[HN Gopher] ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts a...
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ICEBlock climbs to the top of the App Store charts after officials
slam it
Author : doener
Score : 339 points
Date : 2025-07-02 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.engadget.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.engadget.com)
| ck2 wrote:
| Has anyone decompiled it yet to make sure it's legit?
| asacrowflies wrote:
| Yeah in this case not being FOSS makes it most likely a
| honeypot
| kstrauser wrote:
| How so? If I report seeing ICE at 123 Main St., that doesn't
| mean there are more than usual undocumented immigrants there.
| It just means that's where I saw ICE at that moment.
| asacrowflies wrote:
| Not a honey pot for immigrants but for dissidents and
| anyone anti ice or anti administration
| kstrauser wrote:
| If we go down that road, I suspect everyone registered to
| vote as a Democrat will be on the same dissidents list.
| mandevil wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streisand_effect
| ldoughty wrote:
| Apple App Store only. Developer has a statement about privacy
| concerns on Android:
|
| https://www.iceblock.app/android
|
| (Concerned that the information they would be required to store
| and handle may require they work with the government during a
| subpoena)
|
| Apple also has to handle this (internally) to do push
| notifications, but I suppose that theory is Apple has pockets to
| fight the government (or it's at least out of the developers
| hands)
| i80and wrote:
| GrapheneOS has a retort:
| https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3lswujex4e22w
| ldoughty wrote:
| Yeah, that's basically what I deduced. They throw Android
| under the bus but _really_ it's not any more private, it just
| makes it up to Apple to comply, not the developer.
|
| There is an argument to be made that Apple is better
| positioned to fight financially... However, the current
| administration tends to threaten blocking or
| mergers/acquisitions, or other red tape unless they comply. I
| doubt Apple would accept such financially damaging threats to
| protect ICEBlock's users.
| fn-mote wrote:
| Apple has resisted pressure from law enforcement in the
| past. That gives me a real reason to believe that they will
| not fold in the future.
| kstrauser wrote:
| Agreed, and they certainly have better lawyers than an
| indie dev could afford.
| realusername wrote:
| They also threw their Chinese users under the bus and
| complied with the russian government as part of their war
| censorship.
| bigyabai wrote:
| _Which_ pressure from law enforcement? Ron Wyden blew the
| whistle on Apple 's warrantless Push Notification
| backdoor, which Apple did admit to implementing for the
| federal government: https://arstechnica.com/tech-
| policy/2023/12/apple-admits-to-... Apple
| has since confirmed in a statement provided to Ars that
| the US federal government "prohibited" the company "from
| sharing any information," but now that Wyden has outed
| the feds, Apple has updated its transparency reporting
| and will "detail these kinds of requests" in a separate
| section on push notifications in its next report.
|
| As other commenters have noted, Apple's treatment of
| Russian and Chinese users should not give you hope for
| their resisting US federal oversight.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple fought back against forced decryption orders. They
| could theoretically decrypt any iPhone they're given with
| new firmware but they don't want to.
|
| On the other hand, Google isn't exactly working with the
| authorities either. They moved Google Maps' location
| history to on-device storage because of the many warrants
| they were served, for instance, and they too refuse to
| decrypt phones.
|
| These companies know to pick their battles, but they did
| take on the government various times.
| 15155 wrote:
| > They could theoretically decrypt any iPhone they're
| given with new firmware but they don't want to.
|
| This is untrue at some technical level: Apple is
| currently unable to break AES-256.
|
| The San Bernadino case was about having Apple create and
| sign new firmware that would enable a brute force attack
| - which could easily be unsuccessful. I don't believe the
| Secure Enclave found in newer models even allows for a
| brute force attack (enforcing some delay, among other
| things) from BFU state.
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| If there is any silver lining in any of this, it may be
| that people will finally start taking privacy as not
| completely irrelevant trade-off to convenience. I am not
| really holding my breath, but if people do not have that
| level of self-preservation in relatively clear instances,
| it probably does not matter anyway.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| The issue is much older than the current US administration
| : Apple has been listed as participating to PRISM since
| 2012, and considering the whole opacity of the Patriot Act
| (and its derivatives), the secret courts in particular, it
| makes whatever they (or any other US company) might say
| about their commitment to privacy (when the opponent is the
| US government) rather irrelevant.
|
| (Personally, I am suspecting that they _do_ try much more
| than some other companies, but again, the opacity makes it
| impossible to verify.)
| johnklos wrote:
| This is... misleading at best.
|
| So GrapheneOS says two irrelevant things: one, about
| ANDROID_ID, and two, about spoofing locations.
|
| Even if we know nothing about what's going on behind the
| scenes, we know for a fact that Google keeps and uses data
| that can correlate any user / device with their actions. This
| is something their business model includes, and we all know
| they do this all the time. They've even been caught lying,
| saying they weren't doing this when in fact they were.
|
| So it's incredibly disingenuous for GrapheneOS to mention two
| irrelevant things, then make the claim that, "Making posts
| with inaccurate technical claims about Android doesn't
| inspire confidence."
|
| Yes, GrapheneOS, this doesn't inspire confidence at all. I
| wouldn't believe anyone who writes irrelevant things when
| discussing very specific issues in an attempt to confuse and
| mislead.
| miloignis wrote:
| But Google doesn't have to be involved! GrapheneOS is
| specifically a de-googled Android. Even for normal Google-y
| Android, you could provide the APK to side-load, so it
| doesn't go through the Play Store or Google's FCM at all,
| an option you don't have with Apple.
|
| I think this is what the Graphene posts are trying to say.
|
| As others mention, having a web app would make a lot of
| sense.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Apple tracks user location too. If you log into your iCloud
| from a country you've never been to, you're going to have
| to need to provide your 2FA code even with a valid session
| token. They're not stupid.
|
| Apple is very much in favour of user privacy, as long as
| that privacy means "protecting your data from third
| parties". When it comes to the data Apple itself collects,
| they're far less conservative. They don't share information
| derived from their massive databases per se, but they do
| keep track.
|
| Thanks to Apple and Find My, stalking people is easier than
| ever. The company can look up where you are and where
| you've been. They'd probably fight a court order to provide
| live location data to ICE, but who knows what that'll mean
| with the current American government.
|
| Even on iOS, user data ends up in the hands of data brokers
| through ads. They're not _supposed_ to collect all that
| data, but that 's not stopping an unethical company from
| trying.
|
| Android's privacy issues are there, but only if you're
| protecting your privacy against companies. If you're trying
| to protect your privacy against the government, there's no
| difference, really.
| ck2 wrote:
| Everyone can bypass Play store from side-load from a web
| download without root
|
| and they can make their own push system so that claim doesn't
| hold water?
| A4ET8a8uTh0_v2 wrote:
| That.. is only technically true. For a huge population of
| Apple users, messing around with non-standard solutions is
| not exactly popular.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Making your own push system on Android is rather unreliable.
| On phones from several brands (Samsung, for one) the system
| would constantly try to kill any long-running polling
| operation or background refresh daemon.
|
| I don't really see their point about device IDs, though.
| There are ways around that, from cryptography to on-device
| filtering.
|
| It's also not like Apple isn't storing device IDs to send
| these push messages. There's no difference to user privacy.
|
| All of that said, by leaving it up to Apple to keep track of
| device IDs, they're not going to be on the hook for warrants.
| The government can get that data from Apple instead, but they
| can claim innocence. It's CYA.
| OutOfHere wrote:
| It is a false statement since apps can trivially be side-loaded
| on Android.
| snickerdoodle12 wrote:
| Yeah, it's absolute nonsense.
|
| Apple could be subpoenaed for the data, and we all know that
| Tim Apple is happy to jump when Trump says jump.
|
| Meanwhile on Android they could easily just distribute the app
| from their own website and if they really insist on push
| messages there are plenty of non-google options that are
| actually private.
