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ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Ops in US History

446 points zzzeek 1 hour ago 243 comments

Dunewalnut22 1 hour ago | parent

What gets me is how much of this stuff is just bought, not built. Agencies can purchase location and social media data from brokers and skip the warrant step entirely, so I'd honestly put more energy into closing that loophole than into fighting any one agency.

wduncan 31 minutes ago | parent

That's what happens when you have mass privatization of productive capacity. The power to procure surveillance pools in fewer and fewer hands.

titzer 1 hour ago | parent

Not a peep from the second amendment types. Curious.

jareklupinski 1 hour ago | parent

no one poopoos the golem when its on their side

it might listen, and turn...

smallmancontrov 57 minutes ago | parent

Not without work it won't. Trump II has been using "Who won the 2020 election?" as a shibboleth to fill the ranks with True Believers. Nobody gets power without answering "Trump" to that question.

cuttysnark 34 minutes ago | parent

Q: “Who won the 2020 election?” A: “I’m not a biologist”

laweijfmvo 1 hour ago | parent

turns out, they’re into it. they were in favor of it in the 60’s and still are.

the 2nd amendment (the entire Bill of Rights) was written to protect us from our own government, but it’s way more convenient to just shoot brown people or people who speak a different language.

goda90 1 hour ago | parent

They're not all quiet: https://www.reddit.com/r/liberalgunowners/

dmm 57 minutes ago | parent

What do you mean by this? This article seems to be mostly about govt surveillance and not gun rights.

chasd00 45 minutes ago | parent

Agreed. I'm pro-second amendment, what is the there to comment on here about guns? seriously asking.

sixothree 41 minutes ago | parent

The #1 reason sighted by 2nd amendment loyalists for needing such liberal gun rights is to protect us all from government overreach. I assume that's what he means.

ram1500natrluvr 36 minutes ago | parent

A stated core purpose of the second amendment is for ordinary people to be able to keep a government in check by force or threat of force.

Some people view the actions of ICE, like in this article, to be crossing a line that would normally provoke a response from second amendment types.

MisterMunchkin 17 minutes ago | parent

Those people are the people who want gun control and therefore don’t have any guns.

lenerdenator 56 minutes ago | parent

There have been multiple instances of people doing things with weapons. It's not good, but it has been done.

fedpost 50 minutes ago | parent

Deny defend depose I suppose

fedpost 52 minutes ago | parent

Go join your local Pink Pistols/Brown Berets/SRA/whatever chapter.

The leftist gun community is mostly focused on arming the LGBTQ community at the moment though. Your chances of getting canoed while trying to stab a trans woman are way up over the past couple years.

appreciatorBus 35 minutes ago | parent

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=6182901

buellerbueller 22 minutes ago | parent

Why is the paper not available?

cyberjerkXX 49 minutes ago | parent

The same political groups that support hate speech laws are now looking for support from the freedom of speech groups? That sounds like a temporary alliance at best. They aren't going to support you long term because they know leftists are authoritarians of a different color. AKA your rhetoric isn't going to work because you have no principles and they do.

ecocentrik 43 minutes ago | parent

Are "principles" how this administration justifies its less than principled behavior or how you justify rewarding that behavior?

bediger4000 37 minutes ago | parent

Freedom of speech is a first amendment issue, my friend. The "second amendment types" OP refers to are the people who claim that citizen ownership of any and all types of firearms is a buttress against tyrannical government. Since the Trump admin is at least arguably a tyrannical government, it seems legit to at least ask where the previously vociferously pro-gun people are right now. Many should be at least warning of potential tyranny, but appear not to be doing so.

buellerbueller 25 minutes ago | parent

The OPs point stands; why would anti-tyranny types want to stand with people who are (in their example) linguistic tyrants and thought police?

LightBug1 26 minutes ago | parent

It's not "looking for support", it's pointing out the abject hypocrisy. But what's new. Have a great day.

kannanvijayan 24 minutes ago | parent

I see you brought up the freedom of speech group, but didn't address the potential implications of other similarly important groups such as fursuit afficianados and PETA and, most egregiously, the Taylor Swift fandom.

Havoc 1 hour ago | parent

State resources and armed officers taking a political stance like this is how democracy withers

nbajka 1 hour ago | parent

State resources and armed officers are all part of a political stance. If you don't recognise it it's because they are on your side. But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.

inanutshellus 1 hour ago | parent

I'd say this is a pessimistic view (as opposed to than realistic view) of how it's been in the USA for, well, my lifetime, anyway.

ironmagma 1 hour ago | parent

I'll take unfalsifiable statements for $300, Alex.

bilbo0s 56 minutes ago | parent

>But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.

Or, more appropriately, on an election's notice.

A plurality of voters preferred to have leaders of a certain political persuasion.

Now, we can complain about the fine print in the platform of those leaders, but..

I mean..

democracy is a team sport. We voted them in.

It's like football:

Yes.

That's an awesome DB. Guy got 2 interceptions and 4 TFLs in that game. I'd love to get that safety for my team.

All that said, his offense didn't score. So guess what? He gets to take an "L" too. That's just how it works.

usefulcat 52 minutes ago | parent

That depends entirely on the degree to which those in power will respect the results of an election.

ajross 55 minutes ago | parent

Both-sides-ism is probably the single worst stance to take here. You're tacitly siding with whoever actually holds and wields the power. Not caring which one wins isn't helping anyone at all, even you.

nbajka 52 minutes ago | parent

> You're tacitly siding with whoever actually holds and wields the power.

No, I’m not doing that. I’m not even American. But I know that giving someone a weapon means they can eventually try to use it against you.

