ICE's 'Frightening' Facial Recognition App is Scanning US Citizens Without Their Consent
ICE's 'Frightening' Facial Recognition App is Scanning US Citizens Without Their Consent | Common Dreams
Does the US legal system still exist in any sense that it should in a democracy?
I ask because I don't understand how all this is possible in a constitutional state: Masked brutes who arbitrarily kidnap people on the open street without even identifying themselves, people who are interned without due process and then often simply disappear without a trace in the administrative system, total surveillance without cause, and many other massive violations that the US legal system seems to enable rather than prevent, as it should.
All of this already looks very much like a dictatorship to me, i.e., an unjust state, as none of this can be possible with a democratic constitution - at least not with one that is actually upheld by the legal system.
It does not. The legal system has essentially lost the ability to be a check on the power of the executive branch. Partly because of the capture of the judiciary and regulatory bodies by right-wing extremists and partly because of the speed at which the executive branch is acting illegally - it takes time to build cases and the jsutice system can't keep up.
At a certain point, we should just arrest the President, Vice President, and cabinet while we work through the paperwork. I don't know much about Chuck Grassley, but he can run things while we get through the trials.
No.
The people are so gaslit they will attack you if you say otherwise.
I wonder why our allies aren’t helping at this point. Surely they understand where this goes if they don’t stop it sooner rather than later. Europe is laughing at Americans ignoring the tiger that will eat them soon.
I am German and I am appalled by the behavior of our government: Instead of standing up to Trump and his henchmen and becoming independent from the US, they are kowtowing to him, even though it is completely obvious how little Trump cares about his so called allies—and since the US is nowadays blackmailing Europe with tariffs and so on, it takes a lot of imagination to still call them allies, especially when all halfway rational people are particularly disturbed by all the inhuman Nazi shit.
Unfortunately, however, the weak position of the current German government was already absolutely foreseeable before the last federal election, because the Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is actually more of a US lobbyist than a politician (among other things, he was chairman of the supervisory board of Black Rock Germany until 2022 and held various positions in business lobby organizations such as the Atlantik-Brücke – a conservative think tank). Nothing can be expected from these people, although I unfortunately also think that US citizens should not count on any external support anyway.
Why your "allies" don't help? Well, the USA shouldn't have spit in our face to begin with.
We have enough to fix in our own country with your stupid "USA first" moves.
Endure your own shit while we endure your shit...
You have the most powerful military in the world and basically are your allies' (former) protective power. There is no outside help coming because (among other reasons of course) nobody is physically able to help you.
IDK what to do about the gaslighting by Fox and right wing media.. Too many people trust things without verification and it’s the reason our country is in such despair right now
From a distance it looks like the American people don't realize what's happening and accept it because "it will be over in 4 years". Keeping them frightened of losing their breadcrumbs also works very well.
That's my impression too. After everything the regime has done so far, I think it's pretty clear that it can no longer be removed by legal means - the legal system already seems to me to have been infiltrated too deeply for that.
It also seems likely to me that MAGA will no longer allow free elections, because that would carry the risk of being voted out of office, which, even in the corrupt US system, could mean severe legal consequences for many of the regime's followers and for all the misdeeds that have already been committed in less than a year. I don't think MAGA will take that chance, especially since ICE is already set up as a kind of secret police force with a budget equivalent to the military spending of a medium-sized country. I mean, what else could an agency like this possibly need such an astronomical budget for other than as a private army loyal to the regime and thus a safeguard in case of resistance from the regular army or the police?
In short: I think the outlook is very bleak, and like you, I'm not convinced that the majority of US citizens are aware of how dangerous the situation is.
Does the US legal system still exist in any sense that it should in a democracy?
Hybrid Regime is how I describe the US. It's a weird limbo state between Democracy and Autocracy (because if this was a full autocracy, I wouldn't have access to Lemmy and most anti-trump media would've been raided and shut down). Afaik, they aren't doing exit controls yet.
The major difference between the US and PRC (where I came from), is that Americans seem more willing to resist the government compared to mainland Chinese, and these demonstrations in the US are actually being reported on, in China, its absolute silence, nobody even knows about the very little protests that do happen.