| beefnugs wrote:
| Yeah people dont know what they dont know, but just the fact
| people are risking their freedom to do something is important.
|
| Someone explain to him that whatever he is doing, he needs to
| end to end encrypt so none of the infrastructure or middlemen
| can see anything but ips and who installed it (until they
| control the end device). (Better yet use veilid if it works
| yet, or i think there is some kind of tor routing over http
| these days)
|
| Also he is making a weird mistake by not being a website
| instead of obvious corporate controlled "app", also should have
| tried harder to keep anonymous
| UmGuys wrote:
| Oh shit. Graphene says it's a honeypot. Slick marketing.
| seanalltogether wrote:
| This clearly demonstrates that the developer doesn't know what
| they're talking about. If anything, android is more secure
| because you can A. Sideload an app so that
| google play store doesn't know you've installed it. B:
| Run periodic background tasks to poll any https endpoint so no
| service provider has logs of device ids for push notifications.
| C: Create local notifications on the device.
|
| In this case the only logs that any company could be asked to
| produce is server logs which only show ip addresses.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Why does this need to be an app?
| skeledrew wrote:
| Interesting. I was wondering about that. There are definitely
| solutions out there that'd make this feasible on Android from a
| privacy perspective, but may need a bit more work. Perhaps like
| ntfy.
|
| Also, as an offside, this is one of the things I hate about
| Google's handling of AOSP: they keep shuttling things into
| their proprietary layer, making it next to impossible for
| alternative approaches to gain traction.
| beepbopboopp wrote:
| The security secretary and attorneys general going after a
| private citizen by name is gross
| davidw wrote:
| Basic authoritarian stuff.
| justin66 wrote:
| Going after him is (worse than) gross. Using his name is
| normal.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| It's a fantastic way to avoid crowds at Wal-Mart, the county
| fair, car shows, etc. Just a few clicks and the lines shrink.
| Great app!
|
| Sarcasm aside, with no gates to avoiding spoofed ICE sightings
| the usefulness of the app seems questionable at best. This is
| doubly true when observers in this area have historically been
| unable to differentiate non-ICE Federal law enforcement from ICE
| (so even users who mean well are filling the system with bogus
| data). There have been numerous "ICE sightings" in this area when
| in fact no immigration enforcement actions have occurred in the
| county (DEA and HSI have been at work, though).
| ldoughty wrote:
| This might also be hampered by the desire to not store any
| device info if they stores device info, they might be able to
| build a reputation system for believing reports. They claim
| this is for user privacy, but it really just shifts the privacy
| defense to Apple -- so will Apple fight the gag order and
| subpoena for names of users of this app? At least if the
| developer did it themselves there could be a canary[1].
|
| 1: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_canary
| neither_color wrote:
| I don't see what's so bad about wanting to avoid an area where
| there's police activity going on. It has nothing to do with
| whether or not you're doing anything wrong, it's as simple as not
| wanting to get hassled at a DUI checkpoint or get stuck in
| traffic because they need 8 squad cars taking up a lane to k-9
| search someone. As a more tan law-abiding US citizen, the
| possibility of some agent asking me for papers and then asking
| probing questions to "prove myself" anywhere that's not an
| airport is enough for me to want a heads up not to be in area
| where that might happen.
| siliconc0w wrote:
| They've abducted US citizens, it's perfectly reasonable to want
| to avoid them.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You're so right. I'm not afraid of the cops, especially not ICE
| flunkies, but interactions with law enforcement has never made
| my day more convenient and pleasant. It's not that I'd hide
| anything from them, as much as for me it's a bureaucratic
| hassle I'd just as soon not have to deal with.
|
| Out of curiosity, does anyone know, officially, how much a
| multi-generation born-in-America person is actually obligated
| to cooperate with or answer to ICE?
| bbor wrote:
| Legally speaking, they need signed arrest warrants. Being
| "multi-generation" (aka "clearly white"?) doesn't factor into
| it -- all residents are owed this protection, AFAIK. In this
| way, they have much less power than local PD or Sheriffs.
|
| Practically speaking, of course, there's news stories every
| week about them arresting citizens, even when they're saying
| stuff like "please, check my wallet, my ID is in there!". I
| haven't followed up, but I'd be shocked if any of these
| incidents resulted in any sort of reparations for the victim.
|
| As a side note, I'd be way _more_ afraid of "flunkies" than
| any other type of law enforcement. Getting arrested is bad,
| but getting shot by someone with terrible trigger discipline
| and no training is worse... At _best_ , they're especially
| aggressive, masked cops with absolutely zero accountability.
| kstrauser wrote:
| > Being "multi-generation" (aka "clearly white"?) doesn't
| factor into it -- all residents are owed this protection,
| AFAIK.
|
| That's my understanding, too. I do happen to be white, but
| by multi-generation, I mean that I'm not a recent
| immigrant, nor are my parents, or theirs, so ICE doesn't
| have any clear power over me that I'm aware of. Similarly,
| the vast majority of my Black neighbors have been here for
| many, many years; same deal for them.
|
| > As a side note, I'd be way more afraid of "flunkies" than
| any other type of law enforcement.
|
| Same here. Being arrested for a BS reason would be quite
| the hassle, but it sure beats getting shot by a masked try-
| hard.
| davidw wrote:
| > ICE doesn't have any clear power over me that I'm aware
| of
|
| They have a bunch of guys with guns. Maybe no warrants or
| id's or anything legal like that, but guns are probably
| enough.
|
| With this latest bill, they are going to be one of the
| largest armed forces in the world. They'll get more money
| than the US Marines.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Citizenship comes from law. Enforcers and the judiciary
| choose which law to enact and how to enact them. If enforcers
| of the "law" are more loyal to the administration than the
| constitution, then the law and all it's implications, such as
| citizenship, are up to the arbitrary whims of our new king
| coronated by the supreme court.
|
| That's the problem with not defending Rule of Law. If law is
| arbitrary and only serves the interests of one person and
| isn't grounded in some greater objective truth, then it
| doesn't matter what is officially allowed or not. If judges
| and enforcers are loyalists then they get to make the call
| whether your lack of cooperation is obstruction of justice or
| not. Who is going to punish them for violating your rights?
| Other ICE agents? The DOJ? You might not even be given
| standing to fight for your rights in court.
|
| An ICE agent may choose not to believe you are a US citizen
| and call your documents fake, and put you in a concentration
| camp or deport you to El Salvador.
|
| As with Kilmar we saw that ICE can act without due process,
| and due process is what determines your citizenship status.
|
| Trump is also openly talking about revoking the citizenship
| of citizens.
|
| It's worth a reading about de-naturalization:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denaturalization#Human_rights
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >Out of curiosity, does anyone know, officially, how much a
| multi-generation born-in-America person is actually obligated
| to cooperate with or answer to ICE?
|
| You don't have to say anything to them without a court order
| but obviously they're still cops so they can screw you if you
| make a jerk of yourself doing it.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| > how much a multi-generation born-in-America person is
| actually obligated to cooperate with or answer to ICE?
|
| This is the wrong question. The right question is "who will
| hold them accountable if they violate your rights or try to
| punish you for lack of obedience?"
