ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use • Hacker News Board

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#361

Post by donkeybeer » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 2:23 AM UTC

belorn wrote: post #356

donkeybeer wrote: post #307

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was tempted to add this very line when I wrote my message but I hoped it would be obvious I don't mean things like illegally stealing private data. I was talking about things like "falsifying" data to the contractor, which doesn't seem like a crime to me just a contract violation.

If the employee are destroying property owned by the employer, for which is not part of the employee role or assignment, then they could be charged with hacking and property destruction just as if it was done by someone outside the company. The way around this that some people can attempt is work-to-rule strike. That would be a legal way to sabotage a contract without actually going beyond that of the employee contra…

Again I was thinking of things like submitting non-functional application or data, not obvious property crimes like destruction of property.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#362

Post by potsandpans » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 2:39 AM UTC

cmxch wrote: post #276

viraptor wrote: post #55

Since there's quite a few people here working at US companies with access to lots of user data, but they may not have decision making capacity, I just thought I'll link the Simple Sabotage Field Manual, out of context and for no reason at all https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/... If some data is shared with an external entity, it likely needs to be included in a few usual disclaimers, with a…

Are you sure that not even the most mediocre insider threat program doesn’t have this accounted for? Especially when they’re an industry that knows itself well? They will find out. And act accordingly. And your career will end, with the mess cleaned up and billable to you.

You've obviously never worked in big corpo.

People unwittingly deploy this whole handbook back to front throughout the entire process of the sdlc.

It's impressive that anything ever gets done ever.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#363

Post by direwolf20 » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 3:21 AM UTC

casey2 wrote: post #359

direwolf20 wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wakeup call: there's a lot of money in the mass surveillance industry

Not really. Surveillance might create an arbitrage opportunity, but insurers hate data they can't trust. The more data the more noise.

Powerful people are paying a lot of money to locate their dispersed enemies. Think of the system in Palestine that tracks wanted terrorists back to their homes at night, so their whole families can be exploded.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#364

Post by golem14 » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 3:41 AM UTC

cess11 wrote: post #128

golem14 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For instance, the local cops checking in on grandma, or those checking in on a troubled child are really not the bad guys. You WANT them when you need them. Not all LEOs are brown shirts, In my experience, few are, but they give the lot a bad rap. Treating LEOs uniformly as evil is just counterproductive

Why would I want cops doing that instead of social workers or teachers doing it? No one becomes a cop because they want to be nice and help vulnerable people. Some might say they did but that is some coping technique. Being a cop involves exerting violence towards people who are vulnerable and desperate, and to become one you have to be fine with this. Some would say that this alone is enough to deem a person ethical…

Maybe you and I have vastly different experience with police. Disclaimer: From a rather small US state.

Your other note is also well taken, it does however not imply that anything a kid or teen does is OK or automatically positive.

Finally, it's OK to be suspicious. I am too. What I am saying is that one cannot just make the decision "all cops are evil or must be treated as such" and then hope for a good outcome in all cases. I argue it's a better policy to keep an open mind and decide on a case by case basis.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#365

Post by somenameforme » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 5:25 AM UTC

saubeidl wrote: post #347

somenameforme wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it obviously is not. You do not have a right to stay in a country illegally, anywhere in this world. If you want to migrate to a country, you need that country's permission. Without it you are an illegal alien and will, at the minimum, be removed from that country as soon as you are caught. In many places in this world you then may end up in detention - potentially indefinitely, imprisoned, fined, and so on. The U…

You did not have a right to stay in Germany as a Jew either. My point exactly.

This is both technically and logically incorrect. From a technical point of view - it's just wrong. Jews were persecuted and encouraged to leave, yet never formally expelled from Germany. And as the Nazis moved towards genocide, they moved in the other direction and made it impossible for Jews to leave the country.

But from a logical point of view, it also fails, even in a parallel reality where you were right. Countries are generally deemed to have the right to kill their citizens for major violations of the law, in the pursuit of justice. But that does not mean a country has the right to just start killing their citizens on a whim. And similarly, every single country has the right to expel people who enter their country illegally or remain beyond the terms of a granted temporary stay. This does not mean a country has the right the randomly start expelling their own citizens, en masse, for no normal reason.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#366

Post by somenameforme » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 5:53 AM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #329

somenameforme wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No it obviously is not. You do not have a right to stay in a country illegally, anywhere in this world. If you want to migrate to a country, you need that country's permission. Without it you are an illegal alien and will, at the minimum, be removed from that country as soon as you are caught. In many places in this world you then may end up in detention - potentially indefinitely, imprisoned, fined, and so on. The U…

Not to make it out to be some paradise, but illegal immigration isn't a crime in Argentina or Brazil. Argentina doesn't enforce it, and in fact I have read court cases of people criminals arriving illegally with fake passport and granted citizenship. If you are illegal, you can literally show up fresh off of jet and on day one in .ar, file a court case for citizenship, have a lawyer run down the clock for a few years…

It is still a crime even in Brazil and Argentina. Whether or not it's enforced and/or the degree of exceptions allowed, are another issue. For instance obviously illegal immigration was treated radically different during the previous administration, but the laws remain overwhelmingly the same. For instance the most controversial issue in contemporary times is deportation without trial. That's called expedited removal [1], and was passed under Bill Clinton's administration, 30 years ago.

