WEBVTT - The Story: How Is Tech Driving Deportations? 0:00:14.280 --> 0:00:17.239 Welcome to Tech Stuff. I'm Os Voloshan here with Cara 0:00:17.360 --> 0:00:20.360 Price High as Hi Cara. So we've talked on the 0:00:20.400 --> 0:00:23.720 show a fair bit about facial recognition technology and the 0:00:23.800 --> 0:00:28.320 ubiquity of data scraping by private companies. It does sometimes 0:00:28.360 --> 0:00:30.840 feel a bit like we are living in a kind 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:34.959 of science fiction movie about the population of people who 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:36.479 are being technologically surveiled. 0:00:37.280 --> 0:00:39.120 I think the movie is called Minority Report, and we 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:40.960 live in it right now. 0:00:41.000 --> 0:00:43.479 And over the past few months, it's become impossible to 0:00:43.520 --> 0:00:47.879 ignore how government agencies are partnering with private companies to 0:00:48.000 --> 0:00:51.240 help in the efforts to do mass deportations. 0:00:51.720 --> 0:00:57.279 Yeah, it's very disconcerting to read about how government agencies 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:01.480 are using facial recognition technology to detain deput tees. 0:01:01.960 --> 0:01:04.360 Yeah, and it's not just facial recognition. We'll get into 0:01:04.400 --> 0:01:07.160 all the different technologies that are being used today with 0:01:07.280 --> 0:01:11.240 our friend Joseph Cox from four oho form Media. The 0:01:11.240 --> 0:01:14.679 amount of data that immigration and customs enforcement can scrape 0:01:14.760 --> 0:01:18.399 and utilize is pretty mind blowing. And on the other 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:21.000 side of it, people have developed products to help track 0:01:21.319 --> 0:01:24.960 ice activity, but those products and apps have been removed 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:27.480 from the Apple App Store, and also I think from 0:01:27.520 --> 0:01:30.560 the Android app stores, which limits how much people are 0:01:30.600 --> 0:01:31.560 able to use these tools. 0:01:31.760 --> 0:01:35.120 You know, how private tech companies are responding to ICE 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:39.160 does put a spotlight on the relationship between Silicon Valley 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:41.360 and this presidential administration. 0:01:42.080 --> 0:01:46.360 Joseph said, it's really astonishing what a different environment it 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:49.840 is now versus the first Trump administration in that respect, 0:01:50.000 --> 0:01:52.640 which we'll get into but without further ado, here's my 0:01:52.720 --> 0:01:56.400 conversation with Joseph Cox. Thanks for joining us today. 0:01:56.240 --> 0:01:58.360 Joseph, yeah, absolutely, thank you for having me. 0:01:58.640 --> 0:02:02.400 So I've got to be questions what's going on with 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:05.680 ICE in technology and how worried should we all be 0:02:06.320 --> 0:02:07.120 about what's going on? 0:02:08.000 --> 0:02:14.120 So ICE is buying essentially every surveillance technology available under 0:02:14.120 --> 0:02:18.239 the sun. A very brief overview is facial recognition technology, 0:02:18.360 --> 0:02:23.680 social media surveillance, phone location data, spyware for hacking into 0:02:23.720 --> 0:02:27.560 phones remotely fake cell phone towers as well, if you 0:02:27.639 --> 0:02:30.400 can imagine it, and if a law enforcement agency has 0:02:30.440 --> 0:02:34.240 had it before in the US, ICE has almost certainly 0:02:34.360 --> 0:02:37.520 this point purchased it or adapted it, or is at 0:02:37.560 --> 0:02:41.360 least thinking about buying it. As for your second question, 0:02:42.000 --> 0:02:46.320 we actually just published an article today about ICE and 0:02:46.360 --> 0:02:50.600 Customs and Border Protection officials using a facial recognition app 0:02:51.120 --> 0:02:55.120 in the field on people that stops to verify their citizenship. 