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >"who will hold them accountable
|
| Politicians looking to score brownie points with either the
| public or the state itself.
|
| So basically you're SOL if you're not a more equal animal
| or connected to them (Skip Gates), a public persona
| (Whistlin Diesel), attractive woman (Karen Read, though you
| can argue that nobody has held the cops accountable on this
| one, yet) or highly sympathetic individual.
|
| There is some argument to be made that the truth comes out
| eventually in these sorts of matters but that's not gonna
| make Breonna Taylor any less dead or the Phonesavanh's kid
| from being any less disabled.
|
| I think the Floyd factor also prevents cops who are alone
| or in a pair from escalating stuff unnecessarily as much as
| they used to which is where a lot of these abuses
| historically come from.
| danudey wrote:
| Most elected politicians at this point are happy to
| repeat the same lies of "this person was arrested because
| they were being violent/interfering/were acting
| suspiciously/refused to identify themselves" even if
| there is multiple sources of video evidence to the
| contrary. Republicans in particular have no interest in
| the truth where it conflicts with the claims they want to
| make to advance their agenda, and most Democrats are too
| toothless to call out this misbehavior with the force and
| passion it deserves.
|
| And when they _do_ call it out, people will be told by
| Fox News and others that "this senator is opposed to the
| work ICE is doing to solve the problem of illegal
| immigrants", and other news agencies will say "such-and-
| such official says this senator is opposed to..." and the
| propaganda will spread and people will believe it.
| jahewson wrote:
| So there's this thing called the judiciary...
| jkestner wrote:
| Oh yeah, those guys who came up with qualified immunity.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| OK, I don't disagree, but there is nothing that
| guarantees the judiciary will act constitutionally or
| protect people's rights, so "who will hold the judiciary
| accountable if they violate your rights, try to punish
| you for lack of obedience, or fail to hold those who
| violate peoples rights accountable?""
| shermantanktop wrote:
| North Korea has a judiciary. So does Iran. So does China.
| They all have the rough equivalent of a Supreme Court
| too.
|
| A judiciary can only function as a check on other types
| of power when it is allowed to do so. Merely being called
| by that name is not enough.
| watwut wrote:
| Pretty much all layers say judiciary is deferential to
| cops and prosecution to the point of absurdity.
| netsharc wrote:
| In this thread: you slowly realizing that you live in an
| increasingly corrupt despotic police state...
|
| Sure you might be fine (they just harass the brown and
| black people), but it doesn't mean the problem doesn't
| exist.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| In many states you're required to identify yourself, but
| cooperation with law enforcement is otherwise never required.
| My sense is that ICE generally still releases citizens
| swiftly, and if they don't think you're a citizen for some
| reason you're not going to win an argument about it on the
| spot no matter how much you cooperate.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I've considered making a similar app for Denmark's train and
| bus ticket checkers, but I expect it would get rule illegal and
| blocked.
|
| https://www.thelocal.dk/20240529/what-happens-if-you-board-a...
| ericmay wrote:
| This is anti-social behavior and it leads to lawlessness and
| society sometimes having rather overbearing response to the
| increase (see ICE in the United States).
|
| Paying for public services is a duty of the public. Otherwise
| you won't have public services anymore. It's morally
| equivalent to being a tax cheat, in my view.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| Yeah, sometimes people develop an antipathy to certain
| social structures, and then that antipathy is defined as
| anti-social I guess, but there's probably no amount of
| Jantelov you can lay on that will make them change their
| minds.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >This is anti-social behavior and it leads to lawlessness
| and society sometimes having rather overbearing response to
| the increase (see ICE in the United States).
|
| >Paying for public services is a duty of the public.
| Otherwise you won't have public services anymore. It's
| morally equivalent to being a tax cheat, in my view.
|
| Man your comment is a great example of horseshoe theory.
|
| The people who support ICE's current activities justify it
| with all the same mumbo jumbo about "degrading public
| trust" and "better for society"
|
| Only they're trailer park clowns not ivory tower clowns so
| they use words tinged with racism instead of words tinged
| with communism. But you're all f-ing clowns at the end of
| the day.
| ericmay wrote:
| Communism _is_ a failed ideology and we should be on
| guard to extinguish it wherever we find it. We know that
| state ownership of the means of production leads to poor
| economic results at the nation state level.
|
| With that out of the way, if we (and I personally do)
| want to support transit for the masses and even make sure
| that those who are struggling financially have a means to
| use transit to maintain their qualify of life and
| dignity, we should do so through publicly supported
| programs and funding instead of "yea go ahead and jump
| the queue" because that leads to other problems, perhaps
| chief of all is the perception of anti-social behavior.
|
| You can't have public programs or support a strong
| community when people perceive that there is injustice
| taking place, and when they see someone cutting line and
| seeing no repercussions, you will lose broad support for
| public works. In other words, the bad apple spoils the
| bunch.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| >and when they see someone cutting line and seeing no
| repercussions, you will lose broad support for public
| works
|
| You mean like how a bunch of states imported every tom
| dick and harry from the 3rd world, immigration papers be
| damned, handed out licenses/residency like candy, then
| signed them all up for bennies and consequently support
| for those social programs is waning among the voting
| public?
|
| It's maddening that you can't seem to grasp that your
| thinking can trivially be used to justify the kind of
| behavior w're currently seeing from ICE
| ericmay wrote:
| Let me summarize my thoughts here:
|
| I think we should fund assistance programs for folks to
| use mass transit (that we also need to build more of and
| fund more of) instead of having people hop the queue
| because it leads to negative outcomes for public
| programs, and it's unfair.
|
| You're free to make of that what you will. If that means
| you think I support ICE and their current behavior or
| something, then I guess I do. I don't really care.
| soderfoo wrote:
| I went as a biljettkontrollant (Swedish ticket inspector) for
| Halloween--thought it'd be funny as a Yank expat.
|
| Entering a room, I could feel the anxiety as some people
| instinctively grabbed their phones to buy a ticket.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| That's in poor taste, but only because it cost them money.
| ljf wrote:
| And I grew up believing that America was 'land of the free'.
|
| I've never had to prove my ID to a police-person here in the UK
| - once or twice they've asked me who I was, but they didn't
| check the answer I gave them and no ID was shown. I never carry
| photo ID unless I'm flying, so I wouldn't have been able to
| prove who I was anyway.
| triyambakam wrote:
| But are you white?
| whstl wrote:
| I'm a latino in Germany of all places and for years I
| didn't carry any identification because the only one I had
| was my passport, the german work permit was just a sticker
| in one of the pages. I am obviously not gonna risk losing
| my passport, so it was home.
|
| Police never stopped me, but when I asked "what should I
| do?" they were more than understanding of the situation and
| just said that in the worst case I gotta go home grab it.
|
| Only recently I got a German Personalausweis in the shape
| of a card.
| riedel wrote:
| I am a white German with no migration background and i
| believe it is not all that beautiful here and I have been
| checked on various places. The reason is, that it really
| also depends where you are, because police has the right
| to check IDs e.g. in places where migration crimes are
| more likely like railway stations or in a buffet zone
| close to the border. In other places law requires far
| more actual reasons or a far more concrete suspicion. But
| I have also been checked in the middle of the night on a
| flixbus that got pulled out from the highway at the
| border between Bavaria and Baden-Wurttemberg, which IMHO
| clearly violated German police law.
| whstl wrote:
| Oh, definitely. I'm not saying there's no police checks,
| I'm just saying according to the police officer it was ok
| to not have with me at all times and leave at home.
|
| Also, when I was outside of the city I live I would bring
| the passport, and now the Personalausweis...
| netsharc wrote:
| The UK has a complicated relationship with IDs anyway, they
| don't have a national ID, no one's mandated to have a
| passport, and a driving license is also optional (only if you
| want to drive). The US is almost like that except that not
| having a driving license is an oddity there.
| marssaxman wrote:
| Navigation apps have long been reporting police activity along
| with other aspects of traffic you might want to avoid.
|
| Interacting with cops will never make your day better, so it's
| only sensible to avoid them if you can.
| datpuz wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky that you've never had to call the
| cops as a victim. People forget that cops also save lives.
| dmkolobov wrote:
| Consider yourself lucky that you've never called the cops
| as a victim and then been further victimized by the police.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| I've called cops as a victim. They were less than helpful
| to say the least. If anything, they were annoyed that I
| even bothered to ask for help.