SpicyLemonZest 32 minutes ago | parent

If you're not American, then you should consider before commenting that you may be missing important context. The allegiance of US federal law enforcement agencies does not switch on a moment's notice or even follow electoral control of the government; one example of this you can easily verify is that the director of the FBI is always a Republican.

Larrikin 45 minutes ago | parent

Both sides argument are springing up like weeds all over the various forums in the last couple weeks before a predicted major shift in Congress.

If you have deeply unpopular policies but only 1/3rd of the country is expected to vote, telling everyone their vote won't matter is the best stance to take.

Windchaser 54 minutes ago | parent

> But at a moment's notice their allegiance can switch.

Is that true, though? I don't expect that the individual biases of officers or judges, or the institutional biases of the police or immigration departments, can switch at a moment's notice.

cucumber3732842 47 minutes ago | parent

Entities like the courts and law enforcement optimize for the retention of people who do what they're told and the turnover of those who have their own principals. And this is before you account for the fact that most people will do what they're told before they threaten their paycheck.

mft_ 46 minutes ago | parent

Rational people act according to the incentives they’re provided. If that incentive is “follow these new instructions/directives or you’ll lose your job” (or worse?) it takes an especially principled person to object.

smallmancontrov 31 minutes ago | parent

It's less true every day, now that Trump is busy filling the ranks of the bureaucracy with people who respond to the loyalty-test question "Who won the 2020 election?" with "Donald Trump."

JayNitram 52 minutes ago | parent

Our armed officers are supposed to be upholding a constitution, not party preferences.

sixothree 47 minutes ago | parent

And definitely not religious preferences.

SauciestGNU 15 minutes ago | parent

They've never done what they're "supposed" to do, though. While maybe not so egregious in the past, these eager violations from the police apparatus are a large part of why I'm an abolitionist.

adjejmxbdjdn 48 minutes ago | parent

When, in the history of the U.S., have police forces ever been on the left?

Heck, historically the cops have even broken up peaceful union protests, despite being in unions themselves, throwing away all class solidarity in favor of their right wing leanings.

And the police unions have uniquely been extremely right wing, other than during rare highly localized conditions (often involving the democratic candidate being center right at least).

BrianGragg 40 minutes ago | parent

FBI in the 90's (maybe later). WACO, Ruby Ridge come to mind.

geraneum 34 minutes ago | parent

It’s so cute that some people imagine the armed forces and police were on the other side or are on their side. If you’re average Joe, the police in a tyrannical state are never on your “side”.

tfrancisl 6 minutes ago | parent

Why is this being voted down? This is fundamentally how states and governance work. The state has a monopoly on legitimate violence, and can, at any moment, make that a problem for its citizenry.

ecocentrik 47 minutes ago | parent

It's more a self reinforcing side-effect of a withering democracy than the cause. The rhetoric from the far right keeps implying that we're much closer to a single party state than the current election cycle suggests and they have proven themselves to be weak predictors of outcomes they don't directly control so I'm sure more shenanigans will be revealed shortly.

cellsstudio 1 hour ago | parent

Man, this is chilling. Between this and those "anti-ice" protestors that got a collective 450 years of jail time, it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.

monneyboi 59 minutes ago | parent

I think we can stop pretending it's "pretty close" and just call it what it is.

tavavex 53 minutes ago | parent

The "pretty close" is a hedge in case if the gun ever ends up pointing at them.

intothemild 53 minutes ago | parent

Sparkling fascism?.

imdsm 43 minutes ago | parent

Another word like racism which is losing meaning due to this generation using it without understanding what it even means.

"ChatGPT, define fascism but do it in a way that it means what I want it to mean"

swasheck 33 minutes ago | parent

Except, in this case, it is actual fascism so no need to gaslight.

Arkhaine_kupo 30 minutes ago | parent

I would urge you to attempt to define fascism in a way that does not reflect the behaviour of the current admin, and its a pretty fungible political theory so there are multiple valid definitions, and I would still think you would fail

intothemild 27 minutes ago | parent

It is for sure actual fascism. Also how is the word racism losing meaning? What?

Your argument is that if a word gets used more it dilutes the word? That's not how language works.

rc-research 24 minutes ago | parent

I always come back to this: https://ia800601.us.archive.org/9/items/umberto-eco-ur-fasci...

ngruhn 38 minutes ago | parent

Well it can definitely get worse. You're not yet scared of being picked up tonight for posting this comment.

pixl97 29 minutes ago | parent

How do you know they are not. I mean, the moment they posted it here it's now part of the forever record in some data center.

Windchaser 56 minutes ago | parent

> it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.

And: which country has the highest incarceration rate in the world?

technothrasher 48 minutes ago | parent

El Salvador?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_incarcera...

atmavatar 32 minutes ago | parent

In terms of absolute number of incarcerated persons, though, the US is ahead of everyone else by a country mile. Depending on which inmate pools you include or exclude, the US holds 20-25% of all incarcerated persons in the world.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_ra...

mdp2021 29 minutes ago | parent

Not an argument.

> [El Salvador (16.5/Mln), Cuba (8/Mln), Rwanda (6/Mln), Turkmenistan (5.5/Mln), United States (5.5/Mln)]

doginasuit 53 minutes ago | parent

While the Jan. 6th convicts all get pardons.

elgertam 47 minutes ago | parent

Didn't they get 450 years of jail time (spread among nine people IIRC) for attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder?[0] If the start of your pattern of "police state levels of power, corruption and control" is people engaging in organized terrorism, (i.e. using violence for political ends) being convicted of terrorism offenses, then I guess I don't see it. Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.

