Melting down over ICE
This week in digital censorship and surveillance
Hello to everyone who cares about privacy and personal freedom – we’re getting famous, folks!
I say this a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I’m also really excited to share with you some fun news: I recently spoke to my colleague Callan Quinn, who writes about online scams and fraud, for her podcast – and it’s out!
Callan and I, both privacy-minded gals, vented a fair bit about the onslaught of mass surveillance tech, the future of privacy, and how initiatives that start as seemingly benign public safety measures can spiral into a tech dystopia.
You can listen to the episode here, and definitely check Callan’s other work, she is great.
Now, back to less joyous matters, in which we specialize here, as you know. But one story that caught my attention this week offers both a warning and a hope. As you know, ICE has been ramping up raids in U.S. cities and using more and more sophisticated tech to track undocumented migrants. Some people didn’t like that – they started crowdsourcing information about what ICE is doing and where.
As a result, app stores have recently been purging apps that allow citizens to track ICE raids and keep records of violations. But the fact that people create such tools and are actively trying to keep the agents in check – and planning to keep going – strikes an optimistic note, doesn’t it?
If you like this little newsletter, please help me reach more readers who care – share it with your friends!
And without further ado, let’s get into it.
Biometrics briefing
Amazon has added facial recognition feature to its Ring home security cameras – Washington Post
The City Council of Aurora, Colorado has given preliminary approval for the use of facial recognition in police investigations. – Sentinel Colorado
India is rolling out biometric authentication for the national digital payments system. – Reuters
The Philippines’ National Privacy Commission has ordered OpenAI’s crypto project Worldcoin to stop scanning irises of Filipinos. – Rappler
Hong Kong plans to install tens of thousands of surveillance cameras with AI-powered facial recognition tech. – The Japan Times
Norwegian Data Protection Authority suggests a national ban on remote biometric identification, including live facial recognition. – Biometric Update
App store meltdown
Aaaand the first story of the newsletter is about ICE again! But this time, not about some new spy tech the agency is buying but about something that is happening around the U.S. mass deportations.
As ICE has ramped up arrests in U.S. cities, tech activists created apps allowing people to share information about raids in their neighbourhoods. Now, app stores are taking them down.
The first to go was ICEBlock, an app designed for people to notify their communities when they spot ICE agents paying a visit. The app gained attention over the summer but was removed by Apple last week “because its purpose is to provide location information about law enforcement officers that can be used to harm such officers individually or as a group.”
A similar app, called Red Dot, was taken down by both Google and Apple this week. In a comment to 404 Media, Google said the app shared the location of a “vulnerable group.”
Next up was Eyes Up, an aggregator for social media posts, news reports, and videos documenting alleged abuses by ICE. The website with a map of reports is still up. Eyes Up founder, going by the name Mark, told 404 Media that the “goal is to preserve evidence until it can be used in court, and we believe the mapping function will make it easier for litigants to find bystander footage in the future.”
Phone catchers go mobile
But of course, ICE itself made some headlines this week, too. TechCrunch revealed the name of the company selling ICE its mobile cell-site simulators – vans equipped with gadgets that mimic cell towers and can help track phones’ location. The company is Maryland-based TechOps Specialty Vehicles (TOSV), and the contract was worth $825,000.
The agency refused to tell TechCrunch’s whether the vehicles have been deployed recently, for what purpose, or whether ICE always obtains a warrant before using them.
In fact, ICE has been using cell-site simulators for years: according to government records, such devices have been deployed more than 2,300 times between 2013 and 2019 alone.
In September, Forbes reported that ICE used such a cell-site simulator to track down a migrant in Orem, Utah, who had been ordered to leave the U.S. in 2023, but allegedly hadn’t. According to the warrant, he’d escaped prison in Venezuela where he was serving a sentence for murder. ICE also has an active $4.4-million contract with the manufacturer of cell-site simulators, Harris Corporation, according to Forbes.
By the way, the Electronic Frontier Foundation is currently running a pretty cool project where volunteers are searching for cell-site simulators around the protests in the U.S. – check it out if you like the idea.
NYPD is watching you
Police video surveillance is apparently a new hot trend slowly taking over the U.S., one city at a time. Recently, it hit closer to home for some New Yorkers.
The New York City police are quietly gaining access to cameras at the city’s public housing – a story that has been unfolding since this summer and has been deeply investigated by New York Focus.