| scottyah wrote:
| Since we're throwing in personal experiences to shape
| skimmer's overall emotions on police- I had a great
| interaction with police after someone called a wellness
| check on elderly neighbors. They tried hard to assure
| they were safe without being invasive or annoying.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| You are missing the point if you think it is about
| shaping someones' emotions towards police. The point is
| that there are plenty of valid reasons to just want to
| avoid interactions with or areas with police.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| I have had positive experiences with American police, but
| not as many as the negative experiences, and the negative
| where great enough to sour me on authority. In fact
| whenever I had a positive experience it was just so weird
| to have a cop not ruining your day because they had the
| power to do so, that it seemed surreal.
| mindslight wrote:
| I've dealt with the cops a handful of times, with
| responses anywhere from unhelpful to helpful. It helps to
| have the right expectations - can a given situation be
| improved by adding some readily-aggressive dudes, who at
| the very least will be a little annoyed at having to be
| there? Sometimes, that answer is yes. Police perform a
| necessary function in society, and I wouldn't want to
| have to do that role myself (despite DIYing most other
| things).
|
| But that does not justify supporting unaccountability as
| if its some kind of team sport! In fact, if you respect
| the role of the police then you must _support
| accountability_ - a cop breaking the law is just a
| criminal acting under the color of state authority.
| acdha wrote:
| Nobody forgets that, it's just that abuse and misconduct
| sour that. In many communities, people have to weigh the
| odds that reporting a crime will lead to more problems for
| them than it will help, with consequences ranging from lack
| of help to theft to rape or even being shot by mistake.
| American police departments have largely set themselves
| above the law, so the average person doesn't know whether
| they're getting a good cop who is genuinely trying to help
| them or the bad cop whose behavior has been covered up by
| their fellow officers for years. Anyone concerned about
| public opinion of police should be focused on
| accountability and oversight to rebuild public trust.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Let's be real. For all their flaws, US cops are some of
| the least corrupt in the world. There are places where
| you better be ready to fork over cash every time you
| encounter the police.
| afavour wrote:
| > US cops are some of the least corrupt in the world
|
| I don't think that's a good metric to judge them by (I
| also don't think it's true if you compare to first world
| countries).
|
| Sure, third world countries have police forces that are
| more corrupt. But US cops _are_ corrupt in a wide variety
| of ways and we should be very clear about how
| unacceptable that is. It doesn 't matter if someone
| somewhere else in the world is worse.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I can't speak for other first world countries, but Canada
| has its share of police misconduct. The most recent
| example is the mishandling of the 22-person killing spree
| in Nova Scotia[1], and the Toronto police are so famously
| bad at investigating sex crimes and protecting victims
| that an entire book was written on the subject[2].
|
| [1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/canada-police-
| mistakes-novia...
|
| [2] https://www.amazon.ca/Story-Jane-Doe-Book-
| About/dp/067931275...
| sgnelson wrote:
| incompetence =/= corruption.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Corruption allows incompetence to thrive. Deliberate
| inaction can also be whitewashed as "incompetence".
| jvergeldedios wrote:
| I've never understood the "be happy you're not in
| authoritarian Russia" type of argument for papering over
| the shortcomings of circumstances here in the US. Like,
| ok? Why are we comparing ourselves to places that are
| worse? Shouldn't we be striving to make things better
| relative to our own ideals and standards?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I'm using this argument because some of the recent
| proposals for fixing policing in the US are, frankly,
| ridiculous nonsense ("Defund the Police"). It's thus
| helpful to remember that we're discussing one of the
| better police systems in the world here, not the bottom
| of the barrel, and revolutionary change is not likely to
| create some kind of utopian law enforcement organization
| that never does anything wrong.
| jvergeldedios wrote:
| So you're erecting a straw man and attacking that. My
| assertion is that policing in the US has structural
| issues that need to be addressed. I disagree that it's
| helpful to remember that it could be worse as evidenced
| in other countries. That's irrelevant to the original
| assertion.
|
| Also the argument that there are proposals on how to
| address structural issues in policing that you deem
| "ridiculous nonsense" is a straw man that does not
| address my assertion.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| I don't think we should defund most police agencies in
| the US. I absolutely think that we need to defund ICE,
| throw a substantial number of its current employees in
| jail, and build a new immigration enforcement agency from
| the ground up. Nobody who authorized masked raids by the
| secret police can be trusted to enforce the law and I do
| not consider any agency who employs them legitimate.
| babypuncher wrote:
| It's like any economic discussion I have when visiting my
| parents. I'll advocate for something every other
| developed nation has, like paid paternity leave or a sane
| healthcare system, and they immediately start talking
| about communist East Germany like that's somehow
| relevant.
|
| Yeah, we know cops in Mexico are corrupt. Our police
| force has a very different problem set that we need to
| solve. Pointing out a different problem in a different
| country contributes nothing.
| jakeydus wrote:
| yOu LiVE iN sOCiEtY YeT yOu CritIciZe SoCiETY
| mlinhares wrote:
| Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to make
| it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a
| "friend of the police".
|
| Its wild to read cops in the US are not corrupt, did
| people just not read modern US history? Prohibition?
| Civil rights? Union busting? The Pinkertons?
| AlexandrB wrote:
| "least corrupt" != "not corrupt"
|
| What you're describing is bad but also pretty mild by
| international standards.
| korse wrote:
| Funny story about the Pinkertons if you don't already
| know... if you skateboard or do similar shenanigans
| involving parking structures or industrial wasteland,
| you've probably been chased by their direct descendants.
|
| [1] https://www.securitas.com/en/newsroom/press-
| releases_list/se...
| Volundr wrote:
| Hey! I resemble that remark!
|
| I worked as a security guard through college. Never
| chased a skateboarder, but I did ask them nicely to leave
| at least once a week.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| They're not literally corrupt. There's just a huge amount
| of conflict of interests, bad incentives and bad
| behavior.
|
| People play fast and loose with the word "corrupt" the
| same way they do with "conspiracy".
| mlinhares wrote:
| You could try searching "police corruption in the US"
| before saying they're not literally corrupt.
|
| They will literally grab a cop that was prosecuted and
| found guilty, hide the records and have them hired in
| some other police force in a nearby town. There's a whole
| mafia setup going on, organized by their unions, we're
| not far from having "police controlled neighborhoods"
| like in many LATAM countries.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| Yeah, corruption happens but it's not endemic nor is it
| accessible to the everyman.
|
| Yeah they'll bend the law for their buddies but we cannot
| just shove money in their face to make them be reasonable
| when they bother us like you can in Mexico. Instead we
| have to shove 10x as much into all manner of rent seeking
| systems to maintain an air of legitimacy (this last part
| is a gripe I have with most government stuff here, not
| just law enforcement related).
| heavyset_go wrote:
| I don't know what you'd call literal police gangs that
| kill people for initiation rights, kill their own
| whistleblowers, etc other than corruption.
|
| https://knock-la.com/tradition-of-violence-lasd-gang-
| history...
| FireBeyond wrote:
| > Dude, I paid to have stickers and "sheriff cards" to
| make it less likely cops are going to stop me cos i'm a
| "friend of the police".
|
| In many states the FOP stickers and cards are almost like
| "registration". You get the sticker to put on your card
| and just like vehicle registration, a year to show you're
| current. The FOP will say that's just to "show your
| ongoing support", but it's rather hard not to see it as
| "are you paid up? you don't get to get a sticker ten
| years ago...".
|
| Various FOPs have also sued or done eBay take downs of
| people selling the "year sticker".
| 9283409232 wrote:
| LA Police are a literal gang. There are places with
| police that are corrupt in more obvious ways such as
| places in Africa but to say US cops are some of the least
| corrupt is ridiculous.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| This is a very sheltered take. Go south of the border to
| Mexico (you _don 't_ need to go anywhere as far as
| Africa) and you can experience getting pulled over for no
| reason by a cop looking for a payout. That's not to
| mention that cartels are allowed to run rampant and
| collect "protection" in Mexican cities because the cops
| either don't care, are in the cartel themselves, or are
| being paid off.