[0]https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyedgnyn4mo

uxp100 45 minutes ago | parent

The “explosives” being Fourth of July fireworks.

zimbu668 40 minutes ago | parent

Those aren't "explosives", they are explosives. Google death/maiming by fireworks for examples.

smallmancontrov 35 minutes ago | parent

No, the fact that people occasionally get hurt by accident with fireworks does not make the violent subtext in "attacking a government building with explosives" a correct description of the situation.

zimbu668 26 minutes ago | parent

So you admit that fireworks are known to cause death and severe bodily harm. What sort of prison sentence would be appropriate for attacking people with such devices?

tclancy 14 minutes ago | parent

Water is known to cause death and serious harm.

zimbu668 10 minutes ago | parent

So if you throw water at me I can throw a lit firework back at you? Same thing?

smallmancontrov 10 minutes ago | parent

So you admit that you were making a nonsense argument. Thanks for your honesty!

zimbu668 8 minutes ago | parent

Nope, fireworks are still explosives and they can cause death and severe bodily harm. Where’s the nonsense?

WarmWash 38 minutes ago | parent

I think in another universe where they just stood outside and shouted while holding signs and shooting up fireworks, then peaceably surrendered when when the cops came, they would get slaps on the wrist, maybe.

But instead a few of them had guns, and one of them decided to get into a shoot-off with the police.

You are unequivocally fucked if you have any degree of association with those people doing shit like that on federal property.

(the bodycams and security footage for this event are on youtube)

corps_and_code 30 minutes ago | parent

Small nitpick, but I believe this all happened on private, not federal, property. The ICE facility they were protesting at was a private company ICE was contracting with, not an actual federal building.

WarmWash 18 minutes ago | parent

It doesn't look like the judge cared much

tavavex 4 minutes ago | parent

IIRC, people involved in this case made extremely telling comments about the political alignment of the protestors. They despise them either way, the guns are just used as pretext to elevate it to the next level. They almost certainly would not have gotten slaps on the wrist, those are reserved for 'our good boys'. They would have still gotten their lives ruined, just not in quite the same dramatic fashion with showy centuries-long sentences, but the routine 'you're going away for a long time' treatment.

elgertam 36 minutes ago | parent

People are killed and maimed every year from Fourth of July fireworks. You're proving my point that these were LARPing revolutionaries who nevertheless engaged in real violence.

And please don't forget the attempted murder that the leader really did carry out with a firearm.

reactordev 44 minutes ago | parent

Shot in the neck and lived. 420 years. Pretti filming peacefully and shot in the back. 0 years.

tantalor 39 minutes ago | parent

Listen to the NYT Daily episode about this.

tldr, the govt (not the court) decides whether it is terrorism or not, which elevates misdemeanor into decades long felony conviction.

The J6 crowd was not charged with terrorism.

so-gala-massey 38 minutes ago | parent

Tolerance? Jan 6.

ledbettj 37 minutes ago | parent

> Looks to me like some folks wanted to LARP as revolutionaries but with real bullets & explosives and were surprised the government's tolerance for that was limited.

Unless of course your guy ends up in power again and offers you pardons and reparations.

cauch 31 minutes ago | parent

The way you frame the event is very misleading after reading the article.

I know that idiots will argue that "attacking a government building with explosives and committing attempted murder" is "technically correct", but it is stupidity to not understand that it leaves out important nuances.

rc-research 27 minutes ago | parent

Attacking a government building with explosives is a stretch. They had fireworks on July 4th to stage a noise protest outside of the detention facility which got out of hand. The issue is that the government's case for 'material support for terror' mostly hinged on them wearing black and all being members of a signal chat [1] and handed down extraordinarily harsh sentences.

The government's case explicitly tried to throw the book at all involved (including 30 years for someone not even at the protest; for moving a box of anti-fascist literature) in line with new executive direction including NSPM-7[1][2].

The BBC article you linked takes many of the procecutor's statements at face value. Looking into this case more may illuminate how wide this survailance and punnishment net will be cast against the administration's political enemies.

[1]https://theintercept.com/2026/06/23/prairieland-texas-ice-pr... [2]https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...

imdsm 44 minutes ago | parent

Non-US here but if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally, and they do that, where is the controversy? If people then impede them doing that, they should be sanctioned, right? I know the number of actual engineers on here are now dwindling since this became reddit 2.0 but

> If police arrest criminals, and people impede the police arresting criminals > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No

> If paramedics help casualties, and people impede the paramedics helping casualties > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No

> If <noun> <verb> <nouns>, and people impede the <noun> <verb> <nouns> > Should the people be punished for that? (A) Yes (B) No

So long as it's a lawful activity, it shouldn't change from scenario to scenario. Being arrested or convicted is an act of law, not a moral or ethic act. To avoid lawful sanctions, you have to object lawfully. If you act unlawfully, then you risk lawful sanctions. That's a risk you take.

I know it's a little black and white but I'm one of the pre-reddit 2.0 hacker news inhabitants.

moron4hire 38 minutes ago | parent

> if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally,

Following you so far

> and they do that,

Yeah, that's where you fucked up. That's not what ICE is doing that everyone is upset about. It's the locking up, deporting, and killing of people who are here legally, they just happen to be brown.

buellerbueller 33 minutes ago | parent

There are plenty of open borders folks among the woke.

tshaddox 34 minutes ago | parent

> if there's a government agency whose job it is to deport people in a country illegally

This antecedent is false, so we don’t even need to read the consequent.

Arkhaine_kupo 27 minutes ago | parent

Should the paramedics be the one arresting the people impeding their function? If the answer is no, then ICE shouldnt be tracking people they think might impede their function.

If their job is arresting people in the country illegaly, any other matter of public safety should be handled by the correct institution at local or federal police level. Hint, its not ICE.

tstactplsignore 22 minutes ago | parent

Well if we're comparing I've been here a bit longer.

I would make two points here.

