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Since there's quite a few people here working at US companies with access to lots of user data, but they may not have decision making capacity, I just thought I'll link the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, out of context and for no reason at all https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/...
If some data is shared with an external entity, it likely needs to be included in a few usual disclaimers, with at least a few meetings to clarify the exact wording and verification of the legal implications with the right dept and double check how it complies with others data protection rules, and don't forget the audit, and I think this contains a mistake so maybe let's investigate this issue first, and ...
Might I suggest to instead reflect on why you are working in an industry that collects all this data.
Are you sure that not even the most mediocre insider threat program doesn’t have this accounted for? Especially when they’re an industry that knows itself well?
They will find out. And act accordingly. And your career will end, with the mess cleaned up and billable to you.
Hopefully this is a wakeup call to the software engineers and other employees at those companies - it's no longer a hypothetical future where the tools you are building might be abused, it's today.
If you’re not awake already, you support what’s happening.
Blind, which I realize is a bit of the wild west, is full of racist anti-immigration/pro ICE hatred. Obviously, you can see where users work/worked, and it’s every company you could imagine.
The sad reality is that a lot of people will do what they can to support racist agendas, possibly even motivate them to work at certain companies as it feels moralizing to their hateful beliefs.
But those tools buy Teslas and $8 donuts and cardboard apartments in trendy neighborhoods for people too young to understand how money works.
NARRATOR: It wasn’t.
It wasn't a hypothetical future back in the time of DoubleClick.
In the words of the XO from the Alfa class submarine to his CO in The Hunt for Red October: "You've killed us, you ass."
>Hopefully this is a wakeup call to the software engineers and other employees at those companies
No, it won't be. Except perhaps to too few to make a difference. The money is too good.
If you need to wait until the tools you build are being used for things you disagree with before seeing the problem with building those tools then you have already failed.
It's a wakeup call: there's a lot of money in the mass surveillance industry
What makes you believe that software engineers are against the stuff happening? This new movement is defined by male loneliness and other sad traits that are quite common among people whom life passes in front of a computer. Curtis Yarvin, one of the masterminds of this new age is a software developer himself.
I would argue that whatever is happening now is part of the revenge of the nerds once the nerds remain unsatisfied despite the material possessions they acquired as software ate the world.
People deeply disconnected from the real world, seeing numbers and thinking with numbers without understanding the underlying realities of those numbers is a trait of any low touch system that developers and other IT professionals operate within.
Just yesterday apparently when asked Trump said "it's just two people" that were executed by ICE and steered the conversation when he was pushed to elaborate.
Probably from tech perspective ICE is incredibly well working, in tech world you can take away the livelihood of thousands of people by a single line of a code that changes an algorithm that bans someone or re-sorts the search results. Someone loses their Youtube account they built for years due to algorithm misfiring, someone loses their developer account on an App Store and can't even get a reason for it.
The tech world is very used to operate in a fascist high efficiency environment that enshittifies everything that touches but keeps improving on some selected KPI. Maybe they wish it doesn't happen but they are not going to sacrifice higher numbers for the lives of a few people. Welcome to the highly efficient(according to selected KPI) new world order.
I know you don't like to hear that as this is a place for IT people but the governance of online platforms is quite fascist across the board. People are banned, shadow banned or rate limited when don't behave or don't say the right stuff. Preserving order and increasing engagement is above everything, even those who claim that they came to make "speech free again" quickly turned into just changing what speech to be allowed.
Anything controversial that is attracting negativity is hidden away unless it is feeding the narrative of the platform, then it is actively promoted.
Therefore, I don't think that IT workers have any remorse or any problem with this new reality. Its the reality they built and most are loving it.
The medium is the message but the medium was built bit by bit by IT professionals in a span of 20 years.
This has bean a long time coming. This is a stark reminder that you should consider who the future stewards of whatever you are building might be.
We built a vast surveillance network under the guise of servings ads and making money, and lost track of how this power could be abused by an entity not aligned with our own values.
Don't lump me in that "we". I did no such thing. I know exactly how it could be abused and have spent 12 years intentionally not working for companies that perpetuate it.
From day one everyone who worked on these ad-tech surveillance systems knew they had the capability for abuse. They were built to come as close as possible to the legal limits of surveillance and in several notable cases crossed that line. This isn't a surprise to anyone
There was a narrative here earlier that I'd rather trust Google/Apple with my data than any other company or any government. The end result is the same in the end. When it comes to privacy, the only thing that works is zero trust.
It was always intended to be used that way, the programmatic advertising industry is a product of US Nat Sec.
> Against that backdrop, ICE’s assertion that it is considering privacy expectations appears designed to reassure both policymakers and potential vendors that the agency is aware of the controversy surrounding commercial surveillance data.
We can't seriously believe that this agency has any sense of respect for privacy right? They literally are going around thinking they don't need judicial warrants. I mean nobody's going to stop them using the purchased data however they want, but don't lie and say you'll be good with the privacy and care of the data.
https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...
>They literally are going around thinking they don't need judicial warrants.
Noem at the Senate hearing : "Well, habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right to ..."
It’s quite obvious that all of these seemingly paranoid about privacy, were not that paranoid after all.