|
| As I said to another commenter, "some of the least
| corrupt" != "not corrupt". I'm sure _some_ countries are
| better, but there are not that many.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| You don't need to go south of the border. You can get
| pulled over for no reason in the US and have drugs
| planted on you by a cop simply having a bad day. I'm not
| interpreting least corrupt as no corruption. I think
| least corrupt is still a ridiculous statement.
| wordofx wrote:
| lol you watch too much tv.
| 9283409232 wrote:
| Spend some time in the less fortunate areas of your city.
| You'll learn very quickly how things work when it comes
| to the police.
| Volundr wrote:
| Or just anywhere in Northern Idaho. Especially roads that
| connect to Oregon.
| hollerith wrote:
| We are in a thread that began with, "Go south of the
| border to Mexico and you can experience getting pulled
| over for no reason by a cop _looking for a payout_ ".
|
| Are you saying that the cops in Northern Idaho are out
| for bribes?
| bnjms wrote:
| This is recorded. There is at least one famous one on
| YouTube.
| hollerith wrote:
| In Florida and maybe other states, if anyone requests
| body cam video on a case, the police usually have to
| provide it, so, yeah, of course there is going to be at
| least one video on Youtube of cops behaving badly, but
| that does not say anything about the _rate_ of bad cop
| behavior.
| bobsomers wrote:
| This is Whataboutism. What the police are like in Mexico
| is irrelevant to someone living in the United States.
| potato3732842 wrote:
| It's not that they're corrupt in the literal sense. It's
| that they have discretion of enforcement of laws so
| expansive with so many precedents in their favor that
| they basically have de-facto power to arrest anyone and
| that when they do want to do something stupid they're not
| "corrupt" so you can't just pay them off to be
| reasonable.
| jimt1234 wrote:
| This has been down-voted a lot, but I actually kinda
| agree, at least with the second assertion. I've been
| going down to Baja, Mexico frequently for years, and, as
| an American (white dude), you quickly learn that you're a
| target for local police - you're basically their ATM. And
| there's absolutely nothing you can do about it. You just
| do your best to avoid them, like agents in The Matrix.
| watwut wrote:
| Germany, Finland, France, Sweden, Canada ... when you
| compare them to most corrupt states, you are not proving
| they are best. You are peoving they are not absolute
| bottom.
|
| That being said, America is unique in officially allowing
| cops to kill people just because of how they feel, with
| no objective reason for it.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| >> For all their flaws, US cops are some of the least
| corrupt
|
| > I actually kinda agree,
|
| It is my long and consistent experience (MI spouse) that
| the quality of police officers depends on the quality of
| the police chief.
|
| We had good, experienced officers here a generation ago.
| A funding-addicted sheriff was elected. He fired cops w/
| decades of exp and replaced them with just-graduated
| kids. The remaining cops were subject to some kind of
| dept environment that left them half-unhinged.
|
| Addicted sheriff quit after a few terms and his
| replacement was pretty good for a while. Now he's
| average, so kind of crappy.
| SpicyLemonZest wrote:
| Corruption just doesn't have much to do with the kind of
| misconduct that comes up in the US. It's true, yes, that
| an American officer who's decided to mistreat you won't
| usually accept a bribe to stop.
| lupusreal wrote:
| Credit where credit is due, American cops are
| considerably less corrupt than American politicians. Most
| people in America would never even dream of trying to pay
| off a cop to get out of a speeding ticket, that sort of
| thing just doesn't work and everybody knows it. On the
| other hand, bribing local politicians to get some land
| rezoned for your business, or some other similar crap?
| That's just standard operating procedure in small towns
| everywhere.
| acdha wrote:
| If you define "corrupt" as not asking for bribes on duty,
| perhaps. If you use the common definition of the term to
| include things like being bound by the law the same as
| the average person, however, that's tragically untrue.
| Officers routinely cover up the misconduct of their
| fellows and force rehiring of the few officers who are
| held accountable even for serious crimes.
| michael1999 wrote:
| If you are comparing to northern Mexico, sure. If you are
| comparing to northern Europe, LMAO.
|
| With FOP stickers, "courtesy cards", placard abuse, and
| violent impunity, there's lots of corruption going
| around.
|
| https://apnews.com/article/nypd-courtesy-card-police-
| miscond...
| ubermonkey wrote:
| Sometimes, maybe, and increasingly rarely. I live in Texas.
| Ask me about Uvalde.
| cmurf wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop using HN primarily for political
| battle? This is not a valid use of HN, and you're well on
| the wrong side of the line. I had to go back a good two
| months before seeing anything else in your posts.
|
| (This is not a comment on your politics. The moderation
| call here would be the same if you had the opposite
| politics, or any others.)
|
| Edit: This has been a problem for a long time. I don't
| believe it's your intention to abuse HN, so I don't want
| to ban you, but if you don't fix this, we'll end up doing
| so.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43121542 (Feb 2025)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22436733 (Feb 2020)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19972399 (May 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19715736 (April
| 2019)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16758558 (April
| 2018)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16749749 (April
| 2018)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16457684 (Feb 2018)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16234007 (Jan 2018)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15849007 (Dec 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15773271 (Nov 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15484503 (Oct 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14672661 (June 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14233383 (April
| 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13517054 (Jan 2017)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13515750 (Jan 2017)
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| I have. They showed up late and didn't do anything useful
| marssaxman wrote:
| I have _not_ been unusually lucky in that way, though. I
| can think of half a dozen occasions when the kind of people
| who call the cops would have done so, but I didn 't,
| because I expected they would do no good - if they bothered
| to show up at all - and might well have caused a lot of
| harm.
| cess11 wrote:
| Yeah, it's great that someone shows up three hours late and
| writes a worse report than you would.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _Consider yourself lucky that you 've never had to call
| the cops as a victim._
|
| I have, multiple times. They don't give a shit. In my case,
| the only reason to reach out to them is to get
| documentation for insurance or to start the legal process
| for obtaining restraining orders through courts.
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| I've only had to call the cops a few times, but they
| usually put me on hold. 50/50 if they actually do anything
| or just give me the law enforcement equivalent of this
| meme- https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/i-aint-reading-all-
| that (aka "please don't file a report because it makes our
| metrics look bad)
| danudey wrote:
| People forget that calling the cops as a victim also costs
| lives. There have been more than enough cases of someone
| calling in a wellness check on someone who ends up getting
| murdered by police instead of helped, or victims who call
| the police and end up getting shot or arrested by them.
|
| The police as they are now in North America are not a good
| option, they're just the least worst option. You call them
| and they show up and you hope that they cause more problems
| for the offender than the victim, but that's never
| guaranteed.
| frontfor wrote:
| > Interacting with cops will never make your day better, so
| it's only sensible to avoid them if you can.
|
| This is a very nice way to put it. In investing terms, the
| benefits are limited but the risks are severe. With enough
| interactions you're more likely to have experienced the
| downside.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > As a more tan law-abiding US citizen, the possibility of some
| agent asking me for papers and then asking probing questions to
| "prove myself" anywhere that's not an airport is enough for me
| to want a heads up not to be in area where that might happen.
|
| No matter if you are a law-abiding citizen, the cops have too
| many rights to annoy people. At least in Western nations,
| _anyone_ should have the right to not answer the police or any
| other agent of the state about what one is doing or has done
| without repercussions. Always remember "three felonies a day"!
|
| In practice, we all know that if you do not do what the cop
| wants (or, frankly, if you have the wrong skin color), the cop
| finds a way to make your life difficult - from submitting one
| to the litany of shit they can _legally_ do (like a full
| roadworthiness check of your vehicle or, if near a border, a
| full inspection for contraband) down to stuff that should be
| outright illegal (like civil forfeiture) or is actually illegal
| (like a lot of the current actions of ICE).
| hartator wrote:
| > anywhere that's not an airport
|
| Why are we accepting this even at airport?
|
| Locking the doors of the cockpit made another 9/11 close to
| impossible.