1. ICE is breaking the law in many, many different ways. It is not legal to murder multiple US citizens like Alex Pretti and Renee Good. The conditions of their internment camps (I will use the euphemism as I suspect you would not like the more accurate term) are not legal. And many, many other issues, please see:

https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/we-documented-12...

https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/fact-sheet/ice-cb...

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-administration-has-de...

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/courts-have-ruled-4...

By your legalist moral standards, is this not also "black and white"? Do people not have a right or duty to protest it?

2. What is legal is not always what is morally right. The comments you are making mirror those in past "legal" civil rights violations at scale. The same arguments were made against the civil rights movement in the 60s, anti apartheid movement, and pretty much every civil rights movement. The answer in all of those cases is the same: what is legal does not determine what is morally right, and we have a civic duty to nonviolent protest when the two conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Kohlberg%27s_stages_o...

ngruhn 20 minutes ago | parent

ICE arguably has a mandate for aggressive deportation. The Trump campaign did not sugarcoat what their goal was. And people still voted for that. Still, the lack of due process, the excessive use of force, deporting people to random countries, ... that's not normal.

zimbu668 43 minutes ago | parent

You think a prison sentence for shooting a federal law enforcement officer in the neck is chilling?

gambiting 41 minutes ago | parent

Just remember that there is a child somewhere who saw their mum for the last time happily dropping them for school only to be shot by an ICE agent seconds after he called her a fucking bitch - and the agent faced no consequences for this. Every time I think about that kid my heart breaks. Every time I think about the cruelty of the system unwilling to at least put this one wrong right and prosecute the agent properly my heart breaks. What a unbelievably cruel world we live in.

warmwaffles 39 minutes ago | parent

Those 450 collective years of jail time was due to all of the firearms they brought, running away from the scene, shooting at the facility, and lying to law enforcement. I'm all for protesting, but this is not the hill you want to die on as your "chilling" moment.

moron4hire 36 minutes ago | parent

This is how we know "The 2nd Amendment is to protect against government tyranny" is complete, absolute bullshit.

jkestner 7 minutes ago | parent

Firearms are legal in Texas. One person committed violence. Others got 50 years for being at the same protest. Another got 30 years for picking up his own box of zines.

The First Amendment was written by people who experienced this same chilling of free speech.

flowerlad 37 minutes ago | parent

Add to that the weaponization of the justice department. Former FBI director Comey charged 3 times as retaliation, Senator Mark Kelly and other senators, even lowly aides such as Cassidy Hutchinson, all facing retaliation.

David Hearn, the former Olympic canoeist was accused and indicted for damaging the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, purely as a scapegoat.

All federal funds to the state of Colorado frozen to force them to release a convicted-and-imprisoned ally of the administration (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOE6DTMjPEc )

Yeah it isn't "pretty close", it is a police state.

ted_bunny 21 minutes ago | parent

Cats always have claws, not just when they're showing.

multiplegeorges 1 hour ago | parent

> After a local activist uploaded a license-plate search tool on Fly.io, a developer-focused public cloud platform, to an infiltrated Signal chat, HSI agents reviewed website DNS queries and Stripe data along with data purchased from a commercial broker. This gave HSI access to SSH session logs, outbound connection records, the Fly.io account’s signup IP, and a Stripe card fingerprint on an account that had never completed a payment. Agents fused that with Minnesota DVS records and commercial data from the Thomson- Reuters CLEAR platform to produce a driver's license nummber, Social Security number summary, years of address history, phone numbers, property records, and jointly registered vehicles.

Wow, I wonder how they got SSH session logs?!

The breadcrumb trail here is chilling.

zhivota 59 minutes ago | parent

Seems like it was fly.io, since they got the user IP from there and it would make sense they would have the session logs.

john_strinlai 52 minutes ago | parent

indeed, the actual case report (https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/28831278-govuscourts...) states:

"technical and network-activity records from fly.io included:

SSH session logs (CSV format) listing multiple "New SSH session" entries for <redacted> with verified=true between approximately 2026-03-26 and 2026-04-01, timestamped in UTC.

outbound-connection records (CSV format) reflecting numerous TCP port 443 connections originating from internal fly.io addresses <redacted> to external IP addresses attributed to AMAZON-02 (Amazon Web Services) in the US and Cloudflarenet (Cloudflare)".

john_strinlai 47 minutes ago | parent

for some reason, the above comment wont let me edit it (despite it being a minute old). but i was going to add:

"i wonder if fly.io bothers to vet/challenge records requests or if they just hand data over".

(this one can be edited, though. very strange)

dns_snek 39 minutes ago | parent

All of your comments are coming up as [dead]. I vouched and upvoted your first one shortly after you posted it, I think that's probably why you couldn't edit it anymore.

john_strinlai 31 minutes ago | parent

huh... shadowban of some sort because they aren't appearing as [dead] on my side. not sure what rule i broke, but okay.

thanks dang/tomhow.

gjsman-1000 43 minutes ago | parent

Darned if you do, darned if you don't.

If there's a hack, HN will say, "How could Fly.io not be keeping logs? Malpractice!"

If there's a warrant, HN will say, "How could Fly.io be keeping logs? Malpractice!"

3form 36 minutes ago | parent

Choose whether you want logs when creating your instance? Good practice.

gjsman-1000 26 minutes ago | parent

Okay, then the service running on Fly gets hacked, and gets the same blame.

