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

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