| wvenable wrote:
| Murdering all the passengers made another 9/11 impossible --
| nobody is going to sit quietly while their plane is hijacked
| anymore.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| History is filled with people who dug their own graves
| while a person with a gun pointed at them told them to do
| it.
|
| It takes an exceptional person to act before their fate is
| sealed and the majority of passengers, if not all of them,
| will be in a state of denial or shock at the situation they
| are in preventing them from action. Others who might want
| to act, but not having been in the situation before, will
| think about what to do or when the right moment to act is,
| and the _right_ moment will never come, especially if the
| hijackers can guarantee the first person who acts dies.
| mh- wrote:
| As a frequent flyer who has thought about this scenario a
| bit, I agree with this. And I actually think that as long
| as the FAs kept making their inane announcements about
| credit cards and so forth, most pax wouldn't even notice
| a takeover at the front of the plane.
| wvenable wrote:
| Prior to 9/11, hijackings occurred with mild frequency
| and the official policy was appeasement: get the plane
| safely landed and then negotiate with the hijackers. In
| any ways, 9/11 was possible due to exploiting that
| particular policy.
|
| Since 9/11 there have been attempts to disrupt planes and
| no shortage of people willing to tackle the person
| responsible.
| crote wrote:
| You do what the person with the gun says, because you
| believe they'll shoot if you don't. If you believe that
| they will shoot and kill you _regardless_ , following
| their orders is (at best) going to give you a few more
| agonizing minutes to live. The threat becomes
| meaningless.
|
| Don't try to overpower the hijackers? You die. Try to
| overpower the hijackers and fail? You die. Try to
| overpower the hijackers and succeed? You live. It only
| takes _one_ person to do the math and realize they are
| basically in a no-loss scenario.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Yes, the math is the easy part, doing is the hard part.
| The difference between understanding and doing is _large_
| and denial, shock, rumination, and rationalization all
| fuel inaction and there is often a moment in which it
| becomes too late.
|
| People on death marches, in concentration camps, or other
| similar scenarios have the same math, and yet they get
| gassed or forced to dig their own graves after which they
| are shot and buried in them.
|
| So yes, rationally that all makes sense and we should
| celebrate anyone putting themselves at risk to fight for
| the benefit of a larger group, but reality is different,
| _especially if the hijackers can guarantee at least one
| death_.
|
| To say a hijack could never happen again is wrong. The
| doors are a much more reasonable explanation than the
| courage of men.
|
| History also gets forgotten, such as the history of
| secret police or mass deportation efforts as is quite
| clear in this thread.
| wvenable wrote:
| Airport security has rendered passengers equal. There is
| no imbalance of power that exists in all the examples
| that you provided.
| hayst4ck wrote:
| Assuming something is true doesn't make it true.
| Colluding airport employees as well as rural airports
| seem like clear vulnerabilities. When thinking about
| security problems you don't just assume your security
| measure always succeed and assuming that all passengers
| are "equal" seems like a poor assumption, especially for
| an exceptional case by highly motivated people,
| potentially with state backing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_West_Flight_612
|
| Here is an example where a man got a gun on a plane in
| 2007, which directly disproves the 'equality' if
| passengers.
| goopypoop wrote:
| > As a more tan law-abiding US citizen
|
| At first I misread this and thought you must be a vigilante
| afavour wrote:
| There's barely any point examining the app on its merits.
|
| The mere existence of the app shows resistance to the
| government's attempts at establishing something approaching a
| police state. They are against the app for that reason. They
| don't really care about what it does or does not do. It could
| be an app where you press a button and the phone says "boo ICE"
| and they'd still happily claim it endangers officers lives.
|
| (the fact that they're also able to attack independent media at
| the same time just makes it all the more alluring target)
| cmurf wrote:
| If the existence of the app is evidence of nascent police
| state, what does increasing the budget of ICE by 13x suggest?
| amarcheschi wrote:
| That reinforces the idea of police state
| wslh wrote:
| Genuine question: is sharing the location or distribution of
| information about police presence illegal? I assume this
| would be treated differently if it involved military
| positions, but I'm curious about how the law applies in this
| case.
|
| Waze is another example of an app where users can share
| information about police presence or roadblocks, while useful
| to some, could also be seen as having negative implications
| depending on the context.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Absolutely not illegal.
| throw4565e3 wrote:
| Since Waze still has their speed trap reporting feature,
| I'm guessing it's still legal.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Only if you knew by virtue of something like access to
| secret information (the things you'd have a security
| clearance to access).
|
| If you see the police are gathered around your local
| 7-Eleven, you're absolutely free to post it.
|
| If you know in advance that the police are going to be
| performing a raid on a meth house and you got that
| information by virtue of a security clearance (I assume
| they do have something of this sort like federal employees
| have, though I'm not sure the precise mechanisms) then
| you'd be violating the policies around that access. This
| could be illegal (just like a fed leaking secret or top
| secret information).
|
| If you know in advance because the police have loose lips,
| but you are not personally under any kind of
| confidentiality policy, you're free to post it. So the
| loose lipped cops at the bars I used to frequent could have
| caused real problems for themselves.
| mingus88 wrote:
| Worth pointing out that the question of legality is besides
| the point if you are purposefully antagonizing the police
| state.
|
| It's not about legality. It's about compliance.
|
| If you become a target, they will arrest you and drop
| charges later. They will make you miss work and lose your
| job. They will set up surveillance on you to catch you
| doing anything else they want to continue harassment.
|
| You don't have to look hard to see reporting of officers
| using official databases to settle personal scores. 404
| media just did a big expose on ALPR Flock DB abuses
| danudey wrote:
| Honestly, they'll put you in an ICE detention facility
| indefinitely. They don't have to drop charges if they
| don't even have to charge you in the first place, and
| because they're all hiding behind masks there's no way
| for them to face any kind of repercussions.
|
| Beyond that, Trump has repeatedly floated the idea of
| sending "homegrowns" to overseas concentration camps, so
| it won't be long now before you don't have to do anything
| wrong to be targetted and you don't have any recourse
| regardless.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Waze in NZ removed this feature after threats from police.
|
| If you post to local social media groups about DUI
| checkpoints or mobile speed cameras you'll be scolded by
| about 30% of people.
| phatfish wrote:
| Pretty depressing it is only 30%.
| ghssds wrote:
| Why?
| mariodiana wrote:
| Unless I'm mistaken, I remember some years ago the Apple Store
| blocked a DUI Checkpoint app. Has that changed?
| clocker wrote:
| > asking probing questions to "prove myself" anywhere that's
| not an airport.
|
| Doesn't Real ID solve this problem?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| In the US, we're not ordinarily required to keep any sort of
| ID on our person. There are some exceptions, such as the
| mentioned airports, crossing federal borders (as in to Canada
| or Mexico), some federal facilities, maybe some state/local
| government facilities, and (state dependent I've learned)
| when operating a car. Otherwise, you're pretty much free to
| leave your home in nothing but shorts and maybe a shirt
| (public decency laws and all) and go almost anywhere without
| issue.
|
| Real ID is irrelevant to this. The issue is that now they can
| demand that people prove their citizenship almost anywhere
| and anytime beyond the few places it was permitted before.
| crote wrote:
| No, why would it?
|
| I live in a country with the equivalent of a Real ID and a
| law requiring you to present it when asked. _Officially_ they
| are supposed to have a good reason for it, but in practice
| they 'll happily do it just because they can. And they'll
| continue "just asking questions" if they feel like it. You're
| not under arrest of course, but they are happy to waste a few
| hours of your time when you "refuse to cooperate".
|
| After all, as a law-abiding citizen you don't have anything
| to hide, do you?
| Rebelgecko wrote:
| My understanding is that Real ID isn't considered proof that
| someone is legally in the US, because in some cases a non
| citizen can get one while they're here legally and then
| overstay their welcome.
|
| And that's also ignoring the whole "papers please" of how
| allegedly Americans aren't required to carry ID if they're
| just walking around
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| > not wanting to get hassled at a DUI checkpoint
|
| We don't get this in NZ. Waze has removed this feature after
| threats. I don't like cops either, but it is super fair and
| logical to me.
| adolph wrote:
| The application appears to be a geofenced messaging application
| like Yik Yak. What is to prevent feds from joining and changing
| their appearance based on reports of their current appearance?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Remove their masks and drop their guns? Half is won in that
| case!