0:02:55.639 --> 0:02:59.120 And a lawmaker who's also been following the issue told 0:02:59.160 --> 0:03:03.000 me that ICE believes a result from this app can 0:03:03.080 --> 0:03:07.040 override a birth certificate in determining whether someone is a 0:03:07.120 --> 0:03:10.360 citizen of the United States or not. That is obviously 0:03:10.400 --> 0:03:13.720 incredibly alarming that you're going to take the results from 0:03:13.720 --> 0:03:16.320 a piece of technology and you're going to trust that 0:03:16.360 --> 0:03:21.360 and a notoriously inaccurate technology sometimes, and you're going to 0:03:21.400 --> 0:03:25.480 trust that over the piece of paper that says that 0:03:25.560 --> 0:03:27.720 somebody is a US citizen. 0:03:28.320 --> 0:03:31.360 What is the reliability of facial recognition software today? 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.160 So I don't know about this specific technology it's called 0:03:35.640 --> 0:03:40.880 Mobile Fortify, but broadly, over the years, as companies and 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:45.120 governments have been deploying and developing facial recognition technology, we've 0:03:45.120 --> 0:03:49.000 seen there are racial biases. Often because the data sets 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.160 of all of these photos of faces used to train 0:03:51.520 --> 0:03:55.360 the AI or the machine learning algorithms, they don't have 0:03:55.400 --> 0:03:57.800 as many black people or brown people in them, so 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.640 they can actually be very inaccurate at directly identifying people. 0:04:01.880 --> 0:04:04.080 We've seen a ton of coverage in the New York Times, 0:04:04.080 --> 0:04:07.600 for example, where people have been arrested by mistake because 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:10.400 they believe one black man is actually another one based 0:04:10.440 --> 0:04:13.360 on the facial recognition technology. Again, I don't know the 0:04:13.360 --> 0:04:17.200 accuracy of this specific tool that ICE is using. They 0:04:17.240 --> 0:04:21.800 all do vary, but this bias, and especially racial bias, 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.040 has been our longstanding criticism of facial recognition over the 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:28.160 past five, six, even ten years. 0:04:28.320 --> 0:04:30.920 I want to get in start of the specific tools, Joseph, 0:04:31.000 --> 0:04:34.120 but before we get there, I actually several years ago 0:04:34.200 --> 0:04:36.800 hosted a podcast on a very different topic, which was 0:04:36.839 --> 0:04:39.520 called Forgotten Women at Fuarez, and it was about the 0:04:40.120 --> 0:04:44.240 femicides and murders of women on the Texas Mexico border. 0:04:44.560 --> 0:04:47.000 And one of the interesting things that came out of 0:04:47.360 --> 0:04:51.080 spending time there was how everyone on the US side 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:56.240 of the border talks about the twenty five miles inland 0:04:56.279 --> 0:04:59.680 from the border as this kind of zone where the 0:04:59.760 --> 0:05:03.480 law that govern law enforcement don't really apply. There's all 0:05:03.520 --> 0:05:06.880 these kind of special exceptions for border enforcement and stuff, 0:05:07.200 --> 0:05:09.760 and that therefore that area became a kind of early 0:05:09.880 --> 0:05:15.599 testing ground for both actions that might be considered extra judicial, 0:05:16.120 --> 0:05:20.480 but also for technologies that the wider population wouldn't accept 0:05:20.600 --> 0:05:25.200 if they were deployed on the wider population. Are we 0:05:25.320 --> 0:05:29.120 now seeing the metastasis of the border area and the 0:05:29.120 --> 0:05:33.320 technology used to surveil it and control it across the 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:33.960 whole country? 0:05:34.560 --> 0:05:37.880 Yeah, I think absolutely. I think a concrete example would 0:05:37.960 --> 0:05:42.640 be the use of surveillance drones. Many people will associate 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:47.240 these very large predator drones with the US War on terror, 0:05:47.279 --> 0:05:50.599 firing health fire missiles in the Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, that 0:05:50.680 --> 0:05:53.960 sort of thing. Those same drones or be unarmed have 0:05:54.080 --> 0:05:57.200 been surveiling the US Mexico border and the Canadian border 0:05:57.240 --> 0:05:59.960 as well for years and years and years. What happened 0:06:00.200 --> 0:06:04.440 now more regularly and more frequently is that DHS will 0:06:04.440 --> 0:06:07.800 