How ICE became a $2.8b domestic surveillance agency The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency has spent about $2.8 billion over the past 14 years on a massive surveillance "dragnet" that uses big data and facial-recognition technology to secretly spy on most Americans, according to a report from Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy and Technology. The research took …
The cheek of it. They've not even asked the data subjects to sign up to thousands of words policy statements to give away their rights in the first place. Unlike those nice tech giants
"It was quite interesting that the Canadian government was able to block the exchange of bitcoins that US citizens donated to the Freedom Convoy truckers."
Why does that surprise you? When it was available to the people that Canada didn't want to have it, it was in Canada. Where it started wasn't very related since it got there. Also, I only saw cryptocurrency being frozen at exchanges, so a direct transfer would probably have worked. I'm curious what part you found interesting, as both aspects seem predictable and ordinary to me.
According to ICE’s annual report for fiscal 2021 [PDF], 59,011 non-US citizens were deported (“removed” in immigration legalese) from the US in fiscal 2021. Historical comparisons to removals in other fiscal years can be found here; large numbers of deportations seem to have started during the second Clinton administration.
It's funny that they are trying to solve a problem this way where fixing their outdated civil registry system would help a lot. In other countries getting a driving license without the required stay permit is not so easy. Even utility bills could be an issue (of course people renting houses illegally can still have bills in their names or using front people).
It would also make voting in the US a far less cumbersome system - people would be automatically enrolled to vote, without local governments able to try to disenfranchise them, while people won't be able to vote more than once or try to play other tricks.
But the norm in US now looks to never think this is the XXI century but trying to keep outdated XIX or maybe even XVIII systems in place and then build atop it cumbersome, costly, stupid and often illegal solutions...
"They need some visionary to drag them, kicking and screaming, into the century of the fruitbat..."
How about someone to drag them, kicking and screaming, out of the century of the fruitbat and into the century of the anchovy instead?
Modern times and whatnot?
Some of that's been done, and other parts of that I don't want done.
"In other countries getting a driving license without the required stay permit is not so easy."
In the U.S. as well, which is why they had to branch out. Various methods are available for proving identity, but obtaining a license, especially a federally-approved one, requires documents people who immigrated illegally won't have.
"Even utility bills could be an issue (of course people renting houses illegally can still have bills in their names or using front people)."
I don't want to have to prove my identity to connect utilities. I disapprove of a tracking system that can easily link my identity to my ISP connection. It is unnecessary for anyone following the laws, and for any criminal investigation that needs the data, it can be collected in a limited way during the investigation instead of collected indiscriminately and retrieved from that cache. An updated system does not need to collect that data.
Actually, the level of identity theft you see in US is unheard outside it. US as an obsolescence issue but doesn't want to face it. Especially since true reforms would require Congress approval and in the actual situation it's impossible. So federal agencies try to get past the stalemate and build such kind of Frankenstein systems which do break your rights deeply.
Data are already there, but mismanaged so badly they become useless. If that's what you want because you "fear the State", you don't understand that you are the State, so you're actually fearing yourself.
You're afraid of your ISP knowing your identity - but it does know anyway, just it has exactly to use oblique ways that simply put your privacy more at danger, doesn't increase it, and with a bigger chance of doing a mistake and create more issue than are solved. While Facebook & C. know even more than that.
After all you do want property records ensuring a given property is yours, and nobody can claim it, right? You might want to know who your tenant is, so you can go go after them if something bad happens, don't you?
"Data are already there, but mismanaged so badly they become useless. If that's what you want because you "fear the State", you don't understand that you are the State, so you're actually fearing yourself."
Let's get the most wrong part done first: I am not the state. I am a member of a state, which one is not important right now. The state can still abuse one of its members, and many have been known to do so in violation of the laws agreed upon by the state and me as a member. Thus, I wish to avoid those abuses. If I was the state, then I would have the power of the state and I would eliminate those abuses (though making me a dictator is probably not the best way to fix things, I at least promise to be a better one than usually seen).
The whole point of privacy isn't to eliminate the existence of data. It is to avoid the misuse of that data, including collection by people who should not possess it. Disorganization is basically the goal. I'm in favor of avoiding organizing data when it is not warranted and approved. My ISP does know my name and payment details, but they did not need my identity paperwork to plug in a wire. I think it is possible to pay some of the utilities in cash, so if I wanted to avoid giving them my name, I could do that with extra effort (it's not worth bothering, but it's possible). Facebook probably does know a lot about me, and this is exactly the problem I want solved, so pointing out that it's true is not going to change my mind. A record of property ownership is not the same as a centralized repository of every utility connected to every resident. If I'm renting, my landlord can know who I am and collect documents to prove it if they want without having to record this for government usage which has already been specified to be illegal.
It looks to me that attacking the Congress is a bit more anti-American, but looking from outside I could be wrong...
And still what happens at the southern border tells you a lot about what people outside US thing of US - you don't see mass of people trying to enter Russia... actually it looks they fight to avoid to become a colony of Russia, and they deserve any help.
But maybe turning US into something alike Russia will also stop people trying to enter it, sure!
That depends upon how you define “mass”. This archived article from 2014 discusses the emigration of people, both “legal” and “illegal”, from a number of the ex-USSR -stans to Russia, mainly in search of employment. (More recent articles on the same topic exist, but this article provides informative background context.)
Not surprisingly - after all many of them were Russians who emigrated there (forcibly or not) when the Empire was still intact, and may have been given Russian passports for the same reason Russia now invaded Ukraine.
But you didn't see the Black Sea full of small vessels of people trying to land in Sochi.... Belarus "imported" Afghans and try to deliver them across the Poland border, and those people nor tried to stay in Belarus nor tried to go to Russia...
