Anna Bacciarelli

ICE and CBP’s Face-Recognition App Can’t Actually Verify Who People Are ICE has used Mobile Fortify to identify immigrants and citizens alike over 100,000 times, by one estimate. It wasn't built to work like that—and only got approved after DHS abandoned its own privacy r...

NEW: Records reviewed by WIRED show DHS’s facial recognition app (Mobile Fortify) isn’t designed to actually "verify" identity—despite DHS claims and its agents relying on its matches to support probable cause in the field.

“Unconscionable,” Jon thought as he found an email address online for the lead prosecutor, Joseph Dernbach, who was named in the story. Peering through metal-rimmed glasses, Jon opened Gmail on his computer monitor. “Mr. Dernbach, don’t play Russian roulette with H’s life,” he wrote. “Err on the side of caution. There’s a reason the US government along with many other governments don’t recognise the Taliban. Apply principles of common sense and decency.” That was it. In five minutes, Jon said, he finished the note, signed his first and last name, pressed send and hoped his plea would make a difference. Five hours and one minute later, Jon was watching TV with his wife when an email popped up in his inbox. He noticed it on his phone. “Google,” the message read, “has received legal process from a Law Enforcement authority compelling the release of information related to your Google Account.”

A retiree wrote this email to a DHS attorney. Within five hours, DHS demanded Google turn over records for his account.

A Kafkaesque form of domestic surveillance, intimidating Americans for lawful speech.

New from us at the Post: www.washingtonpost.com/investigatio... @johnwoodrowcox.bsky.social

YouTube video by ACLU Eyes on ICE: Document and Record

Watch the full training.

Over 200K people joined our training last night on how to document ICE's attacks on our communities.

The Trump administration's cruelty will not break us — we the people are more prepared than ever for this moment.

Hundreds of ICE Out protestors at the Amazon building in Santa Monica. Tech workers, high school students, soccer moms and dads. Constant honking in support, even from local cops. Amazon employees entering the building overheard discussing how they did not know the company works with ICE.

How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are

Amid reports that ICE has used facial recognition technology in Minneapolis, a reminder that there is no safe use for this tech on streets or at borders.

Governments should stop using it in public spaces and in immigration and asylum contexts.

Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti “In my opinion ICE are the bad guys. I am not proud that the company I enjoy so much working for is part of this,” one worker wrote on Slack.

SCOOP: Palantir Defends Work With ICE to Staff Following Killing of Alex Pretti

WIRED obtained Slack conversations + an updated internal Palantir wiki defending the company's work for ICE to outraged workers.

More here:
www.wired.com/story/palant...

ICE Is Using Palantir’s AI Tools to Sort Through Tips ICE has been using an AI-powered Palantir system to summarize tips sent to its tipline since last spring, according to a newly released Homeland Security document.

NEW with @makenakelly.bsky.social, ICE is using generative AI from Palantir to sort through immigration enforcement tips and summarize them. Details here:
www.wired.com/story/ice-is...

Al Jazeera denounces YouTube's submission to the ban of its broadcast in Israel and calls for adherence to international conventions.

UK police to use AI facial recognition tech linked to Israel’s war on Gaza

UK police to use AI facial recognition tech linked to Israel’s war on Gaza https://aje.news/ux6dhy

Government by AI? Trump Administration Plans to Write Regulations Using Artificial Intelligence The Transportation Department, which oversees the safety of airplanes, cars and pipelines, plans to use Google Gemini to draft new regulations. “We don’t need the perfect rule,” said DOT’s top lawyer....

New US aviation regulation could be generated by Gemini.

“We don’t need the perfect rule on XYZ. We don’t even need a very good rule on XYZ... We want good enough. We’re flooding the zone.” -- DOT General Counsel

Make it stop.

www.propublica.org/article/trum...

"in most cases, these videos appear to have been filmed secretly - using Meta smart glasses."

Argh for the love of god BAN. THE. PERVERT GLASSES.

ICE Deems Being In Privacy Of Own Home Obstruction Of Justice

ICE Deems Being In Privacy Of Own Home Obstruction Of Justice https://theonion.com/ice-deems-being-in-privacy-of-own-home-obstruction-of-justice/

In testimony from a CBP official obtained by 404 Media, the official described how Mobile Fortify returned two different names after scanning a woman's face during an ICE raid. Both were wrong. @evystadium.bsky.social has more.

Scoop by @josephcox.bsky.social: www.404media.co/ices-facial-...

