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ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Ops in US History

ICE Is Running One of the Largest Anti-Left Surveillance Ops in US History

zzzeek

Comments (404)

  • multiplegeorges
    > After a local activist uploaded a license-plate search tool on Fly.io, a developer-focused public cloud platform, to an infiltrated Signal chat, HSI agents reviewed website DNS queries and Stripe data along with data purchased from a commercial broker. This gave HSI access to SSH session logs, outbound connection records, the Fly.io account’s signup IP, and a Stripe card fingerprint on an account that had never completed a payment. Agents fused that with Minnesota DVS records and commercial data from the Thomson- Reuters CLEAR platform to produce a driver's license nummber, Social Security number summary, years of address history, phone numbers, property records, and jointly registered vehicles.Wow, I wonder how they got SSH session logs?!The breadcrumb trail here is chilling.
  • adjejmxbdjdn
    It has always been obvious since ICE’s budget was raised over 10x what it used to be, even though ICE was already struggling to find enough people with criminal records to deport, that ICE was intended to be far more than an immigration enforcement agency.
  • cellsstudio
    Man, this is chilling. Between this and those "anti-ice" protestors that got a collective 450 years of jail time, it seems pretty close to police state levels of power, corruption and control.
  • cogman10
    ICE is rouge agency. They need to be disbanded. Fine if we still have an agency doing ICE work or whatever, but every single person employed by ICE needs to be fired, potentially prosecuted, definitely black listed from federal government work, and their funds returned for the blatant unconstitutional and dangerous use they've been put towards.Put them back under the DoJ and have the FBI handle criminals, not ICE. Bring back the INS.
  • Havoc
    State resources and armed officers taking a political stance like this is how democracy withers
  • ProllyInfamous
    Fun-fact™ Wednesday:One person has appointed every single judge to the current US FISA Courts (whose jurisdiction includes domestic surveillance rubberstamping).You can thank the concessions of Bush v. Gore (2000) for giving this executive-level privilege to the hoNoRAblE Judge Roberts.In 2026, this orchestrated puppetteering probably doesn't even matter anymore..?
  • titzer
    Not a peep from the second amendment types. Curious.
  • uxp100
    Not clear how central the patriot act was to this operation, but it does pop up here.Russ Feingold was the only Senator to vote against the Patriot act. I really do think about that a lot.
  • austin-cheney
    Surveillance in combination with law enforcement is not the immediate problem, and so blaming ills on extended surveillance provides a smoke screen to ignore the actual problems.The two problems of surveillance are misuse by government for political reasons in opposition to constitutional rights and misuse of surveillance by non-government agents who are not held to the same high ethical standards/limitations. These two concerns of misuse will continue their malicious growth until they are challenged regardless of the increases to surveillance technology.
  • derwiki
  • nomilk
    I change countries a lot and my default assumption for any new country is that overstaying your visa will be treated seriously, resulting in something like immediate detention (in a very lousy environment), probably a fine, and near-immediate deportation (at your expense), and probably some sort of quite serious ban (probably greater than merely months). And that's if the individual has a clean record; I'd expect it to significantly less benign otherwise.Although this default expectation is pessimistic (and some countries might not be nearly that harsh), I don't think it's wildly inaccurate. What I don't understand is why it's common for intelligent people (seemingly only in the US) to consider violations of visa/immigration conditions acceptable and ICE bad guys for enforcing the law?
  • so-gala-massey
    Great. So when the dems get back in power they can go after all the far right militant movements that are armed to the teeth and breaking countless laws?
  • Zigurd
    Their status in society should be comparable to former Stasi. You probably haven't heard much about how former Stasi were treated, and how they still are perceived.
  • gherkinnn
    Where are all the Don't Tread on Me people who prepped for decades for precisely such cases?
  • bix6
    Stop voting for these assholes.
  • beaviskhan
    Brought to you by the people who have complained bitterly for decades about federal overreach and excessive government spending. Oh, the irony.
  • monster_truck
    They don't seem to be doing a very good job. It's a dog and pony show highlighting low hanging fruit getting reaped.
  • anon
    undefined
  • DivingForGold
    Ahhh, the SuperMax in El Salvador will soon be overflowing ...
  • rnd0
    Ok. And I'm supposed to do what with this information, exactly?
  • igleria
    I'm tired of these guys trying to one up McCarthy.
  • fedpost
    You have the power to stop them. There are plenty of technical opportunities out there and every internal security memo with your hn handle on it is another piece of grear they can't use and time they've wasted ratcheting their own paranoia.
  • andreygrehov
    Why do they call it 'Anti-Left'?
  • setnone
    not a us citizen but this seems reasonable from historical US perspective