fly those same high powered surveillance drones again that were 0:06:07.839 --> 0:06:11.200 designed for war zones above US cities. The most recent 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:15.600 example of that was the La anti Ice protests and 0:06:15.760 --> 0:06:18.880 DHS flew those same drones above the city. They even 0:06:18.920 --> 0:06:22.479 published some of the footage in social media posts. And 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:26.400 we see it in all sorts of different technology as well, 0:06:26.600 --> 0:06:30.159 maybe downloading the contents of your phone, which is very 0:06:30.240 --> 0:06:33.400 easy at a border where people have fewer rights obviously 0:06:33.440 --> 0:06:37.200 because they're crossing a border or entering or leaving. We're 0:06:37.279 --> 0:06:40.760 absolutely going to see that sort of thing proliferating. And 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:43.600 that's one of the main worries from the surveillance experts 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.160 I speak to, is this trickle down effect of well, 0:06:46.200 --> 0:06:49.640 this technology starts in an immigration context, then it goes 0:06:49.680 --> 0:06:53.359 to domestic immigration enforcement, and then it ends up with 0:06:53.400 --> 0:06:55.320 local cops or local sheriff's office. 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.520 Or you hear Trump talking about having the military practiced 0:06:59.600 --> 0:07:04.080 on pops in sanctuary cities. Makes me think of Anderil, 0:07:04.360 --> 0:07:07.560 the weapons manufacturer who are doing all these drones and 0:07:07.600 --> 0:07:10.880 autonomous weapons that are being exported to Taiwan in preparation 0:07:11.000 --> 0:07:14.400 for a potential conflict there. But I believe that Anderil 0:07:14.480 --> 0:07:17.080 back in twenty sixteen developed a lot of these technologies, 0:07:17.120 --> 0:07:20.920 these weapons of wars, again starting off with border contracts. 0:07:20.960 --> 0:07:25.520 So this intersection of the tech the military and using 0:07:25.600 --> 0:07:29.240 military methods to control domestic populations, I mean, as just 0:07:29.720 --> 0:07:31.720 a set of ideas, it's quite terrifying. 0:07:32.080 --> 0:07:37.640 Yeah, Andreill runs these AI powered towers all across the 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.160 US Mexico border and the US Canadian border as well. 0:07:41.280 --> 0:07:45.280 They're capable of all sorts of things like AI object recognition, 0:07:45.720 --> 0:07:50.480 tracking people, tracking vehicles, alerting DHS officials, all of that 0:07:50.520 --> 0:07:53.440 sort of thing. And there is just a big shift 0:07:53.600 --> 0:07:57.560 now in Silicon Valley in the tech companies where they 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:01.640 are more explicitly going to work with the government. Whereas 0:08:01.640 --> 0:08:07.680 before Facebook, Instagram, Meta, Twitter or whoever uber, they were 0:08:07.760 --> 0:08:10.640 very much separate from the government. We're making consumer goods, 0:08:10.680 --> 0:08:14.640 We're making an app for whatever reason. Tech companies today 0:08:15.440 --> 0:08:19.000 are not only leaning into they're very proud to work 0:08:19.000 --> 0:08:20.960 with the government. And Andrew has been a leader in that, 0:08:21.040 --> 0:08:24.480 And obviously other examples would be palanted, for example, where 0:08:24.800 --> 0:08:28.880 these companies say, this is our purpose is to protect 0:08:29.040 --> 0:08:32.760 the United States. Now, of course, how people understand what 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.880 protecting the United States might actually be is obviously going 0:08:35.960 --> 0:08:38.920 to vary, especially when we talk about surveillance technology and 0:08:38.960 --> 0:08:41.240 how that's being used and who is being used against. 0:08:42.080 --> 0:08:46.440 You mentioned facial recognition. Clearview AI always seems to come 0:08:46.520 --> 0:08:49.160 up sort of as the big batter wolf of this 0:08:49.760 --> 0:08:53.320 topic area. Can you explain a bit about how that 0:08:53.440 --> 0:08:56.640 technology or that company is being used by or partnered with, 0:08:56.760 --> 0:08:57.280 the government. 