Adam M. Elewa

Border Patrol is monitoring US drivers and detaining those with 'suspicious' travel patterns The U.S. Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious.

"The US Border Patrol is monitoring millions of American drivers nationwide in a secretive program to identify and detain people whose travel patterns it deems suspicious, AP has found. The predictive intelligence program has resulted in people being stopped, searched and in some cases arrested."

The IRS Is Building a Vast System to Share Millions of Taxpayers’ Data With ICE ProPublica has obtained the blueprint for the Trump administration’s unprecedented plan to turn over IRS records to Homeland Security in order to speed up the agency’s mass deportation efforts.

“If this program is implemented in its current form, it’s extremely likely that incorrect addresses will be given to DHS and individuals will be wrongly targeted,” said an IRS engineer who reviewed the blueprints.

By @williamturton.bsky.social, @chrisbing.bsky.social, and Avi Asher-Schapiro

'They're Not Breathing': Inside the Chaos of ICE Detention Center 911 Calls Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowdin...

NEW: Records of hundreds of emergency calls from ICE detention centers obtained by WIRED—including audio recordings—show a system inundated by life-threatening incidents, delayed treatment, and overcrowding.

Unpaywalled from @dell.bsky.social and @dmehro.bsky.social:

ICE Is Using a New Facial Recognition App to Identify People, Leaked Emails Show The new tool, called Mobile Fortify, uses the CBP system which ordinarily takes photos of people when they enter or exit the U.S., according to internal ICE emails viewed by 404 Media. Now ICE is usin...

New from 404 Media: ICE is using a new facial recognition app to identify people, leaked emails show. Point camera at person, reveal their identity. It uses the CBP system that records peoples' faces as they enter or exit the U.S. Now, turned inwards to be used by ICE www.404media.co/ice-is-using...

ICE seeks proprietary data and tech to monitor up to a million people The DHS component published an RFI seeking the services of a company to scour data sources and help identify “potentially criminal and fraudulent behavior before crime and fraud can materialize.”

“When we think about ICE, we have to recognize it’s not just sworn officers anymore, but a network of private intelligence contractors who get paid to probe a vast array of data,” EFF’s @maassive.bsky.social told @fedscoop.bsky.social - possibly with political motivations.

Emails Reveal the Casual Surveillance Alliance Between ICE and Local Police Police departments in Oregon created an "analyst group" where they casually offer each other assistance with surveillance tools.

Emails Reveal the Casual Surveillance Alliance Between ICE and Local Police

🔗 www.404media.co/emails-revea...

Federal Monitor Slams NYPD Unit Whose Aggressive Policing ProPublica Exposed A report from a court-appointed watchdog details “troubling” conduct and “unconstitutional” stops by the Police Department’s Community Response Team — a unit championed by Mayor Eric Adams.

The report found that while the NYPD’s Community Response Team was initially created to focus on so-called quality-of-life issues such as illegal motorbikes, its officers have more recently been “stopping, frisking, and searching unconstitutionally.”

By @ericumansky.bsky.social

The Wiretap: Facial Recognition, Amazon Ring, And Surveillance Of The LA Protests The Trump administration has announced plans to reorganize the U.S. AI Safety Institute (AISI) into the new Center for AI Standards and Innovation (CAISI).

LA protests are being surveilled by helicopters, Ring cameras, bodycams, and more. Federal agents can also use facial recognition across all social media. Learn more here: www.forbes.com/sites/thomas...

EFF's @maassive.bsky.social told @wired.com in 2022 that ALPR data regs should be reviewed to protect abortion rights.

Now EFF's @evacide.bsky.social tells @404media.co that police using ALPRs to track women who have abortions "does not make me feel any better about this kind of surveillance.”

A Texas Cop Searched License Plate Cameras Nationwide for a Woman Who Got an Abortion The sheriff said the woman self-administered the abortion and her family were concerned for her safety, so authorities searched through Flock cameras. Experts are still concerned that a cop in a state...

New from 404 Media: a cop in Texas performed a nationwide search of license plate reading cameras for a woman who got an abortion, according to multiple sets of data we've reviewed. Included cameras where abortion is legal, like Washington and Illinois www.404media.co/a-texas-cop-...