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > What is to prevent feds from joining and changing their
| appearance based on reports of their current appearance?
|
| probably the same weird compulsion to cosplay the gestapo in
| the first place. they don't need to move in silence. they want
| to make people afraid.
| ramoz wrote:
| FYI - It's rising to the top rn because it is also being flooded
| with false reporting as an adversary tactic.
| kennywinker wrote:
| A small number of people could easily flood a system like this
| with bad reports. Every good faith user has to wait for an
| actual sighting - bad faith users don't.
| davidw wrote:
| Same could work for ICE reports if you could figure out a way
| to submit them without being traceable... Hrm.
| aerostable_slug wrote:
| Also, good faith users are very often wrong.
|
| In my immediate area, ICE has been "spotted" numerous times
| and that news relayed on social media. Unfortunately, ICE
| hasn't actually engaged in any removal operations in this
| county. All of the sightings have been other agencies. The
| spotters are batting 0.0, and that's without any bad faith
| actors purposely spoofing reports.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| So ICE is ... everywhere?
| atemerev wrote:
| Ah, the good old Sybil attack problem.
|
| Usually resolved by reputation systems and auto-ban algorithms.
| nottorp wrote:
| I think Iran has a similar app for signaling where the religious
| police is checking haircuts and head covers :)
| averysmallbird wrote:
| Gershad -- not sure it's super active but seems like it still
| has a user base.
| https://www.theverge.com/2016/2/12/10977296/gershad-app-iran...
| system2 wrote:
| The silly app requires iOS 18.2. I have an iPhone 11 and can't
| get to iOS 18. They shot themselves in the foot with this
| ridiculous requirement.
| vanchor3 wrote:
| Are you sure you have an iPhone 11? My iPhone 11 runs iOS 18.5
| fine and is reportedly going to support iOS 26.
| kstrauser wrote:
| You're right, according to https://www.apple.com/os/ios/ .
| system2 wrote:
| Well, mine doesn't go above iOS 17. I triple checked it
| now.
| kstrauser wrote:
| It does: https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/iphone-
| models-compati...
|
| You might need to download an image and install it via a
| computer if you don't have enough free space or
| something.
| datax2 wrote:
| >"...we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better
| watch out, because that's not a protected speech. That is
| threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout
| this country."'
|
| wild statement from the person who went to law school, but threw
| out everything they learned.
|
| I see little to no difference between this, Waze, helmet* taps,
| or flashing your high beams to other cars when passing the cops.
| That topic in general has been in court multiple times, and every
| time the ruling was in favor of it being considered freedom of
| speech.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| head taps?
| datax2 wrote:
| on a motorcycle when you pass a cop you tap your helmet to
| warn other riders.
| ggreer wrote:
| People on motorcycles signal "police ahead" to riders in the
| opposite direction by reaching up with their left hand and
| tapping their head/helmet.
| water-data-dude wrote:
| I'm nervous about how willing SCOTUS has been to throw out
| precedent and side with this administration.
| wat10000 wrote:
| They know, they just don't care. They have a friendly Supreme
| Court, and even if they lose in court they suffer zero
| consequences for trying.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| The difference is scale. Waze and the like apps will let
| everyone know, not just a handful drivers.
| josefresco wrote:
| Why isn't this a privacy first PWA? Is a native iOS app more
| secure? Even if I delete it from my device it's still in my
| "Cloud" and there's a record (at Apple) of me
| downloading/installing it.
| Aurornis wrote:
| The article is sparse on details, but I assume an app like this
| relies on background location services to determine when nearby
| alerts are relevant.
| tempodox wrote:
| Aren't there also browser APIs for location services? I
| imagine this functionality could be possible with a web app.
|
| Edit: What I don't know is whether a web app running on iOS
| could do the equivalent of a push notification. Last I heard,
| WebKit's functionality is/was? limited here. That might be a
| reason to use a native app after all.
| int_19h wrote:
| The tricky part here is receiving notifications in your
| proximity while the app is in the background. Native apps
| can request permission to track your location at all times,
| but I don't think that's an option for PWAs.
| tempodox wrote:
| Ah, got it.
| bigyabai wrote:
| That's okay, you trust Apple right?
|
| If you didn't, you'd just buy another phone. That's what HN
| tells me.
| StackRiff wrote:
| Apple provides a lot of things for free that you'd otherwise
| have to pay for (maintain, pay for, and/or scale) yourself. A
| big one that comes to mind is maps API and geocoding. This is
| all _free_ on iOS, if you use the API from a native app.
|
| I maintain an app on both iOS, Android, and the web, and the
| google maps API costs (used on Android and Web) add up really
| fast.
| BlueTemplar wrote:
| Why do you even need an API in the first place though ?
|
| Can't you run it mostly offline with OSM ?
| tempodox wrote:
| Yay, Streisand effect! More power to the publisher and every user
| of this app.
| abeppu wrote:
| There are so many layers of crazy here but the one that strikes
| me most is attacking CNN for having a piece about the App. I.e.
| it's not just that reporting police activity is treated as a
| problem (it's not) but even an article discussing the way that
| some people are reporting police activity is a problem.
|
| > "CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put
| their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal
| aliens to evade US law,"
|
| If the engadget article gets enough eyeballs will they be also be
| willfully endangering lives? What about a really popular forum
| thread discussing that article?
| EGreg wrote:
| This reminds me of how we have articles and handwringing about
| "our soldiers were attacked" in a country they had no
| authorization to even be. It is never discussed what they were
| actually doing there, but this is usually framed as in "we need
| more money to defend our men and women overseas".
|
| Example: https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2017/10/23/politics/niger-
| troops-law...
|
| _Several other leading senators also said they were in the
| dark about the operation in the western Africa nation.
|
| "I didn't know there was 1,000 troops in Niger," Sen. Lindsey
| Graham, R-South Carolina, told NBC's Chuck Todd on "Meet the
| Press" Sunday. "They are going to brief us next week as to why
| they were there and what they were doing."
|
| He continued: "I got a little insight on why they were there
| and what they were doing. I can say this to the families: They
| were there to defend America. They were there to help allies.
| They were there to prevent another platform to attack America
| and our allies."_
|
| https://www.npr.org/2020/01/06/793895401/iraqi-parliament-vo...
|
| Even when a country's leaders unanimously tell us to withdraw
| our troops, we say nah:
|
| https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/us-withdrawing-iraq-agreemen...
| crote wrote:
| > officers who put their lives on the line every day
|
| This sounds a lot less impressive when you realize that cops
| have the same fatal injury rate as landscaping supervisors or
| crane operators, less than half the rate of garbage collectors,
| and _one-sixth_ the rate of logging workers.
|
| There's definitely a decent bit of risk involved in being a
| cop, but we're not exactly seeing Thin Green Line flags for
| landscapers either, are we?
| 93po wrote:
| Cops should be _proud_ to put their lives at risk. It should
| be part of the job expectations. You should care so much
| about the community you 're supposed to serve that you'd be
| willing to make that sacrifice, even for a total stranger.
| The fact that none of this pride or expectation exists
| highlights that cops are cowards who get into policing for
| bad or selfish reasons and perpetuate systemic problems that
| harm millions.
| salawat wrote:
| There was a commenter that got buried, where the person making it
| wasn't aware of the precedent for government mandated "apps". So
| i80and...
|
| Look no further than CALEA mandated forensics packages on most
| network backbone gear!
