Kristi Noem, DHS Again Getting Shitty Because Tech Tools Are Being Used To Warn People About ICE

Overhype

from the oh-the-irony dept

Suck it up, shitbirds. You’re the beneficiaries of full-throated support from a megalomaniac who has just untied the purse strings and dumped pretty much everything in it into ICE’s back pocket. ICE is on its way to becoming the largest law enforcement recipient of federal tax dollars, and yet the head of its controlling entity can’t stop herself from whining about the public utilizing what little resources it has to keep people from walking into ICE traps.

This isn’t DHS/ICE’s first brush with having consumer-grade surveillance tech wielded against it. Just as the FBI was shocked to learn years before, the ubiquity of doorbell cameras now means it’s possible to warn people that law enforcement is active in the area. Those efforts have amped up in response to ICE’s exponential increase in aggressive actions, turning Ring cameras into force multipliers for the people with the least amount of power.

The government wasn’t happy about that, despite having spent years cozying up to Ring in hopes of creating a public-private mesh network of always-on surveillance cameras across the nation. Finding out this network could also be used against it was a direct consequence of its actions, albeit one the better-funded, more powerful entities somehow didn’t see coming.

Crowd sourcing is still a thing, as ICE was less than delighted to discover earlier this year. An app created solely for the purpose of reporting ICE activity zoomed up the App Store charts. Downloads then increased again once the DHS started complaining about it, Streisanding its perceived opponent by being unable to resist taking the bait.

The new competitor to the arena of ICE-thwarting is none other than Waze, the traffic/map tool acquired by Google. Waze has always been a target of law enforcement bitching, thanks to users being able to add cop/speed trap warnings to maps to alert others of hidden cops.

While Waze and its new corporate owner always take care to say things about preventing the tech from being used to undermine law enforcement operations, it’s highly unlikely this actually matters to parent company Alphabet. But these are the things that must be said in order to limit the amount of time spent testifying before congressional committees.

Google Maps users appear to know the parent company might be on the lookout for things that make the government unhappy. That’s why coded language is being added to maps that might evade algorithmic review while still offering people a heads up on impending (or ongoing) ICE raids in their immediate area.

It’s summer in south Florida, the land of eternal warmth. Driving in Palm Beach County — home to Mar-a-Lago — the windows are up, and the AC is blasting to counter the oppressive heat and humidity outside. A warning pops up on the Waze navigation app: “Icy road ahead.”

[…]

“I heard from a friend that it’s pretty icy over by Mission Donuts today,” one user posted on Reddit, in Oceanside, southern California in June. “Icy conditions 🧊 🥶 SIZE: between 4-7 officers,” someone commented in another forum for Cleveland residents. Chicagoans are used to icy roads in winter, but the sudden number of alerts in spring and summer led to a whole thread explaining what was going on.

This is all very innocuous. And it relies on people actually utilizing Waze to make it worth anything. It’s a simple way to spread bad news and warn people. It also may be more subterfuge than is absolutely necessary. It may fool algorithms but it won’t fool cops/ICE/etc. monitoring Waze for messages like these, giving them the power to downvote these warnings into nonexistence.

But, like the idiot she is, Kristi Noem couldn’t help but overreact to this reporting — an act of stupidity compounded by her obvious ignorance of the law.

“This sure looks like obstruction of justice,” Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement to CNN. “Our brave ICE law enforcement is already facing a nearly 1000% increase in assaults against them. If you obstruct or assault our law enforcement, we will hunt you down and you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

First, a “1000% increase” just means 100 more assaults than last year, which is hardly the apocalyptic explosion of anti-ICE violence the DHS hopes most citizens will believe it to be when this stat is delivered without its underlying context.

Second, warning people of police activity isn’t “obstruction.” It’s actually — in most cases — protected speech. Obstruction means actively preventing law enforcement from carrying out its objectives. Warning people away from areas where ICE is currently active doesn’t actually “obstruct” anything. The government can’t legally claim that arresting fewer people than it thought it would is evidence of anything, much less “obstruction of justice.” (Also, ICE raids have little, if anything, to do with the commonly accepted definition of the word “justice.” Unfortunately, that’s not the legal definition of the word “justice,” at least not when it comes to bullshit obstruction charges for Waze pin drops.)

It doesn’t matter how the DHS chooses to spin this. The fact that citizens and residents are turning to cheap, ubiquitous tech tools to save others from the malicious goals of this administration says plenty about how this government is operating and how much it prefers to inflict pain, rather than serve any sort of truly useful purpose. The government may have plenty of power, but there are still several ways to blunt its effectiveness. And whether Kristi Noem likes it or not, most of these options are not only completely legal, but also readily available to anyone who wants to be the sand in the gears of Trump’s malicious machinery.

Filed Under: dhs, ice, kristi noem, mass deportation, trump administration
Companies: alphabet, waze