ICEBlock, an app for anonymously reporting ICE sightings

This is very American, The Green Book guided Black travelers to safe businesses during Jim Crow. The Underground Railroad was literally an information network to help enslaved people reach freedom. During WWII, communities helped hide Japanese Americans from internment. LGBTQ+ people created networks to find safe spaces during decades of criminalization. Native communities have long shared information about safe passage and resources.

I was going to write expletives. But lets rather reflect. When is this ICE stuff going to end?

Whenever I hear anything about the US in the last months it sounds like from a bad movie.

if this app is the "hmm" moment for anybody, god help us.

Growing up reading cyberpunk, this is both expected and welcome.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21210678 ("Apple Removes HKmap.live from the App Store", 893 comments)

More raids because being in USA illegally is being INCORRECTLY treated as a FELONY by ice when, for first occurrences, it's usually a MISDEMEANOR.

So, ICE is incorrectly enforcing the law, under the Trump administration.

They have been some in the past but big increase in frequency and scope with the new administration.

These raids are objectively more frequent and more brazen than they have ever been. The volume of going after people peacefully about their business and picking up people at courthouses is unprecedented.

FTA:

> The app does not collect or store any user data, which TechCrunch confirmed by analyzing the app’s network traffic as part of a test.

> Also a great honeypot to query out all the users of this app and schedule them for a visit.

In other threads people have noted that the Dev's decision to be iOS only means Apple has a complete list of users but the Dev does not.

Well, this IS different

- ICE has not previously arrested en-masse the first-time visa overstays via felony responses. It's typically a misdemeanor offense, and should receive a different response from ICE.

I disagree that the raids have been going on with this frequency or with this level of going after people in neighborhoods, preying on them at courthouses and so on.

It is critical to consider the context as well. The Trump administration demonizes all immigrants, legal or illegal. Listen to Stephen Miller, Kristi Noem, or Laura Loomer. The terror is the point.

This isn't actually true, because interference is illegal ONLY when you physically obstruct or deceive officers - warning others about police or ICE presence is speech that courts protect as a First Amendment right.

A federal judge in Missouri barred tickets for drivers who flashed headlights to signal a speed trap, the Supreme Court in Houston v. Hill affirmed the right to challenge police verbally, and other federal rulings in Florida and Tennessee reached the same conclusion.

Alerting neighbors that agents are around is expression, not obstruction. And case law protects it in case they want to try (though this is becoming increasingly irrelevant, which - at the same time - makes our social contract to honor such institutions proportionally irrelevant)

Let’s wait and see

Waze has had a way to report speed traps for years. Where are those subpoenas? That at least is a loss of revenue.

This also assumes that this can be traced back to whoever reported it in the app, and it would be trivial just simply not log any PII on that

Interfering with these specific people is also a civic duty, so I’ll need to draw inspiration from Thoreau on decisions like this.

Using this specific app is obviously protected by the 1st Amendment, which is why the relevant laws are much more specific than merely "interfering with law enforcement."

Police reporting is already common in like waze though

I agree with you but only because I believe they will make it a crime.

Reporting on the presence on police is protected first amendment activity, but like I said, that’s just ink on paper.

It effectively means nothing now and yea, I wouldn’t download this app because of it

On what grounds? Could you give a simple search term for this?

This reminds me of the musk elonjet case on twitter. Generally, if I were to follow a person (in public spaces) and constantly report their location, is that against the law? (If yes, could you clarify which law specifically?) If it is truly against the law here, does it make a difference that here the reports are non-individual in nature, ie reporting that ice is present, not that a particular ice officer is present.

Is there something special about doing the same thing for police/ice?

I think I remember this kind of scenario coming up in supreme court cases before but don't remember specifics, and google isn't helping.

But I admit I generally feel that my response is "So what?"

It still shocks me that, as republican politicians and voters rode their high horse about free speech absolutism for the last ten years, so many people believed they were sincere.