"They don't know who hacked them? Malpractice. What if it was the government?"

fatty_patty89 23 minutes ago | parent

You dont seriously believe if you check a box that says "keep no logs!" they will.. not keep any logs?

gjsman-1000 11 minutes ago | parent

Especially the idea that somehow Fly.io wouldn't keep track of which IP is signing up for service - kind of important, constantly, for CSAM investigations and the like.

paimapi 35 minutes ago | parent

What about "it's not Fly.io and it's more about how the Fourth Amendment is effectively neutered in our dystopian, socially regressive era."

dns_snek 41 minutes ago | parent

However on page 8 the document states that these "session logs" don't record commands, they're just audit logs of when, where, by whom the sessions were initiated.

api 43 minutes ago | parent

Cloud equals not your computer, folks. Any cloud company can be legally subpoenaed and required to hand over any data they have, and they can also be legally gagged from telling anyone about it. Doesn't matter if they support it or not, they are a corporation subject to the laws of their jurisdiction and disobeying can expose the directors personally to civil or criminal penalties. Every corp will comply with a legal subpoena, and those are often easier to get than warrants.

For you they at least require a warrant. Usually. Unless you're crossing the border or are undocumented or something.

throooooo 10 minutes ago | parent

Same goes for most ISPs, which are needed to connect to the Internet.

dcss_gardener 8 minutes ago | parent

Well, and what are you concretely suggesting here? Having my own door kicked down and my dog shot so they can get at my personal home server? Buying hardware and colocating it then getting permanently blacklisted from every datacenter when they get raided?

The problem here is the cops not where the computer sits.

winterqt 45 minutes ago | parent

DNS, too. I imagine they weren't using their ISP's DNS server, as that could cut out needing a bunch of this data, but then I wonder what data they did get from whatever DNS provider...

api 43 minutes ago | parent

They might mean SSH TCP traffic logs, maybe?

Also SSH isn't a perfectly opaque protocol. There's stuff you can use to fingerprint e.g. client/server versions and often narrow it to architecture, OS, even OS version. That helps.

iugtmkbdfil834 24 minutes ago | parent

How is it chilling? Am I missing something?

Someone is using paid service to surveil actual LEO agency and they are surprised LEOs can compel paid service to produce records? And all that while playing with license plate searches ( and heavens know what else ) that would normally suggest some basic levels of competence?

You play with a bull. You get he horns. Sometimes even if you know what you are doing.

edit:

Kids these days: Wah, the government is not playing faaaair.

RobotToaster 19 minutes ago | parent

What's wrong with surveilling LEO? If they have nothing to hide they have nothing to fear.

iugtmkbdfil834 9 minutes ago | parent

:D

What is good for the goose and whatnot. What I am saying is that when you do things that are bound to get attention is not to assume that you won't get attention.

Zak 17 minutes ago | parent

To "surveil" a law enforcement agency is usually described as journalism or public accountability in democracies.

iugtmkbdfil834 11 minutes ago | parent

Again, but if you kick a beehive do you expect not to get stung?

Zak 9 minutes ago | parent

I expect law enforcement agencies to act like professional public services, not venomous insects.

IAmBroom 8 minutes ago | parent

In a functioning, pro-democracy country: yes.

jnovek 6 minutes ago | parent

Of course, but it is a _crime_ for the bee to sting in this case and I’m (rightly) angry about it. What’s the probable cause in posting public data?

schmorptron 5 minutes ago | parent

In any reasonable way non totalitarian state you expect law enforcement to be limited in their capabilities tho not be a beehive retaliating against accountability

carlosjobim 6 minutes ago | parent

No, it's not. Which newspaper or news network would continuously track the physical location of cops - or of anybody for that matter?

jnovek 9 minutes ago | parent

“they are surprised LEOs can compel paid service to produce records”

I’m not surprised, but this is now how it’s supposed to be in the US.

The fourth amendment is supposed to force a high bar for collecting evidence in this way but we’ve been slowly eroding those rights away over the last 50 years.

Jensson 5 minutes ago | parent

Well the issue is private corporations selling data willingly is not bound by the fourth amendment. So just assume whatever any US corporation knows about you is also known by the US government because they will sell your data for a penny.

MisterMunchkin 20 minutes ago | parent

America is crazy, why are you letting people sell your data like this?

zzzeek 14 minutes ago | parent

I keep pushing the big "make it illegal to sell US citizens' data and arrest anyone who breaks that law" button on my wall here but nothing happens

smallmancontrov 13 minutes ago | parent

Because "private good public bad" brainwashing has been so effective that most Americans see this structure as a good thing, even though the consequences are very obvious and very bad.

jnovek 12 minutes ago | parent

How are we gonna get them to do that? We have a choice between two parties each propped up by trillions of dollars in donations that are both cool with selling our data.

nanomarvin 8 minutes ago | parent

vote for folks with integrity. period.

mancerayder 9 minutes ago | parent

Define letting? The political system has de-criminalized vote buying by re-branding the bribers as 'lobbyists' and protecting it as a 1st Amendment right. Even Guilfoyle's controversy was asking for 100k to her Amex account from a "lobbyist". In most countries it's a jailable offense.

This lobbying means that the politicians might be elected by "us" but they work for "them" - the "lobbyists."

Does this answer your question sufficiently?

cyberjerkXX 1 hour ago | parent

"How dare they monitor my violent terrorist actions. We only shot 3 people at an immigration facility. We only organized a massive law enforcement interference campaign. How DARE THEY".. Leftists will always use your principles against you. They don't care about the second amendment. They want you to care about it so they can bully you into allowing them to be violent and gain political power. Give me the down votes I don't care. Leftists are insane and nuance is lost on their utopian beliefs.

kevmo 1 hour ago | parent

This is going to be moderated off the front page.

rc_kas 52 minutes ago | parent

I remember the early days of the internet when hating surveillance was non-political.