  • goodpoint
    This is fascism.
  • darkarmani
    > Court records show the feds used an administrative summons request reserved for violations of customs and taxation requirements, which does not fit the activity that made up the criminal charges filed by the Minnesota US attorney against former CNN anchor Don Lemon and others.When they are arresting news anchors for reporting on ICE's activities, it should be obvious that Trump and his administration is fascist-curious.
  • ajross
    Not really the bent of the article, but it's also worth pointing out that this shows some really terrible opsec practice by the activists in question. Like, no, you don't just spin up a cloud server to coordinate your protest activity and then ssh into it from your home IP. Dude...
  • shrubby
    Tech fascism alright.Read The Nerd Reich.
  • labrador
    I'm having flashbacks to when I was in high school in the 1970's while Nixon was at the height of his powers.The difference is Nixon had real domestic enemies to worry about: The Weather Underground were bombing buildings, heiress Patty Hearst was kidnapped by the "Symbionese Liberation Army", the Black Panthers were making demands which conservative America found frightening, mass protests were going on about the war in Vietnam on college campuses which resulted in the deaths at Kent State. Nixon believed these protests were driven by Chinese and Soviet influence to support North Vietnam in the war. The CIA’s Operation CHAOS spent years looking for foreign control of the antiwar movement and reported back that there wasn’t any.What domestic enemies does Trump have? Antifa is a philosophy, not an organization. Black Lives Matter protests were his last administration. There have been a few lone wolf attacks like the Dallas ICE sniper, but the domestic threat is no here near what Nixon faced.Under the Trump's White House directive NSPM-7, which defines a potential domestic terrorist as anyone expressing “anti-Christian, anti-capitalist, or anti-American” views, DHS launched an operation to find a “network of conspirators” against ICE.The surveillance op in the Wired article targeted labor unions, a climate change group and socialist collectives — the SEIU had three years of wire transfers investigated, and the AFL-CIO, DSA and Showing Up for Racial Justice were also investigated. That’s the mismatch: a 1970s-scale dragnet for a threat that isn’t 1970s-scale.Trump appears to be grabbing power for the sake of grabbing power.
  • nisegami
    I think the history of the FBI suggests this will continue long after Trump himself leaves office, effectively becoming a state run gang.
  • deadbabe
    the pendulum will eventually swing back and most of these fucks will be thrown in prison.
  • shevy-java
    It is eerily similar to the 1930s era in central Europe.I would not call it "Anti-Left" though. Fascism should never be confused with having an agenda other than fascism itself, be it Trump's corporate fascism or Putin's neo-Stalinism. All pocket away wealth and power to their cronies.
  • Dunewalnut22
    What gets me is how much of this stuff is just bought, not built. Agencies can purchase location and social media data from brokers and skip the warrant step entirely, so I'd honestly put more energy into closing that loophole than into fighting any one agency.
  • dathinab
    anti-left sure, but more like "anti everyone who isn't part of a small set of VERY far right movements by general western standards, many affected people just don't know about it yet or are willful ignorant about it"you are centrist and have a good point to complain about not liked by them, sorry you are now leftyou are conservative right, but have very different views about separation of religion and state, sorry that is woke you are now left, tooyou care bout civil right of all US citizens and especially want to better protect workers against abuse, oh dang I fear that is "left extremist" maybe even "domestic terrorist"/s
  • bradthebeaverfa
    [dead]
  • throwaway5a
    [flagged]
  • zenbane
    [flagged]
  • kevmo
    This is going to be moderated off the front page.
  • sehw
    good
  • cyberjerkXX
    "How dare they monitor my violent terrorist actions. We only shot 3 people at an immigration facility. We only organized a massive law enforcement interference campaign. How DARE THEY".. Leftists will always use your principles against you. They don't care about the second amendment. They want you to care about it so they can bully you into allowing them to be violent and gain political power. Give me the down votes I don't care. Leftists are insane and nuance is lost on their utopian beliefs.
  • elmer2
    Now many people might understand what the Right was going through during the Biden administration, when they were censored, spied on, and arrested.Will this stop? or will we see the same thing again when a Democrat becomes president (with no articles about it and nobody mentioning it)?
  • aristofun
    If current so called left wasn’t so radical, crazy and obviously corrupt at times - i would have been very dissapointed by this.
  • techteach00
    You will fail to achieve anything if you mentally approach these things from a partisan view (like all the comments, general public).ICE should not be running surveillance Ops on Left activists or immigrants and the FBI should not run surveillance Ops on Right activists, J6 rioters.The tools violate all of our rights full stop. Please don't support this garbage again when Dems sweep into power, trying to debank ppl for X tweets etc.