0:08:57.960 --> 0:09:01.319 Yes, so we just revealed that I paid clearview AI 0:09:01.559 --> 0:09:06.080 another five million dollars for access to its technology. Ice 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:09.040 has been contracting with Clearview for years. It's something of 0:09:09.120 --> 0:09:12.480 the established player in the government or law enforcement facial 0:09:12.520 --> 0:09:17.640 recognition space. What Clearview did several years ago was basically 0:09:17.720 --> 0:09:22.880 scrape a ton of photos of people's faces from the 0:09:23.040 --> 0:09:26.320 World Wide Web, so they're then no profiles, are social 0:09:26.320 --> 0:09:29.560 media profiles. And they made this massive database which is 0:09:29.600 --> 0:09:32.880 now something like ten billion images, and they allowed people 0:09:33.200 --> 0:09:35.520 to upload a photo and we will then show you 0:09:35.760 --> 0:09:39.040 similar photos, probably of the same person, and you can 0:09:39.080 --> 0:09:41.760 then figure out who this person is. And when it 0:09:41.800 --> 0:09:44.120 was revealed by The New York Times several years ago, 0:09:44.559 --> 0:09:48.560 that was really crossing the line, like Facebook could have 0:09:48.600 --> 0:09:52.160 done this, and although they had facial recognition technology, it 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.240 was to tag people, you know, when you tag your 0:09:54.240 --> 0:09:58.160 friends and your photos. It wasn't to unmask strangers. Google 0:09:58.200 --> 0:10:00.439 could have done it. They said, this is two dangerous, 0:10:00.480 --> 0:10:04.760 we don't want to Clearview cross that line. And incredibly 0:10:04.800 --> 0:10:08.040 controversial all the time, still controversial now, but it's almost 0:10:08.080 --> 0:10:12.520 normal now. There are Clearview contracts every single day essentially 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:16.160 where local cops are already using that, sheriff's offices are 0:10:16.240 --> 0:10:18.880 or using that, and ICE is absolutely using it as well. 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:22.560 With this latest contract. Ice spent this five million dollars 0:10:22.640 --> 0:10:25.480 in part because it believes it can use facial recognition 0:10:25.520 --> 0:10:29.199 technology to unmask the people that it believes are quote, 0:10:29.200 --> 0:10:30.760 assaulting officers. 0:10:31.640 --> 0:10:36.120 So that's facial recognition. There's also location tracking. Talk about flock. 0:10:36.720 --> 0:10:40.240 Flock is an interesting company. A lot of people may 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:43.000 have actually heard about it because it is proliferated around 0:10:43.040 --> 0:10:46.480 local communities. And what they do is they sell these 0:10:46.559 --> 0:10:51.640 cameras to police departments or homeowner associations or neighborhoods or 0:10:51.679 --> 0:10:56.040 city governments or whatever. And these cameras they sit stationary 0:10:56.240 --> 0:11:00.160 at the road and they continuously scan every vehicle that 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.360 goes by. That will be the model of the car, 0:11:02.679 --> 0:11:06.240 the brand, the color, and most importantly the license plate. 0:11:06.640 --> 0:11:10.680 And this creates this vast surveillance network that law enforcement 0:11:10.720 --> 0:11:15.040 officers can tap into without a warrant. Typically you enter 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:18.920 xyz license plate, it shows you all the locations this 0:11:19.040 --> 0:11:20.520 vehicle has been and. 0:11:20.480 --> 0:11:22.000 Do you have to be law enforce where anyone can 0:11:22.080 --> 0:11:22.320 use this? 0:11:22.559 --> 0:11:25.920 If your homeowners association, it's going to be the authorized 0:11:26.000 --> 0:11:30.200 user of that particular homeowners association or that neighborhood or something. 0:11:30.200 --> 0:11:32.480 It's similar to a ring camera. In a way, but 0:11:32.520 --> 0:11:33.920 you're not going to be able to access all of 0:11:33.920 --> 0:11:34.240 the data. 0:11:34.280 --> 0:11:36.760 I couldn't if I was a stalker and know my 0:11:36.960 --> 0:11:39.920 ex's number plate and therefore track them around the country 0:11:39.960 --> 0:11:42.240 as an individual person. But as a member of law enforcement, 0:11:42.280 --> 0:11:42.600 I could. 