Back when it was just nerds on the internet, and powerfull people with agenda's had not infiltrated everything

ballmerpoint 50 minutes ago | parent

Even back then, it was partly various three-letter agencies manufacturing their own criminals to justify the budget.

fedpost 49 minutes ago | parent

Half the people here are working to help them, intentionally or unwittingly.

giancarlostoro 44 minutes ago | parent

I remember as a 14 year old (2004) thinking about how I'd make sites like TPB or 4chan without getting it shut down, a place that anyone could speak freely. Then Kim Dotcom happened, and even Lavabit, and I'm sure many others.

It's a thankless thing, but we need more people who are willing to just do it. Now I know some of you will point out that Kim Dotcom was hosting movies, shows, music, etc. That's not my point, look at HOW they took him down, and WHEN. They were trying to pass SOPA, claiming it would help them take down people like Kim Dotcom "because they couldn't" so what they did to Kim Dotcom was questionable from a legal perspective...

Sigh. I really do miss the internet before the 2nd and 3rd waves of "Eternal September" (Facebook then Smartphones) it was much nicer.

empath75 44 minutes ago | parent

Everything is political. Just people on the early internet tended to have a particular personality type that shared certain political views.

m0llusk 48 minutes ago | parent

The evidence will remain in ssh logs and such. That is part of why it got posted here. This political struggle has gone technical and we're all involved.

nisegami 1 hour ago | parent

I think the history of the FBI suggests this will continue long after Trump himself leaves office, effectively becoming a state run gang.

rc_kas 50 minutes ago | parent

don't worry. Global warming will kill us all within the next 100 years anyways.

catgirlinspace 27 minutes ago | parent

seems like they're trying to make it come faster with fossil fuels.

bix6 57 minutes ago | parent

Stop voting for these assholes.

darkarmani 55 minutes ago | parent

> Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.

When they are arresting news anchors for reporting on ICE's activities, it should be obvious that Trump and his administration is fascist-curious.

adjejmxbdjdn 52 minutes ago | parent

It has always been obvious since ICE’s budget was raised over 10x what it used to be, even though ICE was already struggling to find enough people with criminal records to deport, that ICE was intended to be far more than an immigration enforcement agency.

ChrisGreenHeur 50 minutes ago | parent

Could they not deport the ones without a criminal record as well?

nyc_data_geek 48 minutes ago | parent

Sure, along with the occasional public execution, for optics.

Jensson 40 minutes ago | parent

Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission, executing people is not.

You can argue about how they should go about deporting people, but them deporting everyone even those without a criminal record is their intended purpose.

Forgeties79 38 minutes ago | parent

It’s also the federal government’s job to go around arresting everybody carrying or smoking weed, as it is still illegal no matter what any state says and every single person consuming it is a lawbreaker.

Should they go around and do that too?

Jensson 21 minutes ago | parent

Every time the police gets to choose whether to apply a law or not you add more power to the police, I don't want the police to be more powerful.

Anyone who don't say yes just wants a police state, the reason your American police is so dangerous and powerful is because they have these choices and can arrest you for a lot of things that people don't normally get arrested for.

So yes, they should do that. That you think they shouldn't is exactly why the American police is so horrible.

tshaddox 36 minutes ago | parent

> Deporting everyone who isn't in the country legally is their mission

This is not in fact the stated mission of the agency.

Jensson 19 minutes ago | parent

Enforcing immigration law is their mission which includes deporting those who aren't allowed to be in the country. So yes it is their mission.

bix6 32 minutes ago | parent

"Protect America through criminal investigations and enforcing immigration laws to preserve national security and public safety."

Jensson 16 minutes ago | parent

Deporting people is "enforcing immigration law".

SmirkingRevenge 12 minutes ago | parent

The law dictates who can be deported, generally not who must be deported.

Who must be deported is mostly left up to discretion.

And since deportation is very expensive and drastic - an option of last resort - it's usually better for all involved to come up with other arrangements.

Most prior presidents had good sense enough to understand that mass deportation is a major foot-gun, politically and economically. And kind of morally monstrous.

For better or worse, the arrangement that's been informally agreed upon is to let most of the undocumented who have been here a long time, remain (dreamers, etc).

Sadly, that left them all vulnerable to the discretion of a capricious criminal wanna-be dictator like Trump.

Forgeties79 38 minutes ago | parent

Isn’t it so cool that none of the theoretical /s

shevy-java 32 minutes ago | parent

We have evidence now that they execute people without a criminal record.

See the execution of Renée Good. Remember how the ICE terrorist deliberately stepped before her car, to try to make a defensive claim aka "had to shoot her to stop her". Meanwhile his other two terrorist buddies were standing NEXT to the car, thus invalidating the lie quite logically. After all, how did two other ICE terrorists manage to not get into that situation that the murderer chose to employ here? So there is a lack of consistency among ICE terrorists.

nbajka 32 minutes ago | parent

That would be mean.

Arkhaine_kupo 32 minutes ago | parent

Its too much work, we did violent rounding up of brown people to have images to re use for campaigns and now we can use the paramilitary force for chasing political dissidents like any normal democratic goverment would do.

Lets ignore that the richest man on the planet has a credible record of being n immigrant who stayed in the US illegaly, and has open criminal record probes in at least 2 countries. But I guess a 350 million donation to the standing goverment in campaign donations might make it difficult for ICE to find him

skulk 31 minutes ago | parent

Immigration in the US has always been more complicated than "no papers? gotta go." Moving north to do some seasonal work then moving back south is a very old thing, and was enshrined into law by the "Bracero program" in the post ww2 era. In the 60s, however, it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally. ... and business owners no choice but to keep hiring them.

The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported (and not have a path to legal residency) comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens (which will bring economic pain that is intolerable) or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.

MisterMunchkin 19 minutes ago | parent

What is the point of having laws if you’re just going to let criminals break them and then stay?