Best test case: a preservation letter that captures fleeting and incriminating social media evidence like a private Instagram 'story' or a Snapchat 'snap'. No independent source because, by the time the warrant was (or would have been) obtained and executed, the material would be gone.

Notable 4th Amendment rulings in this 5th Circuit opinion today. Most importantly: People have a reasonable expectation of privacy in stored online contents—here, the contents of a Dropbox account. (Per Oldham, J., w/Richman & Ramirez)

🧵

storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2025/05/... #N

ICE Taps into Nationwide AI-Enabled Camera Network, Data Shows Flock's automatic license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are in more than 5,000 communities around the U.S. Local police are doing lookups in the nationwide system for ICE.

SCOOP: ICE, HSI, and DHS are getting side-door access to the nationwide system of Flock license plate cameras by asking local police to perform lookups for them, new public records show.

ICE does *not* have a contract to use this surveillance tool itself.

www.404media.co/ice-taps-int...

U.S. Spy Agencies Are Getting a One-Stop Shop to Buy Your Most Sensitive Personal Data The government wants to build a centralized platform where spy agencies can more easily buy private info about millions of people.

The Trump administration is building a central online marketplace for the Intelligence Community to buy private information about individuals from unregulated data brokers — coming soon to www.icdata.gov

theintercept.com/2025/05/22/i...

DOGE Is Using AI To Centralize Government Power. It’s Time to Flip the Script. | TechPolicy.Press It’s time to break the government’s stranglehold on information and use AI to decentralize power, Eric Gordon and Neil Kleiman write.

The DOGE takeover deepens the view of government data as a resource exploited by a few elite (and private) actors, write Eric Gordon and Neil Kleiman. But especially at state and local levels, we can still reclaim civic tech from power brokers and give it back to the people, they write.

ICE Signs $30 Million Deal with Palantir as It Expands Mass Surveillance of Immigrants Immigration and Customs Enforcement has signed a $30 million deal with the controversial surveillance tech giant Palantir, which will be used to help track and deport immigrants, including people who ...

#ICE is pouring $30M into surveillance company #Palantir to supercharge immigrant surveillance — tracking visa overstays, self-deportations, and funneling data to border patrol.
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​A dystopian deal with a dystopian company.
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​Read more:
democracynow.org/2025/4/18/he...

Livestream: Life and Migration Under Surveillance at the U.S.-Mexico Border EFF has built up a robust focus on digital civil liberties at the U.S.-Mexico border, including challenging the warrantless and suspicionless searches of electronic devices and the massive increase in...

TODAY @eff.org is hosting a live, virtual panel with our Advisory Board member @petramolnar.com discussing the massive increase in surveillance infrastructure throughout the U.S.-Mexico border region and civil liberties at the border. Happening at 4–5 PM ET. Details: www.eff.org/event/life-a...

Cellebrite Is Using AI to Summarize Chat Logs and Audio from Seized Mobile Phones The proliferation of AI through law enforcement tools already has civil liberties experts concerned. “When you have results from an AI, they are not transparent. Often you cannot trace back where a co...

Police phone hacking company Cellebrite is using AI to summarize chat logs and audio from seized mobile phones.

🔗 www.404media.co/cellebrite-i...

Magistrate judge in the 5th Circuit, asked to sign off on warrants for routine "tower dumps," declines to do, writing an opinion concluding that all tower dumps are likewise unconstitutional in light of the 5th Circuit's recent geofencing opinion. (Thread)
storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

My sense was that the problem was a mix of too little discretion, too many cases, too little empathy for clients (especially those out on bail, but otherwise suffering collateral consequences ), and no encouragement for ADAs to think critically about how a case will play out in front of a jury.

In some cases, even where I provided the prosecutor with a detailed email with relevant time codes explaining why the case should be dismissed it took months to get both the line ADA and his or her supervisor to put 2 + 2 together and move for dismissal.

I personally handled about 3-4 cases over a 3 year period where I was given a video (usually body cam) that if watched with full attention and a CRITICAL eye to the elements of the offense would require that the case be dismissed. In all cases the prosecutor did not watch the video.

I can give you some insight into "why" given my brief experience as a PD (Legal Aid Society) in Brooklyn: the prosecutor likely did not watch the video, of if they did they were not paying close attention.