For the software builders the conclusion is that we should not store ANY identifiable data.
Exactly.
While trying to degoogling, removing most proprietary software and use sandboxing for everything that's still needed as proprietary, you would often hear that stupid pro-surveillance thesis: "oh, what's wrong in someone trying to show you relevant things in the internet to buy by your interests?".
Maybe now some people would think about it. That giving someone's leverage over youself is a ticking bomb until the actually scary people will use it as an advantage. That's humanity 101.
Same about non-encrypted emails, cloud AI providers, SMS/real-identity based auth and 2fa, telemetry. The industry is full of trash and has to be revived from VC garbage.
Please do not stop using our product. Download this proprietary app. You can't (legally) know what it does. Please download and execute it. Please don't google the FSF or EFF. Please.
This is why you must block all ads always. No exceptions.
Why do all the discussion posts about ICE’s biometric app get taken down? Although they may invite politicing, they are very relevant to HN.
e.g [flagged] Target director's Global Entry was revoked after ICE used app to scan her face [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46833871]
I heard the new division of ICE that is implementing these investigations is called
Government Ethics, Security & Transparency Agency for Public Operations, with some kind of acronym I couldn't quite hear.
ICE got additional $80B over next 4 years in addition to the standard appropriations resulting in $28B budget for example in this year. That definitely gonna buy a lot of “market research”.
ICE will need to hit up Israel for that data.
Israeli companies are constantly working on spyware and advertising technologies.
Take a look at abominations such as the product Sherlock produced by Insanet:
https://www.theregister.com/2023/09/16/insanet_spyware/
https://cyberjustice.blog/2024/01/22/sherlock-the-terrifying...
There are loads of others.
I love this. All these years I've been a privacy enthusiast lunatic, because ofc no-one has anything to hide. Now ad trackers are being potentially weaponised by the govt, and ofc no-one could have foreseen that. This is absolute gold. Will be patiently waiting for recall install's to start sending screenshots to ice of your private documents and comm's.
It is really hard to understand that this is a country that our nation’s media and KOLs have vigorously whitewashed for decades. They say the United States protects private property, that America is free and democratic, and that everyone owns guns, so they can guarantee their own freedom.
All of our people should feel ashamed of this—being deceived by the media day after day for decades. Too stupid. Even today, there are still many people who firmly believe it.
If you want to target a demographic, ask the experts.
I am all for government and private industry working together to keep the country safe and ensure our laws our efficiently enforced.
Don't forget - Microsoft, Google, Apple, Amazon, Oracle, etc are all proud partners of the US intelligence community, which includes DHS and ICE. When the NSA asked these companies to participate in an unconstitutional and unlawful program (as ruled by a federal judge) called PRISM, they didn't fight, they eagerly complied. They kept their compliance secret. They lied about it to citizens, to their users, to their customers, and even to congress. These are fundamentally untrustworthy entities, and there's no reason to believe they've changed and won't comply with secret DHS and ICE requests just like they did with secret NSA requests.
Every dollar spent on AWS, Azure, GCP, Oracle Cloud, iPhones, Macbooks, Windows, Office, etc supports the widespread violation of rights committed against the innocent of all political and demographic backgrounds in the name of "national security".
Know what doesn't? Open source operating systems, open source software, and self-hosting. Do the right thing, ditch the modern day equivalents of IBM collaborating with the enemies of freedom, human dignity, and human prosperity.
Although this is quite a dark time, I hope ICE may finally (accidentally) do some good by making it super obvious to people how much online platforms track them.
If anyone else finds this stuff interesting I've off and on worked on an open source MMP to try and keep the functionality of ad tracking but move the data collection off of centralized hubs like AppsFlyer. I'd love to pick it back up if some people are interested in working together.
In a way, this is a good thing. Hopefully it will draw the attention of other countries and make them realize how important it is to prevent such data hoards, and hopefully once the US has recovered they'll learn from it like the Germans did from the Stasi.
Maybe California will even take it as an incentive to make proper privacy laws and impose it on anyone doing business in California in any way.
Hey but who cares about cookies anyway right?
Here is another example of ICE directly working with Israeli Spyware companies.
"What Is ICE Doing With This Israeli Spyware Firm?"
https://www.msn.com/en-us/technology/software/what-is-ice-do...
The abuse to us normal people has to stop before we really organize and fix things.
> ICE says it is attempting to better understand how commercial big data providers and advertising technology firms might directly support investigative activities, while remaining sensitive to “regulatory constraints and privacy expectations.”
That's rich and i'll believe it when they respect the written law.
To be clear, I fully expect other departments have been investigating these sorts of things in past and present, but ice have conducted themselves differently now and should be treated accordingly.
This must be a real conundrum for the surveillance capitalist weekend 'resisters' who created this technology in the first place. "Oh, but it's not evil when we use it."
I'm against this type of surveillance everywhere, but seeing the holier than thou attitude of some of the comments rubs me the wrong way.
Doing basically the same for people who are on the Epstein list was OK, but now it's wrong?
Auschwiiiiitz
Sorry I sneezed
They’re going from Brownshirt to Gestap to Stasi overnight.