Zak 12 minutes ago | parent

That's a good point. The USA has many counterproductive restrictions on immigration which should be repealed.

threetonesun 7 minutes ago | parent

Why have speed limits if everyone is going to speed. There are systems where selective enforcement works for more parties than is immediately obvious.

SpicyLemonZest 15 minutes ago | parent

The Bracero program was ended, but the H-2A visa program for seasonal farm labor remains active, with no numeric cap and hundreds of thousands of visas issued each year. I don't blame workers for making a living, but is there some reason why these business owners requiring seasonal labor could not obtain the proper visa for it?

assbuttbuttass 6 minutes ago | parent

It's actually better in many cases for businesses to hire undocumented workers, since it makes the workers position much more tenuous. They are much less like to unionize, demand higher pay, etc. if the threat of deportation is hanging over their head

IAmBroom 5 minutes ago | parent

Friction of paperwork. Not saying it's right, but it's a reason.

Also, you are shifting the blame for immigrants getting arrested to the owners. That means the employees are actually blameless: they are caught between seldom-enforced laws and a need to thrive and feed their families.

parineum 11 minutes ago | parent

> The idea that illegal immigrants need to be deported comes from a view that those jobs should go to American citizens or from a view that browns don't belong in the USA.

Or, you know, from the idea that they are doing something illegal and the job of law enforcement is to enforce laws.

IAmBroom 4 minutes ago | parent

Laws aren't moral. These laws are bad, and shouldn't be enforced. They should be changed, but we don't have the political will to do so, so "rounding up all the brown people and shipping them to Mexico" is not the second-best option.

dudul 4 minutes ago | parent

> it was ended abruptly, giving migratory workers no choice but to stay illegally

Or they could have "moved back south" like you said, and stayed there.

Since this "program" was ended it sounds like it should be as simple as "no papers? gotta go".

Funny how democrats always care so much about "the law" and "due process" until it relates to immigration.

paimapi 31 minutes ago | parent

To be fair, this was obvious to many people who study domestic civil rights as early as the bill that originally created the DHS and ICE. For eg, this review from 2002:

https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?...

>Americans’ liberties have been trammeled in a variety of different ways. Under the guise of stopping terrorism, law enforcement officials and government leaders have now been given the right to conduct searches of homes and offices without prior notice, use roving wiretaps to listen in on telephone conversations, and monitor computers and e-mail messages, even to the degree of eavesdropping on attorney/client conversations.

>Conceivably, these extensions of the definition of “terrorist” could bring within their sweep diverse domestic political groups, which have been accused of acts of intimidation or property damage such as Act Up, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Operation Rescue, and the Vieques demonstrators.

It should have been stopped before it grew into the leviathan it is now but the general consensus by the politicos of the time was that this was just histrionic left/libertarian worry, and that something like that could never happen in the USA, we were too just, too democracy-loving.

iovrthoughtthis 12 minutes ago | parent

Ice is a part of a parallel state, a strategy to facilitate a smooth transition of power when replacing the existing state infrastructure

setnone 47 minutes ago | parent

not a us citizen but this seems reasonable from historical US perspective

Thegn 41 minutes ago | parent

I am from the US and the headline is accurate. Not “the largest,” but “one of the largest.” We’ve been here before. The question is does it get kneecapped or does it spin out of control?

uxp100 46 minutes ago | parent

Not clear how central the patriot act was to this operation, but it does pop up here.

Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act. I really do think about that a lot.

bilbo0s 41 minutes ago | parent

For me it wasn't so much that he was the only one to vote against it, as it was that when he did vote against it the people of his state promptly replaced him with a more Law and Order senator.

In the US we claim we want freedom, privacy, and all that good stuff. But where the rubber meets the road, it becomes pretty clear that we don't.

tengbretson 31 minutes ago | parent

Feingold served another 10 years following his vote on the Patriot Act.

fedpost 37 minutes ago | parent

You have the power to stop them. There are plenty of technical opportunities out there and every internal security memo with your hn handle on it is another piece of grear they can't use and time they've wasted ratcheting their own paranoia.

shevy-java 34 minutes ago | parent

It is eerily similar to the 1930s era in central Europe.

I would not call it "Anti-Left" though. Fascism should never be confused with having an agenda other than fascism itself, be it Trump's corporate fascism or Putin's neo-Stalinism. All pocket away wealth and power to their cronies.

nomilk 34 minutes ago | parent

I change countries a lot and my default assumption for any new country is that overstaying your visa will be treated seriously, resulting in something like immediate detention (in a very lousy environment), probably a fine, and near-immediate deportation (at your expense), and probably some sort of quite serious ban (probably greater than merely months). And that's if the individual has a clean record; I'd expect it to significantly less benign otherwise.

Although this default expectation is pessimistic (and some countries might not be nearly that harsh), I don't think it's wildly inaccurate. What I don't understand is why it's common for intelligent people (seemingly only in the US) to consider violations of visa/immigration conditions acceptable and ICE bad guys for enforcing the law?

pixl97 30 minutes ago | parent

Ah, the just following orders person, always at least one in a discussion.

buellerbueller 27 minutes ago | parent

But you didn't actually answer the quesion.

simonsarris 25 minutes ago | parent

Just following the law, you mean, in the countries he is visiting.

watwut 29 minutes ago | parent

ICE is not enforcing the law, they are in fact regularly breaking the law. Judges said so, repeatedly. And ICE threw middle finger. Breaking the law is the literal intentional strategy of ICE. They also mistreat people who are in the country legally, who are citizens and committed no crimes.