0:11:43.120 --> 0:11:46.160 Yes. Essentially yes, and law enforcement have access to this 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:49.640 sort of additional capability, which is the National Lookup Tool, 0:11:49.920 --> 0:11:53.480 where a cop, say in Texas, can search cameras in 0:11:53.600 --> 0:11:57.400 Illinois or California. And that's not even a hypothetic example. 0:11:57.440 --> 0:12:00.920 We actually reported that a law enforcement office in Texas 0:12:01.280 --> 0:12:04.679 searched for a woman who self administered an abortion, and 0:12:04.720 --> 0:12:09.200 it searched cameras all over the country, and crucially, we 0:12:09.360 --> 0:12:13.160 found cops were performing lookups for ICE in this tool. 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:15.680 We got these spreadsheets has said all the reasons why, 0:12:15.960 --> 0:12:18.240 and you scroll through them and some just say ICE, 0:12:18.440 --> 0:12:22.520 some say immigration or immigration enforcement. Immigration protest was another 0:12:22.559 --> 0:12:27.040 one as well, and that was already rarely interesting enough, 0:12:27.160 --> 0:12:30.640 and Flock made serious changes after we revealed that, But 0:12:31.080 --> 0:12:33.559 we then also learned that ICE actually had direct access 0:12:33.600 --> 0:12:35.520 as well. They didn't even have to go through the cops, 0:12:35.559 --> 0:12:39.040 and that's apparently stopped now, But ICE were getting access 0:12:39.040 --> 0:12:42.199 to that system through a side door via local police, 0:12:42.240 --> 0:12:45.080 but then also just direct access as well, so you've. 0:12:44.960 --> 0:12:49.320 Got facial rehognition, license plate tracking, and then we have 0:12:49.480 --> 0:12:52.360 this sort of system that sits even above, which is 0:12:52.400 --> 0:12:56.199 the investigative case management you mentioned Palentier earlier. This is 0:12:56.200 --> 0:12:57.280 this a Palentier product. 0:12:57.960 --> 0:13:03.360 So it started as DHS project and it's basically a 0:13:03.400 --> 0:13:06.719 centralized database and you look into it and you can 0:13:07.000 --> 0:13:10.319 look up a person that is their name, social Security number, 0:13:10.600 --> 0:13:14.480 maybe identifying features like tattoos or scars, that sort of thing. 0:13:14.880 --> 0:13:18.920 Palenteer then started work on that, and this was years 0:13:18.920 --> 0:13:20.520 and years ago. They've been doing this for something like 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:22.920 ten years at this point. But then with the second 0:13:22.920 --> 0:13:28.000 Trump administration, something changed and it became clear that ICE 0:13:28.040 --> 0:13:31.480 and DHS more broadly needed this tool to be a 0:13:31.559 --> 0:13:34.440 bit more powerful, which is where they brought in Palenteer 0:13:34.520 --> 0:13:37.439 to actually take over the development, not just the maintenance, 0:13:37.480 --> 0:13:42.240 of this project. And that's how we come to immigration OS, which, 0:13:42.480 --> 0:13:45.840 according to material I got leaked from inside Palenteer, is 0:13:45.920 --> 0:13:48.880 designed to make it much easier to find the physical 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:53.040 location of aliens. Of course, the US government's terms for 0:13:53.240 --> 0:13:58.440 immigrants essentially we don't know all of the different data 0:13:58.440 --> 0:14:02.720 that's going into this system alan to their entire the 0:14:02.840 --> 0:14:06.400 entire purpose of their existence is to match together all 0:14:06.400 --> 0:14:08.520 of this different sorts of data from all over the 0:14:08.520 --> 0:14:12.319 place and make it intelligible and readable for government customers. 0:14:12.520 --> 0:14:15.480 So we can assume that Immigration OS is probably bringing 0:14:15.559 --> 0:14:18.240 data from all over the place into an interface that 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.600 ICE or DHS can use to I mean, essentially track 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:23.320 down people at least recording some TIRA. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:28.120 I got interesting. One of my dear friends and board 0:14:28.120 --> 0:14:32.080 members at Kaleidoscope is a man called Stuart Carl who's 0:14:32.120 --> 0:14:34.600 a First Amendment lawyer. He was actually the general counselor 0:14:34.680 --> 0:14:36.720 for the Wall Street Journal for many years, and now 0:14:36.760 --> 0:14:42.239 he teaches at Columbia Journalism School, and he advised students 0:14:43.120 --> 0:14:47.040 basically to avoid posting on social media who are not 0:14:47.160 --> 0:14:50.640 US citizens about political matters at least until after they graduate. 