Shabana Mahmood moodboarding panopticon with no regard for civil liberties, quoted in a Daily Telegraph article

The UK Home Secretary treating Bentham's panopticon as an aspirational concept -- with added AI archive.ph/VcmWb

About the PhD: Audits and evaluation of AI systems — and the broader context that AI systems operate in — have become central to conceptualising, quantifying, measuring and understanding the operations, failures, limitations, underlying assumptions, and downstream societal implications of AI systems. Existing AI audit and evaluation efforts are fractured, done in a siloed and ad-hoc manner, and with little deliberation and reflection around conceptual rigour and methodological validity. This PhD is for a candidate that is passionate about exploring what a conceptually cogent, methodologically sound, and well-founded AI evaluation and safety research might look like. This requires grappling with questions such as: What does it mean to represent “ground truth” in proxies, synthetic data, or computational simulation? How do we reliably measure abstract and complex phenomena? What are the epistemological or methodological implications of quantification and measurement approaches we choose to employ? Particularly, what underlying presuppositions, values, or perspectives do they entail? How do we ensure the lived experiences of impacted communities play a critical role in the development and justification of measurement metrics and proxies? Through exploration of these questions, the candidate is expected to engage with core concepts in the philosophy of science, history of science, Black feminist epistemologies, and similar schools of thought to develop an in-depth understanding of existing practices with the aim of applying it to advance shared standards and best practice in AI evaluation. The candidate is expected to integrate empirical (for example, through analysis or evaluation of existing benchmarks) or practical (for example, by executing evaluation of AI systems) components into the overall work.

are you displeased with today’s AI safety evaluation landscape and curious about what greater conceptual clarity, methodological soundness, and rigour in AI evaluation could look like? if so, consider coming to Dublin to pursue a PhD with me

apply here: aial.ie/hiring/phd-a...

pls repost

Four Oglala detainees located, three still in ICE custody - ICT The four Lakota detainees were reportedly sent to a former concentration camp used during the Dakota Wars

This is surreal. 4 Oglala Lakota men kidnapped by ICE in Minneapolis have finally been located. One of them was released but the other 3 are being held at Fort Snelling, a former concentration camp used to imprison Native people incl. the Dakota 38 during Dakota Wars.

ictnews.org/news/north-c...

F.B.I. Searches Home of Washington Post Journalist for Classified Material

Hannah has been a top, top reporter on all things DOGE and the federal government. Hard to see this other than anything but an attempt to chill journalism and the First Amendment protected right to a free press. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/14/u...

An internet shutdown has plunged Iran into a communications blackout as authorities continue to unleash their deadly repression against protesters.

UN member states should press Iran to stop the bloodshed and pursue accountability.

ICE Opens Interdimensional Detention Center To Indefinitely Imprison Immigrants Across Infinite Number Of Multiverses

ICE Opens Interdimensional Detention Center To Indefinitely Imprison Immigrants Across Infinite Number Of Multiverses https://theonion.com/ice-opens-interdimensional-detention-center-to-indefini-1837476700/

Stop Automated Racism Amnesty International UK found out that 3/4 of police forces across the UK are using technology to try to “predict crime”, but it is having racist and discriminatory impacts. Almost no one knows about...

Meanwhile this new @amnestyuk.bsky.social report shows how a majority of UK police forces are relying on data-driven systems that risk undermining presumption of innocence and the right to a fair trial www.amnesty.org.uk/predictive-p...

Bans on face coverings at protests while police forces across the UK expand use of live and retrospective facial recognition tech via vans, street cameras, phone apps — undermining privacy rights and creating risks to freedom of expression, association and non-discrimination rights

Excessive restrictions on protests by multiple UK governments came in the context of a massive rise in technosolutionist approaches to policing, including biometric surveillance and predictive policing, creating more risk of rights abuses and undermining accountability for harms

Ending Item Price Tests on Instacart | Instacart Over the past couple weeks, there’s been a lot written about Instacart and how pricing works on our platform . Some of that coverage raised fair questions. Much of it included misconceptions and misin...

#BREAKING: Instacart says it will halt a practice that used AI to adjust the cost of groceries for different shoppers after a study found some customers were paying as much as 23% more for the same items.

‘I was left homeless after the Home Office claimed I wasn’t a child’ The Home Office has advertised a £1.3m contract for an algorithm that can ‘accurately predict someone’s age’. One former asylum seeker tells Holly Bancroft why he thinks this could go very wrong

The UK government’s plans to use AI to guess the age of child refugees is misguided and cruel, and is set to make a broken system even worse www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home...

Trump Administration Takes Aim at AI Accountability Laws Last week, President Trump signed an executive order that proposes to challenge and dismantle a range of “cumbersome” artificial intelligence (AI) laws at state and city level in the US and replace th...

US President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order that proposes to challenge and dismantle a range of “cumbersome” AI laws.

This would promote a future in which many components of society are reliant on AI but with little accountability.

➡️ Banning exploitative zero hours contracts
➡️ Sick pay for all from day one
➡️ Expanding paternity, parental & bereavement leave
➡️ Strengthening protections for pregnant women, whistle-blowers and victims of sexual harassment
➡️ Making flexible working the default
➡️ Repealing Tory anti-union laws

🚨BREAKING: Employment Rights Bill passes in the House of Lords and will become law.

This is an historic day for working people across the country, and the trade unions who represent them.

Trump Administration Takes Aim at AI Accountability Laws Last week, President Trump signed an executive order that proposes to challenge and dismantle a range of “cumbersome” artificial intelligence (AI) laws at state and city level in the US and replace th...

Trump once again puts tech business interests before people’s rights, with plans to spend federal funds on litigating against state and city level AI laws. This could have major consequences for AI accountability and internet connectivity across the US. www.hrw.org/news/2025/12...

Merriam-Webster’s human editors have chosen ‘slop’ as the 2025 Word of the Year.