ICE and the Smartphone Panopticon

The ICEBlock removal is absurd when you consider Waze has been warning drivers about police locations for... Years? The only difference is which government agency is being monitored. This sets a dangerous precedent for selective enforcement of ToS really

> This sets a dangerous precedent

Quite a lot of things this statement applies to lately.

> This sets a dangerous precedent for selective enforcement of ToS really

It’s only a dangerous precedent if you believe your opponents will ever gain power. If you believe your political opponents will never have power again, then who cares about precedent?

Well, still dangerous for the people its used against.

> This sets a dangerous precedent

This is a dangerous president.

Missing this point is alarming.

Both that removal and Google's removal of other ICE tracking apps on the basis that a government paramilitary enforcement force (much less one involved in executing an ethnic cleansing) constituted a “vulnerable group” goes beyond “dangerous precedent”, a description which implies that an act is not harmful in itself but only in what it may normalize down the road.

I think they are different in that:

1. People are not harassing traffic enforcement, like they are harassing immigration enforcement.

2. Waze's information incentivizes people to follow traffic laws more deligently than they would which results in safer driving conditions for other people driving. ICEBlock did not have the benefit of making people follow immigration law better, or turn themselves in faster.

> if you believe your opponents will ever gain power.

Or are already in power.

What an astounding and completely unforeseeable surprise, the old "they're a private company, they can do what they want [and if they are pressured by the government through back-channels and veiled threats, that's fine too]" is coming back around. Never thought that would happen ever.

> This sets a dangerous precedent for selective enforcement of ToS really

This is selective enforcement of ToS?

It's like saying "pardoning a human trafficker sets a dangerous precedent for pardoning human traffickers".

Yes, this is what we do say when human traffickers are pardoned.

It’s possible loveich does not morally agree with their own post, but are providing it as an opposing view.

Avoiding traffic controls is no solution to reckless driving. Like surveilance cameras, they only move the crime elsewhere.

What you need is a gapless panopticon so that every suspect feels like being at the verge of getting caught, to enforce eg. traffic laws.

ICE does not target criminal behavior though. They literally disappear people based on appearance and any criminal record. Such a panopticon is an entirely different beast.

How can you set a precedent for doing something without doing that thing? Here's a dictionary definition for precedent: "an earlier event or action that is regarded as an example or guide to be considered in subsequent similar circumstances."

The real precedent for this is the removal of the drone strikes tracker app on the grounds that it was "political". https://tech.yahoo.com/general/articles/apple-finally-approv...

Which predates Trump and was happening under the Obama presidency. The real lesson there is that the application of the Jack Bauer principle ("good guys" are allowed to freely torture and murder "bad guys" without legal process) would eventually leak back into the mainland US. The same excuse - the concept that foreigners do not have rights - enables ICE to be incredibly abusive. And of course citizenship then becomes something that can be taken away by such a trivial matter as a cop deciding to throw away your ID. You might be able to prove you're a citizen if you had due process, but now you're a noncitizen you're not entitled to that.

Immigrants with no criminal record now largest group in ICE detention: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/sep/26/immigrants-c...

ICE Agents Rappel from Helicopter in Overnight Chicago Raid, Dragging Kids from Beds to U-Hauls: https://people.com/ice-agents-overnight-chicago-raid-1182308...

Feds detain WGN-TV staffer, slam into resident’s car in Lincoln Square: https://chicago.suntimes.com/immigration/2025/10/10/feds-arr...

We Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. They’ve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days: https://www.propublica.org/article/immigration-dhs-american-...

Videos of violent ICE interactions flood social media: https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/ice-agents-violent-...

This is not "immigration enforcement".

It's paramilitary thugs beating up and disappearing political opponents. The closest equivalent would be the SA.

But never mind all those incremental precedents we helped set along the way. /s

It's a staircase, not a cliff.

> This sets a dangerous precedent for selective enforcement of ToS really

Companies can enforce their terms of service as they see fit, including enforcing them selectively or not at all, with very few limitations. They're not bound by precedent as courts would be, nor do they need to be fair.

>It’s only a dangerous precedent if you believe your opponents will ever gain power. If you believe your political opponents will never have power again, then who cares about precedent?

And that kind of thinking in years past is EXACTLY why we're here annoyed by dozens of organizations having and using power they probably ought not to.

I think his post is meant to be interpreted about like holding up a mirror in response to "who done this?".

Should that be true for a monopoly service though? I don't believe it's true for water, electricity companies. It's not tried for health insurance companies under the ACA. Are we teaching the point where technology should be treated similarly?

Leaving aside the obvious governmental influence in this “private company’s decision”, we, as a democratic society, have the right to decide when and if the two major smartphone OS makers have the right to ban apps. We even have the right to decide whether those exclusive app stores should exist. Whatever I thought about this matter before, my feelings are different after this decision.