0:14:50.920 --> 0:14:53.360 I think his point was get your degree that you've 0:14:53.400 --> 0:14:55.560 come for, and then decide where you want to draw 0:14:55.600 --> 0:14:57.720 your line. He got a lot of blowback for that, 0:14:57.840 --> 0:15:00.720 and there was debate and a York Time story about it. 0:15:00.120 --> 0:15:04.200 But this idea of second guessing what you post on 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.440 social media in the current political environment, I mean, how 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:12.680 programmatic is social media scrapian analysis versus opportunistic when they 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:14.440 already want to build a case against somebody. 0:15:14.960 --> 0:15:17.760 Yeah, they do it in several different ways, but broadly, 0:15:18.320 --> 0:15:22.600 you have right wing agitators who are constantly going through 0:15:22.640 --> 0:15:26.480 social media Twitter, Instagram. Whatever they see something they don't like, 0:15:26.880 --> 0:15:30.720 they flag it to the administration. And we have several 0:15:31.000 --> 0:15:35.320 very high profile right wing social media personalities who are 0:15:35.360 --> 0:15:37.640 clearly doing that, and they're emitting as much on their 0:15:37.680 --> 0:15:41.840 own social media. The other side are these technological tools 0:15:42.320 --> 0:15:45.240 which ICE has, Customs and Border Protection has, and the 0:15:45.280 --> 0:15:48.560 State Department I believe has as well, and these are 0:15:48.800 --> 0:15:52.840 broadly speaking AI powers. They say they can make decisions 0:15:52.960 --> 0:15:56.360 or inferences based on somebody's profile, what they've posted, the 0:15:56.440 --> 0:15:58.400 location they've done it from, and all of that sort 0:15:58.400 --> 0:16:02.840 of thing. Again, already a black box. We're also trying 0:16:02.840 --> 0:16:05.320 to look at a black box from the outside, so 0:16:05.360 --> 0:16:07.960 it's doubly opaque about what is actually going on. But 0:16:08.040 --> 0:16:10.640 what we do know is that these government agencies SUS 0:16:10.640 --> 0:16:14.400 spend millions and millions of dollars on social media surveillance tools. 0:16:14.440 --> 0:16:17.280 We just don't know exactly how it goes from post 0:16:17.600 --> 0:16:20.400 to visa being taken away. But the threat is absolutely 0:16:20.400 --> 0:16:22.920 there that if you say something that the administration does 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:26.600 not agree with, there's every chance that some sort of 0:16:26.640 --> 0:16:30.840 pretense will be used to revoke you your immigration status. 0:16:31.160 --> 0:16:36.200 You know. As this sort of ice crisis royals the country. 0:16:36.240 --> 0:16:39.320 There are certain courts that are fighting back. I mean 0:16:39.360 --> 0:16:45.080 recently in Chicago, one of the judges basically hauled in 0:16:45.160 --> 0:16:49.640 the local head of border patrol and said, you know, 0:16:49.680 --> 0:16:51.400 you have to come and report to me every single 0:16:51.480 --> 0:16:54.160 day at six pm and what you're doing. You can't 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.840 throw tear gas into crowds where children are about to 0:16:56.920 --> 0:16:58.640 arrive with the warning, etc. 0:16:58.880 --> 0:16:59.040 Etc. 0:16:59.400 --> 0:17:03.320 And essentially kind of insisted on some kind of role 0:17:03.560 --> 0:17:08.639 for judiciary in managing the behavior or the illegal behavior 0:17:08.720 --> 0:17:12.040 or the potentially illegal behavior of some officials. How's that 0:17:12.080 --> 0:17:14.160 playing out in the tech realm, That's a. 0:17:14.200 --> 0:17:17.720 Very good question, actually, Yeah. And with the court stuff, obviously, 0:17:17.760 --> 0:17:20.960 that is the American system working as intenders, where you 0:17:20.960 --> 0:17:24.600 have all of these different branches of government and all 0:17:24.640 --> 0:17:26.560 of these other things, like the courts, and they provide 0:17:26.560 --> 0:17:31.800 these checks and balances. That doesn't exist really for the 0:17:31.840 --> 0:17:37.480 private surveillance tech social media industry. We have had impact 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:41.600 