies for "street criminals" and "gang members" was never about "pacifying inner-cities" at all. I'd be inclined to think that maybe it was just the equivalent of the beta test. But I'm not given to being suspicious. So I know that whole way of thinking is just nutty. right?
- throwaway984393 1y agoAmerica's Gestapo
- groby_b 1y agoHold, citizen, you shall be arrested for your impure thought. By masked goons.
- Paratoner 1y agoGoons arresting gooners. In the year of our Lord.
- deeg 1y agoWhat happened to all those 2nd Amendment conservatives who needed their guns to protect us from the governments jack booted thugs?
- skizm 1y agoDidn't you read the article? They're building a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team.
- watwut 1y agoThey joined ICE and proud boys.
- diffrinse 1y agoWe ask things like this because we fundamentally misunderstand the MAGA movement. The MAGA movement's fundamental claim is that America is under attack by an insurgent force. The Trump regime (read: Heritage Foundation) is a counter-insurgency operating under emergency conditions.
- vkou 1y agoThey are the jack-booted thugs, and they always have been.
- ProjectArcturis 1y agoThe 2A guys have only ever been LARPers.
- krapp 1y agoThe 2A guys overwhelmingly voted for this and will be more than willing to take up arms when it's time to put the untermenschen against the wall.
- xyzelement 1y agoThis is such a lame comment, sorry. The fact 2nd amendment crowd had a chance to prove their principles a few weeks ago and they did it with flying colors when the NRA came out against any restrictions for trans people. But as a 2A supporter I don't feel any obligation to rage against ICE assembling a social media team. These seem to be completely disconnected concepts.
- btbuildem 1y agoGiven how many accounts online are bots or anonymous, will they ever be able to shake out which real people which personas belong to? Or will it be a case of "we said this is you, so that makes it you"?
- miltonlost 1y agoThe latter. Checking for identity won't matter to ICE. They already break into apartment buildings without warrants and arrest children and US citizens. There's 0 logical reason to believe ICE will do anything in good faith considering their past and current behavior as well as by the words of Trump himself. https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-...
- SteveNuts 1y agoYes, they’ll use bots to detect the bots. I guarantee it’s not hard to detect outliers (bots) via many different heuristics at this point. It’s going to turn into a perpetual game of whack a mole just like SEO and ad blocking.
- netsharc 1y agoI'm going to modify my keyboard to generate em-dash when I input "-"...
- froober 1y agoThat works well until the following doesn't compile int x = 1 — 2;
- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago#define — - fixes that issue for C.
- rockercoaster 1y ago
- jmclnx 1y agoYet another reason to dump Twitter, Meta, Tiktok and other social sites. People can always go mack to USENET and IRC if they want to make it hard to be tracked :)
- Imustaskforhelp 1y agoMatrix, session, simplex seems like a interesting idea too. Not sure if signal allows anonymous-ish personas for their groups but simplex definitely does but out of all the options given, maybe irc is the most well known :) So irc it is lol
- cindyllm 1y ago[dead]
- segmondy 1y agoThey don't want you on there, they need your silence. Your posting about injustice gives them great fear. They don't want your unsolicited commentary on state of affairs. You are a friend only if you boost their propaganda. So yes, go hide away and say nothing and pretend the world is normal, you will eventually have to deal with it in the real world.
- ghostoftiber 1y ago[flagged]
- Arubis 1y agoYou don't even need to take a job. You can just [dress up as ICE](https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/us/ice-impersonators-on-the-rise-arrests-made-as-authorities-issue-national-warning https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/04/us/ice-impersonators-on-the-r...) and use the threat of deportation to assault them. Or you could probably take the job and do that while getting paid. It's clear enough this admin would approve.
- throwaway810 1y agoApparently. https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8Y3imj6bYP8 https://www.youtube.com/shorts/8Y3imj6bYP8
- MandieD 1y agoYeah, that's some Gestapo level business... or since they don't like that word, Stasi. As in, there were loads of people in the DDR (East Germany, 1949-1989) whose job it was to read people's personal mail, along with the network of neighborhood snitches.
- otterdude 1y agoAll those out of work programmers here's an opprotunity to create some disruption, pad your resume, and possibly create a job. While we still have a free internet, it would be great to see efforts to create technology to replace centralized social media, cloud-tech, and businesses. We need to make it so fucking hard for the gov, advertisers to get access to your data that it very expensive to maintain a system like this. And please please please do not work for or lend talent these jerks!
- 01HNNWZ0MV43FF 1y agoThe network effect and the funding is the hard part. People want to be on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram because they spend billions hosting images for free and they have a million para social friends there Any competitor will have to compete not on technical competence or privacy, but on "can I upload lots of HD video?" and "are my favorite celebrities there?" Offramps to let people migrate easier, syndication to let people leave and still do POSSE, a solution to the problem that all free image hosting eventually attracts CSAM, those are difficult problems
- otterdude 1y agoFacebook, Twitter and Instagram all took advantage of "viral marketing", ontop of lots of venture funding for advertising potential. Distributed/P2P tech is essential because of the income from marketing maintains these systems, selling user data. P2P changes that by allowing people to own their data and share it their way. User-Hosting shouldn't be such a wild idea in 2025, especially if its like IPFS based which already has infrastructure for low-effort hosting such as a chrome plugin. As long as transition is easy I dont see why change cant happen. A browser plugin to scrap your existing profiles and bring them to NEWSITE.com is all thats needed There's No reason change cant happen especially when so many people see social media as despotic, and gov takeover of tiktok beckons. Be the motherfucking change yo!
- jonathanstrange 1y agoThe US is going down the gutter, it's sad and pathetic.
- rpjt 1y agoCertainly depends on who you ask
- an0malous 1y agoWhat’s the steelman argument for the US actually doing well?