Under the Big Apple Connect program, which provides free internet to public housing residents, the NYPD will have direct access to live footage and archived video from CCTV cameras installed in common areas of New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings.
NYPD also plans to connect video cameras at 20 NYCHA developments to the Domain Awareness System, which collects CCTV footage from cameras across the city and allows police to analyze New Yorkers’ physical movements, digital footprints, biographical information, and interactions with law enforcement.
During a New York City Council emergency oversight hearing last week, the NYPD’s information-technology chief revealed that 68 cameras are already live at one location, and about 1,900 cameras across 19 properties will be added by year’s end, according to Biometric Update. Ultimately, the NYPD plans to install nearly 17,900 cameras across 119 communities.
So, for some New Yorkers, the future of omnipresent police surveillance isn’t coming – it’s already here.
And, just à propos, this reminded me of a pandemic-era story from Russia when a Moscow resident was diagnosed with COVID, sent to quarantine at home, went out of his building to throw out trash and got fined for breaking quarantine – because a camera on his building’s intercom was feeding footage directly to the police.
Welcome to the future, folks – it’s here.
Tracked for abortion
Video surveillance is a delicate matter. Can it help the police to prevent and investigate crimes more efficiently? Sure it can. Can it destroy innocent people’s privacy? Also yes. But making our communities safe is worth it? That’s where we reach the ultimate conundrum: the threat to public safety is in the eye of the beholder.
A woman took a pregnancy-terminating pill. Her partner got angry and assaulted her. She left home and didn’t return for weeks. The police searched for her using a network of license plate-reading cameras. The reason? A “death investigation” into the death of the fetus, as police considered charging the woman with a crime, according to new documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and reported by 404 Media.
The police, as well as the license plate camera manufacturer, Flock, earlier said they were looking for the woman out of concern for her safety as she could have suffered blood loss after the self-administered abortion. However, the fact that the search started two weeks after the abortion took place (because that’s when her partner chose to report her to police – nobody knows why) already made this explanation sound shaky. And now it turns out it was the investigation into the death of a fetus all along.
Abortion is a deeply private matter that has become a divisive political issue. Regardless of where you stand on it, imagine how many similar personal matters can put people under surveillance, if we continue down that slippery slope. Being gay? Being transgender? Having mental health issues? Practicing a religion your government dislikes (think of the Uyghurs in China and Jehovah’s Witnesses in Russia)? Having “wrong” political views?..
These are hypothetical possibilities that only need one thing to become reality – a decision of whomever happens to be in power.
No Signal in Europe?
Signal, a messaging app company, has threatened to exit the EU if the bloc votes to oblige messaging apps to monitor users’ messages for child pornography.
Signal Foundation president Meredith Whittaker emphasised that there are no backdoors for “good guys” only – any privacy vulnerability affects everyone.
“What they propose is in effect a mass surveillance free-for-all, opening up everyone’s intimate and confidential communications, whether government officials, military, investigative journalists, or activists,” Whittaker said in Signal’s corporate blog post.
The statement came out in response to recent speculations that Germany, which until recently opposed the “Chat Control” measure, will reverse its stance by the October 14 voting date.
On the spectrum between valuing privacy and seeking control, Europe has historically leaned toward the control end. However, “Chat Control” appears radical even by EU standards.
The measure, first introduced in May 2022, proposes that messaging apps monitor all communications — including encrypted chats — for illegal content. The legislation has stalled in the European Parliament, as privacy advocates have strongly opposed it.
In February, 2024, the European Court of Human Rights weighed in and banned all legal efforts of weakening encryption of secure communications in Europe. In June 2024, Belgium proposed a new version of the bill that only allows monitoring of shared photos, videos, and URLs, upon users’ permission. In February 2025, Poland suggested making the scanning of encrypted chats voluntary.
No version of the bill passed voting yet, but the trend is clear. The crucial question is whether chat encryption will survive in the EU at all, as “Chat Control” is not the only threat. According to the bloc’s latest strategy reports, in 2026, the EU Commission is set to present a roadmap on arming Europol with decryption capabilities by 2030.
Tips and tricks: traveler’s privacy
Traveler and Tour World provides some tips for protecting your privacy while on an international cruise. Passengers are required to give away a lot of personal data to the cruise organisers, but there are tricks to minimise your exposure.
And that’s all for this week, guys.
Stay vigilant!
Anna