through our reporting. Again, our reporting or FLOCK ended up 0:17:41.640 --> 0:17:46.080 with the company removing California, Illinois, and I think a 0:17:46.119 --> 0:17:49.440 couple more states from its National Lookup TOL, meaning ICE 0:17:49.480 --> 0:17:52.160 can no longer access those through the police, and then 0:17:52.280 --> 0:17:56.040 FLOCK also stopped. It's more direct sharing with ICE and 0:17:56.040 --> 0:17:59.119 Customs and Border Protection as well. There has been some 0:17:59.240 --> 0:18:04.200 pressure from Democrats on House committees looking into the facial 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.560 recognition side as well after our reporting. That being said, 0:18:08.119 --> 0:18:12.000 accountability looks very very different in the second of Trump administration, 0:18:12.400 --> 0:18:16.200 where you have masked agents, you have officials physically assaulting 0:18:16.240 --> 0:18:18.840 people in the corridors of court rooms in New York 0:18:18.880 --> 0:18:22.159 and then two days later they're back at work. Accountability 0:18:22.160 --> 0:18:25.679 looks very very different here. And for the tech stuff, 0:18:26.480 --> 0:18:31.440 the accountability comes from the outside. It's not really from government, 0:18:31.480 --> 0:18:33.760 because of course the government wants to work for these companies. 0:18:34.000 --> 0:18:36.920 It can come from inside where people are clearly annoyed 0:18:36.920 --> 0:18:40.240 inside Pale or Flock and then they'll provide information to me. 0:18:41.160 --> 0:18:44.440 But it looks very very different to as you say, 0:18:44.520 --> 0:18:46.960 taking a senior official in front of a judge and 0:18:47.000 --> 0:18:49.720 having him report every day. It's just a completely different environment. 0:18:56.119 --> 0:18:59.879 After the break the people fighting back against the ICE 0:19:00.200 --> 0:19:10.639 surveillance state stay with us. There is also resistance tech. 0:19:11.320 --> 0:19:14.360 I'm very curious to hear about ice block. I mean, 0:19:14.720 --> 0:19:18.040 our producer Eliza made an interesting point that, you know, 0:19:18.080 --> 0:19:22.480 after the California fires, there was this great interest in 0:19:22.920 --> 0:19:26.680 funding fire watching apps and early warning systems, and there's 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:31.400 also an explosion of apps around helping communities avoid ice 0:19:31.480 --> 0:19:34.199 round apps and stuff that it will be fair, they 0:19:34.200 --> 0:19:37.159 didn't receive the same funding attention. Talk a little bit 0:19:37.160 --> 0:19:40.760 about these apps and the resistance to them. 0:19:41.320 --> 0:19:44.399 Yeah, so ice block is the most prominent one. It 0:19:44.440 --> 0:19:47.399 was launched earlier this year. People only really started to 0:19:47.440 --> 0:19:51.240 pay attention in around June when CNN covered the app. 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.800 And all ice block does is it allows people to 0:19:54.960 --> 0:19:58.680 report sightings of ICE officials in their local proximity. It 0:19:58.800 --> 0:20:02.040 uses the location data off your iPhone. It was only 0:20:02.119 --> 0:20:04.800 on iPhone. It wasn't on Android for privacy reasons, is 0:20:04.840 --> 0:20:07.920 what the developer told me. And if you see an 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.280 ICE official or some sort of ICE raid within five 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:12.720 miles of you or whatever, you can report it and 0:20:12.760 --> 0:20:16.240 then other people around the area will receive a push alert. 0:20:16.280 --> 0:20:22.080 It's rarely similar to ring the neighborhood app or even 0:20:22.320 --> 0:20:24.520 a citizen or something like that. All the fire watching 0:20:24.560 --> 0:20:28.320 apps you mentioned as well. Time goes on. The DOJ 0:20:28.480 --> 0:20:31.520 does not like that CNN has reported this and amplified it. 0:20:31.840 --> 0:20:34.400 The DOJ even says it's trying to find a way 0:20:34.440 --> 0:20:37.600 to charge CNN. Obviously that didn't come to anything at 0:20:37.680 --> 0:20:41.080 least yet. But fast forward to September and there is 0:20:41.160 --> 0:20:44.440 a horrible shooting at an ICE facility where a gunman 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:48.600 shoots at the facility and he hits free detainees. I 0:20:48.640 --> 