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- slater 1y agoProtecting us against Schrödinger's immigrant: Both stealing our jobs AND too lazy to do any work. /s
- Dig1t 1y agoWilling to work for less than an American, but somehow doesn’t drive wages down for Americans. Lives in American housing yet somehow doesn’t drive up the cost of housing. Creates ethnic enclaves which mostly speak their own languages yet somehow assimilate into American culture. The left has plenty of its own contradictory arguments.
- rockercoaster 1y ago> Willing to work for less than an American, but somehow doesn’t drive wages down for Americans. Yeah, they obviously do. That's plain bullshit. .... ooooon the other hand, we've never tried having an economy without them. We didn't meaningfully limit migration from elsewhere in the Americas until like the '50s, and at the time beginning such enforcement was controversial because we already used them for a ton of cheap farm labor and farmers' interest groups thought it'd ruin them if we significantly limited such migration. The reason their fears didn't manifest as reality is that we simply, and at least in part on purpose, never bothered to enforce those new laws as completely as we technically could, especially for farm labor. So like they do lower wages (again: obviously) but also they always have, so removing them is a big change from the status quo of practically the entire history of the country's economy. I dunno, worth looking at I guess, but I personally would want to ease into it in case it turns out to be a bad idea. > Lives in American housing yet somehow doesn’t drive up the cost of housing. I think the cheap-labor effect on construction probably outweighs this by a good margin. But maybe not. > Creates ethnic enclaves which mostly speak their own languages yet somehow assimilate into American culture. Eh. That complaint has been leveled against every prior migrant group, and hasn't held up over the long haul. Even prior waves of hispanic immigrants. I'd need a reason to think it's different this time to give this any credence whatsoever.
- nicholasjarnold 1y agoSo if they are using information people freely share to social media sites as the seeds for their investigatory and enforcement actions it follows that there is a simple trick people can employ or minimize their effectiveness. https://signal.org/download/ https://signal.org/download/
- rpjt 1y agoSome people: "Great, this will help them get criminals and other bad people off the street." Some other people: "More fascism. This is Trump's version of the SS. It's absolutely horrible and we are doomed if this continues." The world continues to spin.
- miltonlost 1y agoSome other other people: "i can't tell the difference between rotten apples and fresh oranges. therefore all fruit is shit." But which one do you think is accurate? Here's an article to consider, where ICE broke into an apartment building without warrants to arrest citizens and children. Does this sound like Gestapo tactics or no?: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-immigration-raid-on-chicago-apartment-building-leaves-residents-reeling-i-feel-defeated https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/01/massive-...
- rpjt 1y agoIt doesn't matter what I think. The reality is most people who voted, voted for this or something like this. This will only change at the ballot box, assuming you believe in fair elections.
- miltonlost 1y agoSo what is your actual point? Is there a true reality in your world or is it just all political spin? Does ICE's violence against US citizens even exist in your worldview? Is ICE's violence against US citizens something that is objectively true in your eyes? Say something concrete.
- rpjt 1y agoMany people are upset, many people aren't. My point is: what are you going to do about it?
- clipsy 1y ago> It doesn't matter what I think. Then do us a favor and stop sharing it.
- Hizonner 1y agoAny creative chaffing or deception ideas?
- Ccecil 1y agoI guess I had always just assumed this was the case for quite some time. Or I should say "someone" in the govt was always watching...not necessarily ICE.
- photochemsyn 1y agoNationwide secret police with paramilitary capabilities only answerable to a few people in the executive branch? Completely unconstitutional, violating all the clauses on warrantless searches, detention without trial, etc.? Looks like ICE should be abolished and its entire staff fired, just have INS take over all immigration issues.
- justahuman74 1y agoThe social media companies must dislike this as it'll make people even less likely to post anything
- sgnelson 1y agoAnd of course it's flagged. Because the use of technology built from companies funded by VC has nothing to do with Hacker News and Ycombinator. Dang and company are such a joke (yes, that's a direct violation of the rules, maybe it'll get their attention) for allowing these sorts of stories to be flagged. The idea that this is only about "politics" or it's "controversial" and thus should be hidden from view is such a copout. These are the important stories that should absolutely be discussed in a place like this. Save your breath in replying: "well, it might make people upset and we want to have nice conversations here." And whatever other platitudes arguing for censorship of obviously important topics that deal directly with the technology, companies and employess that frequent this site.
- mzajc 1y agoFor a more proactive approach, browse https://news.ycombinator.com/active https://news.ycombinator.com/active to catch these kinds of stories. As far as I know, it ignores flags completely.
- Schmerika 1y agoThey don't care about making no one aware of these stories. Blocking 98% will do just fine for them.
- Gud 1y agoWe need a diverse set of online communities again.
- jemmyw 1y ago> for allowing these sorts of stories to be flagged I believe, from reading responses on other stories, that they need to manually do something to prevent a story being flagged. So there's no allowing, it just happens. I don't disagree with you though. I haven't found "flagged" a good indicator on whether a story is interesting or has worthwhile discussion in it. It's just "some small number of people don't want this link here". It would be nice if instead people put their energy into upvoting the stories they do like. Or add a downvote instead of flag so we actually have a consensus.
- h05sz487b 1y agoThat would create the risk of people generating, hundreds and thousands of fake profiles and giving ice the runaround, wouldn’t it?
- southernplaces7 1y agoThat this post got flagged, and was allowed to stay flagged (as far as I can see) is one more excellent example of the selective idiocy of the moderators on this site, or if not their idiocy, than tacit support for dampening certain narratives. It's very much a tech-related post, that talks about a very worrying authoritarian digital surveillance tendency, and it gets flagged on a site that calls itself "hacker news"? Get the fuck out of town.
- tartoran 1y agoWhy is this flagged??