One thing that I really don't like about the way the Democrat party is handling illegal immigration is that they know it's overwhelmingly unpopular, so they say one thing and do another. For instance part of the DNC 2024 platform was "Securing the Border" [2] which they tried to argue Biden had done, and that the only reason he hadn't doing more was because of Congress. Obviously that's overt gaslighting. If they want to run on a platform of defacto open borders, more power to them - laws can be changed, but they need to actually run on that platform instead of lying and gaslighting.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expedited_removal

[2] - https://democrats.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/FINAL-MASTE...

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#367

Post by emodendroket » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 5:55 AM UTC

tosapple wrote: post #19

emodendroket wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think there is really anything "woke" about wanting to sell products to people who speak Spanish but what do I know. What does this even have to do with the article?

First it's your nationality, then your language. Next maybe you're church or your music. Data is a liability, it's omnipresent. Permeating.

Foreign language ads could be done just based on the content with no behavioral targeting.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#368

Post by seanmcdirmid » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 5:59 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #366

mothballed wrote: post #329

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to make it out to be some paradise, but illegal immigration isn't a crime in Argentina or Brazil. Argentina doesn't enforce it, and in fact I have read court cases of people criminals arriving illegally with fake passport and granted citizenship. If you are illegal, you can literally show up fresh off of jet and on day one in .ar, file a court case for citizenship, have a lawyer run down the clock for a few years…

It is still a crime even in Brazil and Argentina. Whether or not it's enforced and/or the degree of exceptions allowed, are another issue. For instance obviously illegal immigration was treated radically different during the previous administration, but the laws remain overwhelmingly the same. For instance the most controversial issue in contemporary times is deportation without trial. That's called expedited removal…

Obama and to a lesser extent Biden weren't soft on illegal immigration, but they did two things that differ from the current administration:

* They followed the law. Crackdowns like the one Trump is taking are only possible if you treat law as a fluid concept and ignore judges consistently. A democrat is never going to get around that, and yes, laws can be changed, but notice how Trump isn't even bothering to do that also (he just ignores them), the best he got from a Republican congress was extra funding for ICE (and remember, Bush was worse than Obama on illegal immigration).

* They just treated them with some dignity (which Trump sees as soft, dignity isn't really in his vocab).

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#369

Post by somenameforme » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 6:11 AM UTC

mothballed wrote: post #330

somenameforme wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Madagascar plan was Germany scheming to to remove all Jews from Europe and their occupied territories. It has nothing, whatsoever, to do with a country removing illegal immigrants from its territory as happens every day, world round. The only thing that makes it notable was previous administrations intentionally enabling and encouraging illegal activity which turned a small problem into a big one.

This doesn't justify it by any means, but the parallel between the Madagascar Plan and the issue with illegals in the US is actually quite similar in reasoning for how the perpetrators end up opening concentration camps. There are several countries that refuse involuntary repatriation of their citizens. With the Jews in germany, same issue, hardly anywhere was willing to take them. And that's when you ended up with t…

The German plan for deportation was never executed. There were programs against the Jews, they were persecuted and encouraged to leave, but the Nazis never formally banned them. They ended up going the other direction as genocide approached and made it impossible for Jews to leave.

But the situations are again nothing alike because in that case you're speaking of Germany trying to dump Germans on other countries. In this case you're speaking of the US returning e.g. Salvadorans to El Salvador, which the latter country generally having obligations under international law to accept their citizens. The handful of exceptions, like with Venezuela, have all generally been resolved.

Re: ICE seeks industry input on ad tech location data for investigative use

#370

Post by AlecSchueler » Fri, Feb 06, 2026, 6:41 AM UTC

xp84 wrote: post #325

AlecSchueler wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The protest you linked wasn't calling for completely open borders. That's also not policy of either of the main parties in the US, as was implied above. I understand "no one is illegal" to be a counter to the use of language like "illegals" to describe the humans involved.

I get that you can make the argument that they're merely making a semantic point. However, if that side of the debate actually agreed with us that these people shouldn't even be here at all, what difference does it make what we call them? If the side who wants them gone had their way, they'd be gone back home and they'd no longer be in any illegal status in any sense of the word. It only matters what we call them, if…

> It only matters what we call them, if you want to keep them here forever.

You think it makes no difference if we call them "the scum of the earth" or "below human entities" otherwise? Surely there's a line of what rhetoric you would tolerate. This is ours.