0:20:53.000 believe two died and one survived. When authorities looking to 0:20:53.040 --> 0:20:56.520 that person, they look at his phone and they find 0:20:56.520 --> 0:21:01.400 that that person was searching for ice spotting apps explicitly 0:21:01.840 --> 0:21:06.320 ice block. The DOJ and Pambondi, the Attorney General then 0:21:06.520 --> 0:21:10.200 uses that as a justification to go to Apple and say, look, 0:21:10.240 --> 0:21:13.600 you have to remove this app. This is encouraging violence 0:21:14.040 --> 0:21:17.640 against ICE officials. Putting aside the fact that obviously ICE 0:21:17.640 --> 0:21:19.360 officials are going to be an ICE facility, I don't 0:21:19.359 --> 0:21:22.520 think you need an app to determine that. But Apple 0:21:22.880 --> 0:21:26.040 gives in and it removes not just that app, but 0:21:26.080 --> 0:21:29.520 a host of other ones at the explicit request of 0:21:29.960 --> 0:21:32.919 the US Department of Justice. Now Apple removes and Google 0:21:32.920 --> 0:21:36.879 removes apps every single day for doing sketchy or weird 0:21:36.960 --> 0:21:42.359 or misleading stuff. It is an entirely different thing for 0:21:42.400 --> 0:21:45.520 the US government to go and say remove this app, 0:21:45.760 --> 0:21:49.680 especially when that app was actually facilitating First Amendment protected 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:52.879 speech as well. This is not illegal to report where 0:21:53.359 --> 0:21:56.160 law enforcement are. That's a core tenant of the First Amendment. 0:21:56.880 --> 0:21:58.560 Yeah, it's kind of extraordinary. I want to help people 0:21:58.680 --> 0:22:03.679 look back on this time. I mean, obviously, people who 0:22:03.720 --> 0:22:07.160 are rich and powerful like getting richer and more powerful. 0:22:07.280 --> 0:22:12.880 But the capitulation every step of the way of private companies, 0:22:13.240 --> 0:22:18.400 especially tech companies, to these requests and mandates, it's quite extraordinary. 0:22:18.440 --> 0:22:22.000 I wonder how it will be judged by history. 0:22:22.760 --> 0:22:25.720 Yeah. I remember in the first Trump administration, I feel 0:22:25.720 --> 0:22:29.800 like there was so much more pushback from tech companies, 0:22:29.880 --> 0:22:32.600 you know, even surveillance companies as well. I think Amazon 0:22:32.680 --> 0:22:37.600 stopped selling its facial recognition technology to law enforcement agencies 0:22:37.600 --> 0:22:41.080 for a period of time as well. That has completely 0:22:41.160 --> 0:22:45.200 gone Now. It is absolute capitulation to the government. It 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:48.720 is doing whatever they want. It is not really pushing back. 0:22:48.760 --> 0:22:51.120 I mean Apple removes that app. You know, a few 0:22:51.119 --> 0:22:53.399 weeks earlier or whatever it was, Tim Cook was giving 0:22:53.680 --> 0:22:57.680 Trump a golden statue of the Apple logo or whatever. 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:02.080 Another example is that DHS right now is using a 0:23:02.080 --> 0:23:05.880 lot of memes from the Halo video game franchise which 0:23:05.920 --> 0:23:11.359 are dehumanizing immigrants and basically comparing them to like an 0:23:11.400 --> 0:23:15.840 alien parasite. Microsoft hasn't responded to that. Microsoft hasn't, you know, 0:23:16.480 --> 0:23:19.240 asked them to take it down. It's an entirely different 0:23:19.320 --> 0:23:22.520 environment now than it was in the first Trump administration 0:23:22.560 --> 0:23:25.360 where it comes to tech and even just business right 0:23:25.480 --> 0:23:26.840 and private companies. 0:23:27.480 --> 0:23:30.360 So who's fighting back? I mean, there's Joshua Aaron who 0:23:30.480 --> 0:23:33.560 founded the ice block app. Where is their resistance to this? 0:23:33.640 --> 0:23:36.320 And also what the normal people do in their daily 0:23:36.359 --> 0:23:39.600 lives to protect themselves from the reach of some of 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:41.920 these technologies and keep themselves safe. 0:23:42.240 --> 0:23:44.400 Yeah, I mean there's a lot of different things people 0:23:44.440 --> 0:23:47.680 are doing. There are other apps similar to ice Block. 0:23:47.760 --> 0:23:50.680 There was one called eyes up. There was just cataloging 0:23:51.280 --> 0:23:54.280 videos of ice abuses. I wasn't even tracking the physical 0:23:54.320 --> 0:23:58.200