No-Bid ICE Contract Went to Former ICE Agents Being Sued for Fabricating Criminal Evidence on the Job
The $73 million deal for assisting with deportations went to a company whose executives are accused of retaliating against a fellow ICE worker.
https://theintercept.com/2025/04/17/ice-deportation-contracts-us-advisors/
@nullagent
Of course the best answer (for a given definition of best) is to avoid the region and make it as unprofitable as practicable, while finding ways to support conventional policing and strengthen democratic institutions in other regions.
So it is therefore clearly on a completely unrelated note that I share this link to amusing printed masks of your favourite topical celebrities and politicians, (from a Chinese supplier, please do share a link to manufacturers in friendlier states, if anyone has one).
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008613350140.html
If we in the #USA manage to get our country back from the current #dictatorship, and we still think government is a good idea (I'm not trying to resolve the question of #anarchism right now), we need to recognize first of all that we can't go back to the prior status quo. Certain core aspects of that system got us into this mess, and will require fundamental change.
(1) Our #voting system needs overhaul. The right to vote needs to be recognized explicitly as a RIGHT, not a privilege for each state to regulate largely as it pleases. In particular, no criminal conviction should ever be able to impair the right to vote; racist abuse of the criminal law has been used to accomplish widespread disenfranchisement of minorities. Also, we need to recognize that winner-take-all voting systems are utterly incompatible with genuine democracy. If you ever have to ask whether you can afford to vote for who you really want, as opposed to voting for the lesser evil, you do not live in a democracy. Something like proportional representation, ranked-choice voting, or instant-runoff voting is not a luxury; some such system is a minimum requirement for authentic democracy.
(2) To hell with "#SeparationOfPowers". Any protection it supposedly offered us has been purely illusory. Indeed, it was never intended to safeguard the people. It was designed by an elite who deeply distrusted the people, in order to safeguard their wealth and power FROM the people. A legislature answerable to the people is the best safeguard for their rights that any government can hope to offer. Autonomy for the judicial and executive functions of government, as separate "branches" outside the control of the legislature, has brought nothing good. Throughout most of its history, an autonomous Supreme Court has consistently defended the most depraved policies of private power against legislative efforts to control them; and now it has aided and abetted the autonomous Presidency in fulfilling its inherent tendency to degenerate into a #dictatorship. Put the courts and all executive functions under full legislative control, to be granted only such limited and conditional autonomy as the legislature sees fit to offer them.
(3) We will need to overhaul our understanding of what the right of #FreeSpeech consists in. I do not like the unclear slogan "money is not speech"; but the right of INDIVIDUALS to speak freely is what must be safeguarded, and if that is to be accomplished, we cannot allow private capital to monopolize control over the media of communication, much less recognize an inviolable right for private capital to buy such control. Also, we may need to place severe restrictions — as #Germany has done — on organized promotion of certain ideas that involve a systematic attempt to suppress the very existence, let alone the free expression, of others. A #fascist march has more in common with a brandished weapon than with a discussion of fascist ideas in, say, a university classroom or a private home.
These changes (1)–(3) will not, of course, be sufficient by themselves. I have not addressed issues as fundamental as who will own the means of #production, whether people should be guaranteed an unconditional #BasicIncome (#UBI), or how (and whether) #policing should be done. But (1)–(3) will still be needed, no matter how a host of other basic questions are to be resolved.
LA Times: A rich L.A. neighborhood donated surveillance technology to the LAPD — then drama ensued
"...The LAPD’s lack of a formal data-sharing agreement with Flock opens the door for federal authorities to potentially request information from the company about an immigrant’s whereabouts — undercutting the city’s promise not to cooperate in the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, warned Tiff Guerra, an organizer with the activist group Stop LAPD Spying. ..."
https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-04-10/cheviot-hills-license-plate-readers-lapd
The UK's murder prediction AI will create a dangerous, criminalising loop.
This tech repackages flawed police data as neutral. Then replicates itself.
The existing over-policing of racialised, low income and migrant communities will be hardwired into police operations.
We need #SafetyNotSurveillance
@glyph
I hear you.
My favourite (perhaps less jarring?) example is when a court declares they have found someone guilty, and that their threshold of guilt is "on balance of odds".
I look at the lawyers and the witnesses and realise that none of them has studied actuarial or probability mathematics. I wouldn't even trust them to understand a bet on the horses. For a scientist to watch them is like observing a cargo cult. Worse, I am sure, is for a scientist to find themselves on the receiving end of such a court.