Also, in normal countries, if you break the law, arbitrary abuse is still not the expected behavior of the police.

kccqzy 28 minutes ago | parent

Because seemingly only in the U.S. the legislature hasn’t meaningfully passed significant new legislation, making the immigration law out of date. A lot of intelligent people voted for Obama, and Obama created DACA, which says overstaying your visa as a child is fine and results in “deferred” deportation. Hence a lot of leftists think visa rules in the U.S. are so outdated that violating them is fine. IMO Obama made a careful calculation to degrade the sanctity of immigration laws to avoid hardship on a million people; it was a good idea on humanitarian grounds but it did open a large can of worms.

As for why ICE are the bad guys, well that’s a completely different question. The way they enforce laws is thug-like and have resulted in multiple innocent deaths. Regardless of if it is ICE or a normal police department if enforcing laws causes death you bet there will be a large pushback.

functionmouse 27 minutes ago | parent

It is not so simple. Here is some information: https://www.aclu.org/news/immigrants-rights/we-documented-12...

Centigonal 23 minutes ago | parent

The 15 people charged in the case this story is about were not overstaying their visa; they were protesting ICE after ICE killed a US citizen in Minnesota.

fisherjeff 21 minutes ago | parent

Would you expect to be detained and deported from those other countries while trying to attend a court hearing to resolve your immigration status?

maeln 19 minutes ago | parent

First off, there is a difference between “I come from a decent country and therefor have no real reason to take the risk of illegally immigrating somewhere” and "My country is very, very bad (possibly in not small part due to country X), and moving to country X illegally is less risky for my life and family than staying here". We tend to have at least some empathy for people in the second scenario.

But even never minding that, you could say a lot of things : The U.S.A is a country literally built by immigrants. The native-american are a minority in their own land. So is it surprising that a lot of people in an immigrant country support immigrant ? Then, there is the dirty economic secret that illegal immigration fill the low-wages jobs that citizen don't have to lower themselves too. A lot of ties, rule of law, etc. Of all country, it is weird that the U.S is turning anti-immigration.

jnovek 17 minutes ago | parent

ICE under the current administration has been “enforcing the law” using excessive force and intimidation tactics.

People have died in our detention centers due to unsanitary conditions.

They arrested a five year old and sent him to one of these detention centers without his parents.

They’ve murdered multiple peaceful protestors in the street.

I favor responsible immigration enforcement. This is not that.

marcosdumay 14 minutes ago | parent

Hum... It can be your assumption, but most countries do not fulfill it.

Detention in particular is a violation of human rights, with an exception to strictly for the time it takes for the next flight to take off.

deadbabe 32 minutes ago | parent

the pendulum will eventually swing back and most of these fucks will be thrown in prison.

gherkinnn 27 minutes ago | parent

Where are all the Don't Tread on Me people who prepped for decades for precisely such cases?

heyitsmedotjayb 20 minutes ago | parent

They're the ones treading on other people.

nullocator 7 minutes ago | parent

Ya this is the big lie 2Aers are bought into, turns out being able to organize is as important or more than just having a bunch of guns and a ooh-rah attitude. And as you can see from article the government will be there if you start acting in a way the admin disapprove of

andreygrehov 26 minutes ago | parent

Why do they call it 'Anti-Left'?

DonHopkins 14 minutes ago | parent

Because it's Pro-Fascist.

Zigurd 25 minutes ago | parent

Their status in society should be comparable to former Stasi. You probably haven't heard much about how former Stasi were treated, and how they still are perceived.

dathinab 21 minutes ago | parent

anti-left sure, but more like "anti everyone who isn't part of a small set of VERY far right movements by general western standards, many affected people just don't know about it yet or are willful ignorant about it"

you are centrist and have a good point to complain about not liked by them, sorry you are now left

you are conservative right, but have very different views about separation of religion and state, sorry that is woke you are now left, too

you care bout civil right of all US citizens and especially want to better protect workers against abuse, oh dang I fear that is "left extremist" maybe even "domestic terrorist"

/s

labrador 19 minutes ago | parent

I'm having flashbacks to when I was in high school in the 1970's while Nixon was at the height of his powers.

The difference is Nixon had real domestic enemies to worry about: The Weather Underground were bombing buildings, heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the "Symbionese Liberation Army", the Black Panthers were making demands which conservative America found frightening, mass protests were going on about the war in Vietnam on college campuses which resulted in the deaths at Kent State. Nixon believed these protests were driven by Chinese and Soviet influence to support North Vietnam in the war. The CIA’s Operation CHAOS spent years looking for foreign control of the antiwar movement and reported back that there wasn’t any.

What domestic enemies does Trump have? Antifa is a philosophy, not an organization. Black Lives Matter protests were his last administration. There have been a few lone wolf attacks like the Dallas ICE sniper, but the domestic threat is no here near what Nixon faced.

Under the Trump's White House directive NSPM-7, which defines a potential domestic terrorist as anyone expressing “anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or anti-American” views, DHS launched an operation to find a “network of conspirators” against ICE.

The surveillance op in the Wired article targeted labor unions, a climate change group and socialist collectives — the SEIU had three years of wire transfers investigated, and the AFL-CIO, DSA and Showing Up for Racial Justice were also investigated. That’s the mismatch: a 1970s-scale dragnet for a threat that isn’t 1970s-scale.

Trump appears to be grabbing power for the sake of grabbing power.

shrubby 16 minutes ago | parent

Tech fascism alright.

Read The Nerd Reich.

so-gala-massey 15 minutes ago | parent

Great. So when the dems get back in power they can go after all the far right militant movements that are armed to the teeth and breaking countless laws?

FLeXMurphy 8 minutes ago | parent

Horseshoe theory in action.

igleria 11 minutes ago | parent

I'm tired of these guys trying to one up McCarthy.

rnd0 5 minutes ago | parent

Ok. And I'm supposed to do what with this information, exactly?