In the ongoing struggle between 2,700 immigration agents sent to Minneapolis this winter, and the large majority of Minnesotans who oppose them, it was supposed to be ICE that had technology on its side.
ICE agents have been using battlefield tech to make arrests. They’ve boasted about using facial recognition (made by Clearview AI as well as the controversial Mobile Fortify app) on neighborhood observers as well as undocumented immigrants. The agency is using 24/7 social media surveillance tools and Israeli spyware that can hack into phones. Palantir, having been awarded $30 million for “ImmigrationOS,” an AI system designed to track individuals for deportation, built a database of real-time locations for ICE’s Minneapolis operation.
“The conglomeration of all these technologies together is giving the government unprecedented abilities,” a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, which is suing the Department of Homeland Security on civil rights grounds, told the New York Times.
But if all that technological terror was supposed to intimidate the people, someone forgot to tell the people — who are feeling more empowered than ever. In part, that’s because every neighborhood in the Twin Cities has developed its own conglomeration of technologies — on regular smartphones.
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