ICE Wants to Build Out a 24/7 Social Media Surveillance Team

by loteckon 10/3/2025, 6:13 PMwith 136 comments

by sgnelsonon 10/3/2025, 11:41 PM

And of course it's flagged. Because the use of technology built from companies funded by VC has nothing to do with Hacker News and Ycombinator.

Dang and company are such a joke (yes, that's a direct violation of the rules, maybe it'll get their attention) for allowing these sorts of stories to be flagged.

The idea that this is only about "politics" or it's "controversial" and thus should be hidden from view is such a copout. These are the important stories that should absolutely be discussed in a place like this.

Save your breath in replying: "well, it might make people upset and we want to have nice conversations here." And whatever other platitudes arguing for censorship of obviously important topics that deal directly with the technology, companies and employess that frequent this site.

by MandieDon 10/3/2025, 8:56 PM

Yeah, that's some Gestapo level business... or since they don't like that word, Stasi.

As in, there were loads of people in the DDR (East Germany, 1949-1989) whose job it was to read people's personal mail, along with the network of neighborhood snitches.

by jinushaunon 10/3/2025, 8:07 PM

It’s pretty clear that ICE is the seed of a paramilitary force.

by nicholasjarnoldon 10/3/2025, 9:16 PM

So if they are using information people freely share to social media sites as the seeds for their investigatory and enforcement actions it follows that there is a simple trick people can employ or minimize their effectiveness.

https://signal.org/download/

by photochemsynon 10/3/2025, 9:22 PM

Nationwide secret police with paramilitary capabilities only answerable to a few people in the executive branch? Completely unconstitutional, violating all the clauses on warrantless searches, detention without trial, etc.?

Looks like ICE should be abolished and its entire staff fired, just have INS take over all immigration issues.

by btbuildemon 10/3/2025, 8:31 PM

Given how many accounts online are bots or anonymous, will they ever be able to shake out which real people which personas belong to? Or will it be a case of "we said this is you, so that makes it you"?

by groby_bon 10/3/2025, 8:22 PM

Hold, citizen, you shall be arrested for your impure thought. By masked goons.

by Ccecilon 10/3/2025, 9:21 PM

I guess I had always just assumed this was the case for quite some time. Or I should say "someone" in the govt was always watching...not necessarily ICE.

by nh43215rgbon 10/3/2025, 8:06 PM

Palantir can help with that

by h05sz487bon 10/4/2025, 4:44 AM

That would create the risk of people generating, hundreds and thousands of fake profiles and giving ice the runaround, wouldn’t it?

by justahuman74on 10/3/2025, 10:00 PM

The social media companies must dislike this as it'll make people even less likely to post anything

by lawnon 10/3/2025, 7:51 PM

Gotta spend that gigantic funding on something that furthers the party's agenda.

by tartoranon 10/9/2025, 4:32 AM

Why is this flagged??

by Hizonneron 10/3/2025, 9:18 PM

Any creative chaffing or deception ideas?

by southernplaces7on 10/6/2025, 1:24 PM

That this post got flagged, and was allowed to stay flagged (as far as I can see) is one more excellent example of the selective idiocy of the moderators on this site, or if not their idiocy, than tacit support for dampening certain narratives. It's very much a tech-related post, that talks about a very worrying authoritarian digital surveillance tendency, and it gets flagged on a site that calls itself "hacker news"? Get the fuck out of town.

by jonathanstrangeon 10/3/2025, 9:09 PM

The US is going down the gutter, it's sad and pathetic.

by jmclnxon 10/3/2025, 8:34 PM

Yet another reason to dump Twitter, Meta, Tiktok and other social sites.

People can always go mack to USENET and IRC if they want to make it hard to be tracked :)

by deegon 10/3/2025, 8:23 PM

What happened to all those 2nd Amendment conservatives who needed their guns to protect us from the governments jack booted thugs?

by throwaway984393on 10/3/2025, 8:08 PM

America's Gestapo

by rpjton 10/3/2025, 9:17 PM

Some people: "Great, this will help them get criminals and other bad people off the street."

Some other people: "More fascism. This is Trump's version of the SS. It's absolutely horrible and we are doomed if this continues."

The world continues to spin.