|
| https://www.subsentio.com/solutions/platforms-technologies/
|
| https://www.fcc.gov/calea
|
| You see, we've had government mandated "apps", but they are
| intentionally "hidden" (only by omission of course) from the
| layperson! So you, John Q. Public, are not exposed to them, but
| every regulated service provider is turned into a facilitator for
| law enforcement monitoring activity.
|
| Bumping it down to handsets simply hasn't been done because it's
| just easier to plug in upstream through Third Party Doctrine and
| it'd be self-defeating in a sense to straight up make and admit
| that handsets purpose is to surveil you for law enforcement
| purposes. Businesses can have compliance compelled through the
| threat of disincorporation, so can be relied upon to cooperate as
| a pre-requisite of doing business.
|
| Now, this software is generally considered "the good guys doing
| good guy things" so isn't generally considered problematic. As I
| hope is being learned by everyone; there is no line between a
| system that exists for well intentioned people to do good things
| with and a system capable of being used by evil people to do evil
| things, at scale with.
| callahad wrote:
| Interesting that Apple even allows ICEBlock on the App Store
| given that 13 years ago they blocked the publication of an app
| that notified users of American drone strikes abroad as
| "objectionable" content: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-
| security/apple-drone-stri...
| jeroenhd wrote:
| I think Apple hates the current American leadership enough that
| they'll take their sweet time to take down this app.
|
| ICE isn't the military, though. Effectively sabotaging American
| war goals is a bit different from warning American civilians. I
| can see why they were more uncomfortable with the drone strike
| app.
| genter wrote:
| Tim Cook was at Trump's inauguration, and donated $1 million
| to it. While I don't know what his private views are, his
| public ones are to cozy up Trump.
| darkoob12 wrote:
| That was public ass kissing but it didn't work. Tarrifs
| hurt apple. Trump is fixated on making iPhone in USA which
| is not good for apple's business.
| cosmicgadget wrote:
| I mean no one had his tongue farther up the golden hole
| than Elon and look where that landed him. The donation
| and inauguration appearance was probably to avoid some -
| not all - consequences.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Hell, you have Jared Isaacman, who also donated $1
| million to Trump's inauguration to show some support,
| hoping to become NASA admin (for which he'd have been an
| uncharacteristically decent choice, being someone with a
| genuine interest in aerospace, and not having been all
| that outspoken politically).
|
| Only for Trump to throw out the nomination as part of his
| falling out with Elon, saying Isaacman was a democrat.
| SpaceNoodled wrote:
| You misspelled "Tim Apple."
| egorfine wrote:
| We had the same thing happening in Ukraine. Conscription agents
| are sweeping the streets and forcefully kidnapping people.
|
| So, yeah, it did not took long before public chats with real-time
| reporting popped up and became country-wide phenomenon.
|
| Welcome to the club, America!
| atemerev wrote:
| O hi.
|
| Well, they are one logical leap away from realizing that
| instead of sending undesirables to CECOT they can send them to
| their guerre du jour instead.
|
| I guess Erik Prince could use a penal battalion or two.
| oxqbldpxo wrote:
| Can Sauron use his Palatir to get info from this app?
| janalsncm wrote:
| Is the stat they keep repeating relevant? Attacks on ICE agents
| increased 500%? If attacks went from 1 to 6 that is an increase
| of 500% but if there is also 6x more ICE activity the baseline
| rate of attack is the same.
|
| It's like complaining there's more shark attacks in the summer vs
| winter and concluding sharks have seasonal mood swings.
| kevingadd wrote:
| The baseline number of attacks was in the single digits, yes.
| jvergeldedios wrote:
| I also have a feeling their definition of "attack" would
| differ from mine.
| syedkarim wrote:
| Why is this an app and not a website?
| cess11 wrote:
| For one users don't have to say they consent to data extraction
| as often, and some people don't use web sites very much.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Cheaper and easier to build. Apple's SDK offers a lot of
| options and doesn't require a lot of credit card details,
| unlike some of Google's APIs.
|
| Plus, web apps are gimped on iOS (no notification support
| without going through a cumbersome PWA installation flow and
| data getting wiped every 14 days if you're just letting it run
| in the background).
| sawjet wrote:
| Sweet, going to use this when I go to the grocery store later.
| apparent wrote:
| Probably people will use it when going to baseball games and
| theme parks as well, to scare others into staying home.
| apparent wrote:
| Interesting that this is an iOS app, not Android or web app. What
| percent of illegal immigrants who are worried about being
| randomly swept up (i.e., those who can be visibly profiled) have
| iOS devices?
|
| I was under the impression that iOS devices were prevalent among
| wealthy and aspiring wealthy Americans, but that middle class and
| lower class Americans were much more likely to have Android
| devices.
| mijoharas wrote:
| Part of the article said this:
|
| > The app is only available on iOS, because it would have to
| collect information on Android that could put people at risk.
|
| Can anyone describe what this means? I don't know of a
| requirement to collect data on android? Is there something I'm
| not thinking of?
|
| [EDIT] carried on reading the comments and it appears to be
| answered here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445392
| xoa wrote:
| > _I was under the impression that iOS devices were prevalent
| among wealthy and aspiring wealthy Americans, but that middle
| class and lower class Americans were much more likely to have
| Android devices._
|
| I think your impression is pretty dated, like to 2010 or
| something?Apple has generally kept iPhones fully updated for a
| good 5-7 years, with some security updates after and apps
| typically supporting n-1 or n-2 OS. Current iOS 18 supports
| devices back to the iPhone XR/XS released in 2018. And the pace
| of progress has leveled off a huge amount since the heady early
| days in the steep part of the S-curve. But prices still fall
| fast on used phones. Even if you go back fewer years, iPhone
| 11s and 12s can be had for a few hundred bucks or less and
| still work well (I had a 12 until recently). Battery
| replacement can be done for ~$30.
|
| So while sure, if someone was always on the newest phone that'd
| have some premium, it's definitely not any big deal or sign of
| riches to have an iPhone. They're all over the US market space.
| wnevets wrote:
| ICE is a waste of tax payers money, I rather have satellite data
| for hurricanes.
| DaveChurchill wrote:
| I am worried the app is just a honeypot made by bad actors to get
| a create a database of the "rebels" they will soon be hunting
| down.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Slightly OT, but TIL that I've never heard of the 2nd most
| popular social networking app on the App Store ("threads").
| UmGuys wrote:
| > "because it would have to collect information on Android that
| could put people at risk."
|
| What's this about? Surely it's technically possible to implement.
| Can someone add more detail?
| yahoozoo wrote:
| Surely this won't be used by trolls.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Because law enforcement officers have so much more power than an
| average citizen, they must be held to much higher standards and
| have even more accountability. Law enforcement radio should be
| unencrypted, there should be public databases of officers for
| facial recognition, and their vehicles and persons should be
| publicly trackable. The same techniques they use to surveil the
| citizenry should be applied to them.
|
| https://icespy.org is a site where you can do facial recognition
| on ICE employees.
| crote wrote:
| > Law enforcement radio should be unencrypted
|
| I disagree. Every single criminal is going to have a scanner
| the next day, and it'll become impossible to apprehend genuine
| criminals.
|
| On the other hand, I _would_ support mandatory recording and
| archiving of law enforcement radio, just like we are already
| doing with air traffic control. Combine this with independent
| incident investigations with public disclosure, and you 've
| essentially achieved the accountability you are asking for.
| jjwiseman wrote:
| Did you know there are currently _many_ large police agencies
| that use unencrypted radios and they don 't usually have any
| issues with it?
| mikestew wrote:
| In reference to the app developer: _we are looking at it, we are
| looking at him, and he better watch out..._
|
| So they're not even trying to disguise the fact anymore that
| they're a bunch of goons? And this, coming from a person that
| went to law school.
|
| Meanwhile, I'm going to download the app right now. Thanks,
| Streisand effect!
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