But, by the time EU starts accepting American Refugees, it'd probabably be too late and they would've imposed exit controls by then.
Idk what will happen, only time will tell.
Its in a transitionary state but it's getting there extremely quickly
It does but we're in an act first ask questions later regime.
Yup, it just takes forever to get anything through the courts. We're just now getting to the tariff nonsense, for example.
Does the US legal system still exist in any sense that it should in a democracy?
No.
The judiciary "interprets" the constitution. Trump filled the judiciary with loyalist or otherwise ideologically aligned judges during this term and his previous. The supreme court ruled last year that the president has immunity, and the president has the ability to pardon people, so it seems the administration is pretty much "above the law." Even when the courts do push back, they're acting like they're powerless, and the admin's tactics seems to be just ignoring, stalling, or taking the "ain't no rules says a dog can't play basketball" approach to working around the courts. Yes, the constitution has been severely weakened, and will probably continue to weaken.
Land of the free (for white people)
I’m not going to excuse ICE and all the shit they are up to. I’m just going to point out that immigration status doesn’t require the same process to determine as the guilt or innocence of some other crime. In a murder trial, you have to prove motive, opportunity, etc beyond a reasonable doubt. With immigration status, it’s simpler: either you can document your legal right to be in the country or you can’t. When someone isn’t supposed to be in the country we don’t jail them for years to rehabilitate them and then release them into the population. We remove them. So everything about this feels and looks different from a standard criminal due process because it is different. Even without the aggressive tactics, masks, and all attendant bullshit, it would still be different.
Due process is recognized as a human‑rights protection in almost all democratic countries and generally applies regardless of citizenship; it helps prevent arbitrariness and abuse of power.
The fundamental safeguard against arbitrary state detention is habeas corpus or its functional equivalent: a person detained must be brought before a judge so the lawfulness of the detention can be reviewed and so the detainee can be informed of the charges against them.
ICE denies detainees even this, for which there can be absolutely no excuse in any reasonably civilized country.
An ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship—including a birth certificate—if the app says the person is an alien
Cool, so I guess that means I can ignore evidence of the person/people at the door being law enforcement before enforcing my 2nd Amendment rights and state self-defense laws that also allow me to shoot to protect others.
We should act on protecting our rights and then ask questions later.
Yup. If someone is abducting someone else and doesn't self-identify, that sounds like an open and shut self-defense case, provided you survive the encounter.
Yeah you can, but you'll probably get killed. If you're willing to do that though, then at least make it worthwhile
ICE don't even show their ID do they? They think real police only have warrants and show their ID for no reason. They smahter than all of history combined you know. /s
Um, Americans also realize they’re ABDUCTING people without their consent too, right? And have been, for like months now?
Most of us are well aware of that. I live in a neighborhood with a pretty high Hispanic population. ICE was reported just a few blocks from my house on Thursday, zero trick-or-treaters on Friday. There are still a discouraging about of people saying they support Trump and what he's doing on Nextdoor. I want to believe they're bots.
Hopefully they just don't kno a how bad things are on the ground. Everything looks fine when your head is buried in the sand.
Yup ice is in my neighborhood too, I'm trying to keep a look out and help anyone I can. I have a balaclava ski mask with prom night stitched into the forehead.
What is the point of comments like this? Yes, we realize this. Are you just hearing about it? Do we really have to face each new horror with admonishments that it is distracting us from the last horror?
It has been years(let us remember Obama), it is only just now that drumpf is in office they realize that people are getting literally disappeared.
Is it illegal to have a facemask? People should start carrying around ski masks in their vehicles in case ICE approaches them. If they claim it's illegal then why the fuck is ICE wearing them?
Because it is an authoritarian regime now, and not a state of law and order anymore.
It's harder to racially profile a masked person or identify them in general.
Ok time for everyone to dress like ice agents then. Masks for all.
I'm not entirely sure, but modern cameras can see through fabric, so I'm afraid you'll have to buy a mask made of special materials.
Time to start wearing face paint / face tattoos that fuck with facial recognition.
In their world, resisting surveillance will be probable cause for arrest, because you must have something to hide and need to be investigated.