I would offer the meagre consolation that you can see the feedback loops that drive them to behave so, where they think themselves to have free will.
The Data Bill strips back your right to human review of automated decisions that have life-changing impacts.
It flips the script, forcing you to prove a mistake has been made when AI gets it wrong – the scales of justice further imbalanced.
Sign our petition 
Even the limitation on automated decision-making using 'special category data' could be sidestepped by relying on the loophole of 'authorised by law' in the UK Data Bill.
The letter warns that "police will be able to conduct ADM without limitation and to conduct ADM involving sensitive data with very few limitations."
Automated decisions could be made in policing "on the basis of their socioeconomic status, regional or postcode data, inferred emotions, or even regional accents."
The UK Data Bill puts marginalised groups at risk of opaque and unfair automated decisions that replicate inherent biases in the data.
The UK Data Use and Access Bill strips away your right to not be subjected to life-changing decisions made solely by AI, apart from where special category data is used.
But, as the letter says, "there are many contexts in which non-special category personal data acts as a proxy for protected characteristics."
The UK Data Bill could unleash unchecked automated decision-making in policing 
ORG has signed Big Brother Watch's open letter to warn that removing safeguards could greatly expand "possibilities for bias, discrimination and lack of transparency".
> It was alleged that on 24 August 2022 Arshad took his work phone into a top-secret area of GCQH and connected the mobile device to a top-secret work station.
Holy smoke, that seems like a long investigation! I presume this is normal for forensic data analysis cases?
"No-one has been arrested in a Quaker meeting house within living memory."
Reposting with hashtags #UKpol #policing #repression #Quakers
h/t @SusiArnott
https://www.quaker.org.uk/news-and-events/news/quakers-condemn-police-raid-on-westminster-meeting-house
The British state goes on - regardless of the people
The Metropolitan Police will permanently put up live facial recognition cameras in south London, as part of a pilot project that may see the scheme extended across the capital.
It makes no difference as to what people think or want or the effective of the technology. Or even what Parliament has accepted (wot you mean is has been debated? 
)
@rwg @gaian @clive @RoyBrander
Sound point regarding physical access, although I suspect the legality of compelling someone to unlock their device with a passcode may be up for debate.
For anyone anticipating such an event, I believe GrapheneOS has a "duress" feature (where entering an assigned "duress" pin code to the device wipes it), and - although I've not tried it - there are apps that do something similar.
https://f-droid.org/packages/me.lucky.duress/
*edited to add: being logged in as a guest user with a token set of contacts and messages and whatnot is probably the other easy win, although if they're smart enough to notice it may make them grumpy. Some companies advise travellers to fly to specific countries with burner devices, and the company agent gives you a new device when you land. This is usually for the sort of country that will install snooping software on your device when given access (or worse). It is unlikely to become one of those situations.
I've just noticed that when police post in their social media, they rarely use the word "allegedly".
There was a post from NSW police the other day about a young guy who was caught speeding (200+ km/hr), the cops literally posted a picture of his car in which his licence plate is visible and detailed information about what (allegedly!) happened, but never once used the term alleged/allegedly.
I find it interesting, because I guarantee anyone who talks about the cops doing anything wrong gets absolutely stomped for not using those terms.
"The aggressive police use of new anti-protest laws, coupled with a growing portrayal of protesters as alleged threats to democracy rather than a vital part of public participation, has grown so routine and so severe that it now amounts to state repression."
But "despite increasing levels of #surveillance, the police have repeatedly ignored the risk to the public of #FarRight groups."
https://www.thecanary.co/uk/analysis/2025/03/19/netpol-protest-report/
Transgender woman killed by LAPD after calling for help.
https://www.advocate.com/crime/transgender-woman-killed-by-police #LAPD #LGBTQ #Crime #SexTrafficking #Policing #Violence #LawEnforcement #GunViolence #LindaBecerraMoran #Victims
The UK Crime and Policing Bill will create a vast facial recognition database of over 55 million driving licences and ban face coverings at protest 
This would be the biggest biometric database ever created in the UK for policing.
With other rights groups, we're telling politicians to stop the expansion of police surveillance powers 
Read the joint briefing
'City officials say the state’s plan to wrest back control of the police department is an attempt by white conservatives." #StLouis #missouri #mo #criminalJustice #lawEnforcement #policing #conservatism #racism
https://www.propublica.org/article/st-louis-police-missouri-gop-control-tishaura-jones-civil-war
