Law enforcement authorities in the United States have for years circumvented the US Constitution’s Fourth Amendment by purchasing data on US residents that would otherwise need to be obtained by a warrant. Today, Immigration and Customs Enforcement apparently thinks it can ignore long-standing constitutional protection by warrantlessly breaking down doors to arrest people, according to a recent whistleblower complaint—despite recent federal rulings that doing so violates the Fourth Amendment.
Such is the news coming out of Minneapolis this week, where protesters and the federal government continued their standoff—even as ICE plans to build out a deportation network spanning Minnesota and four other states. And despite the Department of Homeland Security’s claims that merely naming an ICE agent publicly is akin to “doxing,” a WIRED review of LinkedIn found that agents are frequently doxing themselves. Of course, having access to someone’s personal information can have consequences: A report this week found that people are less likely to seek medical care due to ad-tech surveillance and ICE enforcement activities.
Immigration authorities aren’t just raiding people’s homes without a judge-signed warrant—they’re also looking for drugs. Customs and Border Protection this week put out feelers for a “quantum sensor” that’s capable of detecting fentanyl that ties into an “AI database.”
In non-immigration news, a researcher recently discovered an unsecured database containing 149 million login credentials. The usernames and passwords appear linked to accounts for everything from Gmail, Facebook, and Apple to government systems around the world. The researcher who found the database, Jeremiah Fowler, believes the stolen logins were collected by infostealing malware. The database, which was accessible to anyone on the internet, has since been taken offline.
TikTok, meanwhile, has begun collecting even more data on its users—including precise location data—after the social video app was sold to US investors.