Apple removed the apps used by Hong Kong protesters on Chinese government’s request. It’s way past the point of pretending that this situation is somehow unforeseen. Two private companies have inexcusable control over what the entire population can do with their devices

I want to believe that the top level comment is satire that perfectly threaded the needle and is indistinguishable from the morons it's ridiculing.

It really is that bad. They put illegal immigrants on military transport planes to South Sudan. And how are those poor people supposed to get back home?

Every time I report a speed trap I wonder how long it will be until that feature is removed.

Do we, a democratic society, have a right to pick your breakfast?

Can we force you into a career?

Can we force you to right a book?

What if you work with a few people? Can we compel you to right a book then?

What if you work with a lot of people, a few thousand? Can we make you write a book in that case?

I think in Europe speed traps have to be signalled beforehand? I'm not sure if that's the case everywhere but the signs are usually there, so perhaps that's why such a feature is allowed to exist.

>Do we, a democratic society, have a right to pick your breakfast?

Well, you can pick your friends. And you can pick your nose.

But you can't pick your friend's nose. In a democratic society, that is.

Wow I'm really glad they got the 15,000 illegal immigrants who had criminal charges. I'm also fine that the 16,000 people here illegally have to go back home.

Why were 30ish kids naked in an apartment building illegally? That sure sounds a whole lot like human trafficking, especially if the men arrested all had criminal records and gang affiliation.

Wow intentionally blocking a federal vehicle transporting a prisoner sure shoulds like interfering with law enforcement.

And in getting 30,000+ illegal immigrants into ICE custody, they've only detained 170 people? 130 of those were with criminal charges? That seems like a very low number.

This sounds exactly like immigration enforcement. Who are the politicians being rounded up? Who are the "political opponents" here? Not the 30,000 illegal immigrants who can't vote. Not the 130 citizens who committed a felony against agents.

Interesting conversation. I think there is a recent trend of closet nazis (or at least closet nazi-ish) outing themselves. They say and write things publicly, they previously would have self-censored in public.

Children sleeping in their beds, turned into something incriminating. So twisted.

If me saying I don't want people to enter my country illegally (especially with criminal records), that sex trafficking is bad, or that confronting the police with force instead of courts is bad makes me a Nazi in your eyes, then you are so far from normal human behavior you might as well be from Pluto.

The Nazi's killed, through bulk extermination, 13,000,000 people. Literally bulk gas chamber stuff.

That enforcing a land border is equivalent to you is insane.

> The Nazi's killed, through bulk extermination, 13,000,000 people. Literally bulk gas chamber stuff.

They didn't start with that. They started by framing it as immigration enforcement.

"We are resolved to prevent the settlement in our country of a strange people which was capable of snatching for itself all the leading positions in the land, and to oust it." - Adolf Hitler, 1939

You know what the euphemism for that bulk extermination was? "Resettlement to the East".

Didn't you get the memo? Sex trafficking is just a hoax, Epstein acted alone, and Trump has nothing to do with that stuff at all. Or you know, MAGA is hiding something.

I forgot where I heard this quote but it stuck out to me, especially after the election where so many just didn't vote. "if the left won't protect the border a fascist will"

I think the small percentage of the far left that feels like it is ok to have immigrants here that are not following the rules of immigration and the small percentage of the right that feel it is ok to violate our constitution to stop these immigrants have taken over while the big middle just watches with their jaws open at what is happening.

> they are being put back in their country of origin at lightning speed.

Sure, sure, people are just being deported. Where did I hear that story before?

Oh, thats right: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madagascar_Plan

It's not like anyone's talking about rounding them up in camps where they would be killed, right?

Oh, wait, what was that? https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-joke-alligato...

Huh.

They'll leave it on the UI, it just won't actually do anything. People will mostly be none the wiser.

I'd notice over time when if never got any speed trap notifications anymore.

> Do we, a democratic society

Can we say that if we only have two app stores and both are controlled by the government?

I think police may not mind Waze, they may care more about drivers that are truly dangerous and are fine with filtering out hose that are signalling that they are paying attention and showing respect by slowing down when police are present

They'll just report speed traps 30 minutes after no reports for the previous 30 minutes. Then you'll think you were one of the first to come up on them when you see them on the side of the road and think they moved on when you see a report on your map but no cars around.

Naw if I got repeated reports and nobody there, over time I'd be suspicious.

The people who threw rocks at a little black girl attending school never changed their mind. They never grew up. They never learned.

They were just made to shut up for a little while, but they still wanted what they wanted. They openly say that they are glad Trump makes them feel like they don't have to shut up anymore.

They never stopped voting. They were incensed that they were stopped from being systemically racist.

> The Nazi's killed, through bulk extermination, 13,000,000 people. Literally bulk gas chamber stuff.

Is that what they did first? Or did they strip the citizenship away from their undesirables so they were illegal immigrants in their own homes, and used that as pretense to deport them to camps?

I wonder if they will shut up ever again.

We all know what it took last time.