The people from the ex-USSR -stans who hold Russian passports have a citizenship right to emigrate to Russia. But as the article noted, in one year (2009), 1.5 million people from Uzbekistan alone emigrated to Russia, whether “legally” or “illegally” — in my view, 1.5 million people fron one country in one year qualifies as a mass of people successfully entering Russia.
Why would you expect emigrants to Russia to arrive primarily via the Black Sea? Russia has extensive land borders, which are far safer to cross than over large bodies of water in small vessels.
My understanding was that Belarusian travel agencies were offering trips to Belarus for the purpose of crossing into the EU, not for crossing into Russia or claiming asylum in Belarus, so it shouldn’t be surprising that the Afghanis, Iraqis, &c. who decided to fly to Belarus were intent on crossing into the EU rather than crossing into Russia or staying in Belarus.
I hadn't realised that we had a cross posting agreement with THE TRUTH. 4 posts in the last month - looks like we got all of it as well.
I do love watching the trumpettes whining about "globalists" when the USA has been exporting its inflation to China for decades to allow it to finance its military empire. Of course when their fuhrer employs dubiously documented peons to work in his money losing ventures that's somehow OK. Or the MAGA hats made in Pakistan. Note to trumpettes - Pakistan is not a town in Pennsylvania. It's an actual country out there in the grey mist called "not the lower 48".
"trumpettes"? Sigh.
I have to assume however that you're not referencing the half of America that supported President Donald Trump, as he put measures in place to make Chinese imports less attractive and to return manufacturing jobs to the US, while upsetting the military industrial complex by not starting any wars.
Precisely countering the exportation of inflation and financing of a military empire.
He also had strong policies against illegal immigration to the US. Had ICE been allowed to actually prevent this they wouldn't need to try and track and remove all the illegal immigrants now.
Basically ICE operates with the suspicion that anyone from south of the United States is an illegal immigrant.
That assumption drives their philosophy that people can be deported first and wait in some other country, sometimes for years, until they can make their case.
They have even arrested Puerto Ricans who are US citizens with US passports.
ICE needs to be thawed, but that will require changing the law. Unfortunately, in our current political climate, this is a non-starter.
There are too many Americans who wouldn't mind going back to the original Naturalization Act of 1790 which limited naturalization to "free White person(s) ... of good character".
“These types of contracts with private data brokers have helped ICE amass utility records from more than 218 million customers across all 50 states and Washington, DC, according to the Georgetown researchers.”
218 million customers that has got to be nearly every utility customer and therefore the homes of nearly all the population of the USA. Sure, the population is about 330 million, but most homes will have more than just a single resident.
Why do ICE have the household utility bills of nearly every US citizen, they are not illegal immigrants. This is massive overreach by ICE. As is 74% of driving licenses etc.
218 million customers that has got to be nearly every utility customer and therefore the homes of nearly all the population of the USA.
According to the 2020 US census, as of 2019-07-01, there were 139,684,244 “housing units” (i.e. houses, condominiums, apartments/flats, &c., whether occupied or not) within the US, so there is certainly some overlap in those 218 million customer records (which are perhaps represented by tuples of person, service address, utility type, date range, so a single person at a particular service address during a specific date range could have multiple customer records — one for each relevant utility type).
Section V of the report confirms that my interpretation was mistaken: they’re not 218 million utility customer records, but utility records of 218 million unique customers (among 139.7 million housing units). ICE’s use of these utility records to e.g. track down people for deportation seems to be a side effect — an extra source of income to the NCTUE consumer credit reporting agency, which assembled these utility records as a way to estimate the creditworthiness of people with limited or no traditional credit histories.
Even if they were subject to oversight, Biden's new Disinformation Government Board (aka Ministry of Truth) could suppress anything anyone says about the new Congressional Police anyway. I wonder if "War is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength" will become their motto.
> spending dozens of hours filling out immigration forms to take my wife of 8 years to Merica
They hope that at some point you'll get tired of this, and stop bringing that nasty foreigner into our nice clean USA.
We don't like foreigners, we've been told time and time again they come to steal our jobs and take our women. The only acceptable foreigners are the illegal barely paid ones who do our gardening, cook and clean our houses for next to nothing.
/s
Even now, 14 years later, we continue to see how wonderful the PATRIOT Act, et al, was in making our American lives safer and more betterer. All while spending a not-insignificant chunk of our tax dollars every year. Not that I've noticed any difference in the number of (probable) illegals in the area, seems about the same as it's always been. But hey, that carpet isn't going to make itself...
It's a funny world - in the 90's it was the Democrats saying "Aaaargh! We need to get these illegal Hispanics out and keep them out" where the Republicans were like "but who's going to mow my lawn?" Fast forward 10 years, and the parties had reversed roles. Yet more proof that it's all just hand-waving and useless incantations.
If one really wanted to stop undocumented immigration, one would have to severely punish the people who provide the incentive to cross a border - the employers. While I have seen people hauled away at shift change at factories, none of them are Anglos in suits. Arrest the factory owners, and do not let them bond out until all those arrested at their facility have had their cases adjudicated. Oooooh, but those are the people who vote for these harsh immigration crackdowns (keeps the underpaid workforce scared of doing anything to call attention to themselves).
I will say that I remember INS busts back in the 90's making the local evening news, and the story was usually that INS had detained 3-5 illegal immigrants for deportation. Three to five? It's like they didn't even look through that factory of 300 workers, the vast majority of whom were immigrants, and most of them were of dubious immigration status. It was a lot of fluff, a bit of news coverage, but nothing fundamentally changed.
Arresting the factory owners is a good idea on paper, but their high-dollar lawyers will have none of it, and Congress would never go for it since they know the people (campaign contributors) who would be arrested.
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