I don't think anything like that would help. Especially over the last several years with the huge rise of things like Snapchat filters where people can take photos of themselves in various situations with various costumes, various themes. I'm sure all of that was data mined for someone's purpose.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_vision_dazzle it's been done before. AI facial recognition gets a little overhyped
Is that why cyberpunk media always has people wearing face tats.
Sometimes it's explicitly called out for that reason ya. Can't say all the time though.
So look, this is just gonna happen. It's legal to film people in public (in the US) and we all know stores, etc. are already using facial recognition.
The real problem here is the (apparent, though almost certainly assured) lack of responsible use of the data. Scanning faces means you also get time, place, and event/activity, and the citizens then have zero control of what the govt does with this, who they share it with (e.g. Palantir), etc. All prior collection of US person data required appropriate approval, limited scope of access, and timely adjudication/disposal. But ICE is (again, apparently) operating outside the law.
Also, doesn't this shit just waste like a fuckton of taxpayer money?
By design. They want America bankrupt.
That's the beautiful thing, we just print more so people don't notice how much we actually spend on things. Inflation goes brr, but people blame the corpos.
Remember kids, Juggalo makeup defeats facial recognition. Woop woop!
Everybody wear drag queen makeup!
I also hear beards still confuse the system so that's nice
Alright, that's it, I'm going full juggalo.
At this point there is no voting your way back to normal anymore. As others have pointed out, the Democrats will ratchet their way further to the right in order to take office again, and the surveillance state will continue to expand under their authority (albeit somewhat less rapidly)
The lower classes must wake up to this reality and take meaningful steps to remove the ownership class from power once and for all. Holding signs and chanting in a public square during a weekend won't be enough, the rich and powerful must be in fear of losing their wealth and their lives.
Imho surveillance state will grow even more rapidly with democrats, just not overtly. They will make a stronger big brother which the republicans will use to promote fascism.
As they wear masks....
We can wear masks, too...for health reasons. I predict an increase in germaphobes.
Imagine if they actually try to ban medical face masks, not for some cockamamie pseudoscience reason, but because we don't have the right to evade their facial recognition scheme?
Facial Recognition has always been racist this is nothing new in a broad sense.
There's always been facial rec. In the old days, they recognized that "He looks black, that can't be his car."
So hypothetically, what if a bunch of protestors showed up with IC E shirts/pants/etc.... without license plates and started to protest? How would they know who was who at that point?
It doesn't even look that hard to do given how much memorabilia there is online.
Well, Halloween just happened, so there are probably convincing costumes available on discount. Just saying...
Serious question, with all this surveillance, would it become a thing to always wear a full mask in public.
I know, feels weird to ask that post pandemic, but here we are.
We aren’t post pandemic. They just want you to think we are.
We are though. COVID-19 strains have become endemic, which is the step after pandemic if the disease is not eradicated. So it's like the flu now.
There are clothing that messes with it but the issue you will find is that with no one wearing them it puts an even bigger target on you.
Convenient they did that with the masks too.
Well that was my point, what if dressing up with masks and glasses (similar to ICE) becomes a trend.
It surely isn’t illegal so if enough people do it regardless of political alignment, it could break their process.
A lot of cameras ID you by your eyes, so a medical mask wouldn't really work. If you use a mask + something like Reflectacles, you'll probably be okay.
Just disguise yourself as your favorite Buck Rogers character.
are you "there yet" America?
We're working on it, apparently.
They use facial recognition on us while we are not allowed to see their faces.
These guys need de-masking.
They need lifetimes in prison for treason and domestic terrorism.
We will never get there while they are anonymous. The path to prison starts with de-masking.
You can’t prosecute what has no identification.
With their mask-wearing they’re practically advertising their methods. We should take the clue. Everyone still has their COVID masks, right?
Not the point. As long as they remain masked there will be no accountability.
Eh, I'm fine with them wearing masks. I'm not fine with them breaking the law and not being accountable. If they wear masks (or even if they don't), they need to be ready to show ID and recite their badge number.
No, they are law enforcement and should be readily identifiable the community they serve. Including their face. Also being masked makes it harder for the people they're interacting with to understand what they're saying. They lose all the non-verbal communication that comes from the face. Them being masked has absolutely zero upside to the public.
What badge number? They won’t do that. They need demasking.