App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners Across the Country

https://www.404media.co/this-app-lets-ice-track-vehicles-and-owners-across-the-country/

by aworks • 8 months ago

75 19 8 months ago

aworks• 8 months ago

The ad: "Vigilant Mobile Companion transfers your mobile device into a powerful, secure license plate recognition and facial recognition data collection, analysys and alerting tool -- increasing productivity and insight, anywhere you go."

extropic-engine4• 8 months ago

Dead the instant it hit the new page. dang, why do you let the bots bury certain news sources such as this one?

Bender• 8 months ago

Best to email dang. Unless this thread gets popular he won't see it. 404media is auto-dead in most cases and requires a vouche. [1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=404media.co

chaps• 8 months ago

Here's the top of a conversation I had with him, starting with me:

  Thanks for the thought out response. I agreed with just about everything you said, which makes this whole situation that much more frustrating. On one side, you're right and you're trying to create substantive discussion, which their sensationalist reporting often rubs against. On the other hand, [dead] in its current state is neither informative nor allows for substantive conversation about why it's [dead]. Ironically, the action of [dead]'ing looks like a malicious response from you and your colleagues -- something that's still hard for me to shake, especially considering who owns HN and who's within its network. Or at the very least, it looks malicious in the face of potentially simple UX changes.

His response:

  Yes, I hear those frustrations and they all make sense. I'm afraid I'm pessimistic, though (having been at this job for many years) about the possibility of a fuller explanation ever clearing up these perceptions—for example the perception about "who owns HN and who's within its network" being the main factor in what gets marked as [dead] on the site. In my experience, (some) people are going to believe that, regardless of anything we say or do. A lot of people on the internet are primed to perceive maliciousness and, sadly, I don't think we have the power to change that.
 
  I also don't think it's possible to "promote substantive discussion about why [a post' is dead" because that sort of meta-talk invariably becomes bogged down and self-referential. In my experience, such discussions don't lead anywhere productive, they just generate more and more of the same. 

  The moderation burden such meta-discussions impose is high, because if we don't answer and explain, our absence gets taken to mean that we're hiding something and/or that whatever people are accusing us of must be true. That's potentially disastrous for HN because it means that those moderation resources get sucked away from things that matter more for the quality of the site.

  But I don't want to come across as too dismissive! I appreciate your openness and your suggestions and will think further about them.

toomuchtodo2• 8 months ago

HN deads 404media links instantly.

extropic-engine4• 8 months ago

is there a reason given anywhere for this? is there a place to see which sites are on the list?

bryanrasmussen• 8 months ago

huh, wow if only someone made an app to track ICE! /s

michelb• 8 months ago

“On its website, Thomson Reuters markets CLEAR as a tool that has saved an abducted baby, identified a wanted man, and caught a sexual predator. “

Ah yes, think of the children! I wonder whose cronies will be whitelisted from this app.

add-sub-mul-div• 8 months ago

I was so used to fear of immigrants being used to simply win votes that I overlooked how effective it would be at justifying surveillance that would otherwise be unpopular with the constituents of both parties.

waitwot• 8 months ago

We also were so afraid of economic irrelevance we let them financially engineer the deflation of the majority's buying power.

Inflation is ~300% since 1980.

Sheer coincidence this aligns neatly with Boomers coming of age and assuming political power, I'm sure.

ahmeneeroe-v22• 8 months ago

We have had mass surveillance for a generation now. It would be great if they used it for mass deportations.

TitaRusell• 8 months ago

Yeah but then Americans would have to do the jobs illegal immigrants are doing.

Even Trump had to admit that maybe the US needed work camps instead of deporting them.

App Lets ICE Track Vehicles and Owners Across the Country

Related Stories