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ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
51–60 of 61 posts
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reminds me of this ICE contract for billion dollar detention facilities … to some random unknown company registered to a single family home with no working phone number or website https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/acquisition-log... This administration has had mass corruption and grift, taking from taxpayers and handing it to friends and family of Trump
It's nothing new, the Pentagon has failed 8 audits in a row. In just one year (2022), $220 Billion dollars of their spending were totally unaccounted for.
that audit has nothing to do with the president of the united states enriching themselves and frieds. If you want to go look at that audit, the summary usually is: the DoD can't place a bunch of black money going to CIA programs to do whatever shit they get up to.
It's not an equivalence of any merit.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this. There isn't one. And the sooner we all come to terms with that, the better off we and posterity will be. The constitutional government of the United States failed long before January 20th, 2025. Chasing sunk costs on this scale as futile, even if the alternatives are terrifying. In my opinion, the best, just, course forward is a Constitutional Convention tha…
Boggles my mind you'd even imagine a positive scenario here. Let the states choose? This is not only how we kept slavery going by letting states drive, but it also caused a civic war when we had no federal coordination. Nay, we must reform and reclaim a just federal government. Letting states drive themselves will turn the country into extreme violence.
> Letting states drive themselves will turn the country into extreme violence.
Who days that doesn't happen now? Seems like wishful thinking.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#54Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is a vast, hugely funded, and incredibly adept propaganda machine aimed at about half the country. There are propaganda machines directed at everyone. > And no, I don’t think “my side” would be immune to a similar machine speaking the language we like to hear, but I just think that hasn’t happened (yet) It seems incredibly naive to believe that propaganda in this age isn't utilised by all "sides". My base ass…
I didn't say "my side" doesn't utilize propaganda, I said there isn't a vast, hugely funded, and incredibly adept propaganda machine aimed at my side.
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Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#55I’ll save you a click: yes, of course it was a no bid contract. And: > The procurement did not require the system to clear FedRAMP, the government’s security review for cloud systems handling sensitive data, before deployment. It described no independent audit, congressional notification or outside review of how the system would be used. I don’t know how the US charts a path back from all this. There are going to be…
There is no path back. Even if the next administration overturns ICE and its activities and dissolves all contracts related to them, there is no reason to think the US govt will not keep using any and all technologies or services obtained in the name of security, regardless of party, even if they have to do so with deep secrecy.
Also nothing prevents Trump v2.0 in 4 years after that since all the conditions will still exist in 4 years.
For anyone outside the US (including me), it's dismaying.
It's not like any of us thought the US was perfect (at least those of who like history, no country is and the US has more issues than many) but they just straight took the wheel and swerved it into a wall.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#56Earlier quoted context omitted.
> They just cannot search you If instead of looking up your name in a name list, I look up your face in a face list, ain’t that searching? I feel like what you’re ultimately asking hinges on when, legally, a photo turns into biometrics.
No, looking up your face in a list of faces is searching FOR you, not searching you. Searching you means taking an inventory of the items on your person. It does not mean looking at you. In some cases, imaging you can be a "search" even where there is no physical contact (for example: a millimeter-wave scanner), but a photograph in a public place has never qualified as a "search" in the USA. I understand your feeling…
> Applying the same standard to faces, you cannot make an individual put their eye to a scanner without reasonable suspicion, but if you can get a biometric scan from the invidual as they happen to walk about their day, doing that isn't searching them...
There's a different standard that could apply with just a small amount of tweaking.
Many people's homes happen to leak IR out of their poorly-insulated windows, walls, and roofs. Anyone (police included) can get an IR camera and determine facts about what's going on in such a house. However, police must obtain a search warrant before doing so... despite the fact that the design of such a house means that it broadcasts all that information indiscriminately while one goes about one's day and the twin facts that IR cameras aren't dreadfully expensive and are available to anyone with the funds to get one.
The Supreme Court case that determined this hinges in part on things that would "previously have been unknowable without physical intrusion". This logic could be tweaked to cover things that would "previously have been unknowable without physical detention". The core problem with searches has never been the inconvenience involved in the search... it has always been the fact that you're being searched. New tech that removes the physical imposition of a type of search does not solve this problem. A long while back [0] NYPD was deploying mobile microwave scanners that they used to perform indiscriminate under-clothes searches of people who were committing the "crime" of being in public going about their day. IIRC, they wrapped this in «We're just looking for weapons, and it's only a pilot program, anyway!» language, but that doesn't change the fact that they were performing "stop and frisk" searches at scale.
[0] And maybe they're still doing this... I've not paid much attention to NYC's law enforcement insanity in quite a while.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#57Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, looking up your face in a list of faces is searching FOR you, not searching you. Searching you means taking an inventory of the items on your person. It does not mean looking at you. In some cases, imaging you can be a "search" even where there is no physical contact (for example: a millimeter-wave scanner), but a photograph in a public place has never qualified as a "search" in the USA. I understand your feeling…
> Applying the same standard to faces, you cannot make an individual put their eye to a scanner without reasonable suspicion, but if you can get a biometric scan from the invidual as they happen to walk about their day, doing that isn't searching them... There's a different standard that could apply with just a small amount of tweaking. Many people's homes happen to leak IR out of their poorly-insulated windows, wall…
The interior of the house is a private space. Things under your clothes are too. Revealing either of these things through whatever technology is a search.
The standard is whether something expected to be private is revealed. What your eyes look like (even in detail) is not that. There isn't a point on some line where the photograph becoming higher-quality applies a different standard than a low-resolution photo would.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#58I thought Altman's worldcoin was angling for this when they had people take photos of their eyeballs.... getting into the gov't contracting side of things.... surprises me some no-name company got it.
Altman's shitcoin has too much eye scanning and too few kickbacks.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#59I really don’t understand how so many people can support this admin. It’s not that I ideologically disagree with them, but they are so corrupt that they appear incompetent. They actually aren’t incompetent, they just don’t care about what is important to almost everyone else. If you, for example, don’t care about public safety or accountability it turns out you can make a lot of money.
A lot of us are coming to terms with "tier-1" venture firms like a16z tolerating corruption and ethics violations to support financial deregulation (crypto, prediction markets) and AI deregulation Polymarket is even running ragebait ads[1] about Trump's corruption, while his son (profiting from the corruption) sits on the board The word you are looking for is "greed", and it is ripping apart the moral fabric of this…
All regulation does is centralize the power to a few big players, which are corrupted themselves, and then they get little slaps on the wrist whenever they're caught by being fined 0.01% of their annual profits and then bailed out when they royally fuck up.
Re: ICE Awards $25M Iris-Scanning Contract to Bi2 Technologies
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
similar to the Google-Facebook surveillance Capitalism that funded so many D-pols? .. before this devolves into simple polarity jab posts.. taxation-based Big Gov seems very eager to embrace and extend constant tracking of location via devices.. social attribution profiles are maybe less so, maybe? hard to see the positives in the new social dynamics, from either base in the US, from this chair
History has proven how capitalism is eager to work with such kind of governments. Shareholders tend to not have morals as long as money keeps pumping into their bank accounts. They are responsible for much of the sad state of affairs across the planet, now they even offer gold statuses back home, for little favours.
This is the very definition of crony capitalism.
Capitalism without any government intervention/ force hasn't been a thing in a very long time.