HN Reader

I don't see what's so bad about wanting to avoid an area where there's police activity going on. It has nothing to do with whether or not you're doing anything wrong, it's as simple as not wanting to get hassled at a DUI checkpoint or get stuck in traffic because they need 8 squad cars taking up a lane to k-9 search someone. As a more tan law-abiding US citizen, the possibility of some agent asking me for papers and then asking probing questions to "prove myself" anywhere that's not an airport is enough for me to want a heads up not to be in area where that might happen.

>"...we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that's not a protected speech. That is threatening the lives of our law enforcement officers throughout this country."'

wild statement from the person who went to law school, but threw out everything they learned.

I see little to no difference between this, Waze, helmet* taps, or flashing your high beams to other cars when passing the cops. That topic in general has been in court multiple times, and every time the ruling was in favor of it being considered freedom of speech.

>The app does not collect or store any user data, which TechCrunch confirmed by analyzing the app’s network traffic as part of a test.

Actually pretty decent tech reporting if true. This is a non trivial task that can take some time to setup and analyze. If the app is secure and uses certificate pinning it would require reverse engineering it to patch over the pinning before you could MiTM the traffic and actually see it decrypted.

Because law enforcement officers have so much more power than an average citizen, they must be held to much higher standards and have even more accountability. Law enforcement radio should be unencrypted, there should be public databases of officers for facial recognition, and their vehicles and persons should be publicly trackable. The same techniques they use to surveil the citizenry should be applied to them.

https://icespy.org is a site where you can do facial recognition on ICE employees.

The security secretary and attorneys general going after a private citizen by name is gross

In reference to the app developer: we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out...

So they're not even trying to disguise the fact anymore that they're a bunch of goons? And this, coming from a person that went to law school.

Meanwhile, I'm going to download the app right now. Thanks, Streisand effect!

Interesting that Apple even allows ICEBlock on the App Store given that 13 years ago they blocked the publication of an app that notified users of American drone strikes abroad as "objectionable" content: https://www.aclu.org/news/national-security/apple-drone-stri...

I think it’s important to take a second and reflect that in 2025 America we need an app like this at all.

Apple App Store only. Developer has a statement about privacy concerns on Android:

https://www.iceblock.app/android

(Concerned that the information they would be required to store and handle may require they work with the government during a subpoena)

Apple also has to handle this (internally) to do push notifications, but I suppose that theory is Apple has pockets to fight the government (or it's at least out of the developers hands)

ICE is a waste of tax payers money, I rather have satellite data for hurricanes.

Why isn't this a privacy first PWA? Is a native iOS app more secure? Even if I delete it from my device it's still in my "Cloud" and there's a record (at Apple) of me downloading/installing it.

Nice. We need less of a surveillance state and more surveillance of the state.

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44445180

Yay, Streisand effect! More power to the publisher and every user of this app.

A question as a non-American that I hope will be taken in the spirit of enquiry.

I am hearing a lot more about ICE raids, particularly on reddit. Is this an artefact of more attention to raids that have been going on for years, or is there an increase in the number or impact of the raids? I find it hard to tell as I'm in somewhat of a bubble in terms of the US news I come across.

Perfect for a real life DDOS.

Want empty parking at a Dodger game? Use the ICE app.

Also a great honeypot to query out all the users of this app and schedule them for a visit.

There was a commenter that got buried, where the person making it wasn't aware of the precedent for government mandated "apps". So i80and...

Look no further than CALEA mandated forensics packages on most network backbone gear!

https://www.subsentio.com/solutions/platforms-technologies/

https://www.fcc.gov/calea

You see, we've had government mandated "apps", but they are intentionally "hidden" (only by omission of course) from the layperson! So you, John Q. Public, are not exposed to them, but every regulated service provider is turned into a facilitator for law enforcement monitoring activity.

Bumping it down to handsets simply hasn't been done because it's just easier to plug in upstream through Third Party Doctrine and it'd be self-defeating in a sense to straight up make and admit that handsets purpose is to surveil you for law enforcement purposes. Businesses can have compliance compelled through the threat of disincorporation, so can be relied upon to cooperate as a pre-requisite of doing business.

Now, this software is generally considered "the good guys doing good guy things" so isn't generally considered problematic. As I hope is being learned by everyone; there is no line between a system that exists for well intentioned people to do good things with and a system capable of being used by evil people to do evil things, at scale with.

> "because it would have to collect information on Android that could put people at risk."

What's this about? Surely it's technically possible to implement. Can someone add more detail?

Can Sauron use his Palatir to get info from this app?

The app isn't available on Android because it supposedly cannot preserve anonymity. Why is that? That doesn't make any sense.

Interesting that this is an iOS app, not Android or web app. What percent of illegal immigrants who are worried about being randomly swept up (i.e., those who can be visibly profiled) have iOS devices?

I was under the impression that iOS devices were prevalent among wealthy and aspiring wealthy Americans, but that middle class and lower class Americans were much more likely to have Android devices.

Perhaps it went viral because MAGA are downloading and flooding it with false reports to make the app useless?

We had the same thing happening in Ukraine. Conscription agents are sweeping the streets and forcefully kidnapping people.

So, yeah, it did not took long before public chats with real-time reporting popped up and became country-wide phenomenon.

Welcome to the club, America!

Whelp, that's one less application that I feel compelled to make

Surely this won’t be used by trolls.

After reading their blatant misinformation on Android support (https://www.iceblock.app/android, which makes no sense as explained in https://bsky.app/profile/grapheneos.org/post/3lswujex4e22w), and seeing their refusal to publish the source code, I can't help but wonder if it's an honeypot.

this can just be flooded with fake data making it useless

Don't want to see ethnics at Costco? Boy do I have the app for you!

Years ago I had to live the house in a hurry for my daughter nearly died due to a very rare medical complication. So I forgot to put the alarm on. Twelve hours later I came back home to pick some clothes for my kid and wife (as she had to stays for days at the hospital) only to arrive and see gypsies [1] watching the entrance of the street. I arrived at my home and, well, thieves had broken, damaged our window and stolen belongings of ours. While my kid was between life and death.

Now today, no latter than today, on the way to school, I saw four police car and policemen everywhere, obviously looking for someone. Then I saw a gypsy [1] hiding in the bushes, waiting for the proper moment to jump over a fence and evade cops.

Karma is a bitch. I drove in reverse and yelled at the cops, pointing to where the guy was. And they got him.

You fuck with me (by visiting my house, breaking a window and stealing stuff), I fuck with you.

I have zero tolerance for people turning our high trust societies into low trust ones.

It is my understanding democrats rely on the votes of many illegals to have the representation they have but is this really what this has come to? Import as many illegals as possible to "beat the republicans"?

And side with illegals by writing an app allowing to prevent ICE from doing their job?

I've got a question: I'm an EU citizen. I want to come live to the US. Is it open? Can I just come and live as an illegal alien, not pay taxes, get a free driving license?

Shall you guys root for me? What if I promise to vote democrat? Deal? (for it certainly seems to be part of the deal)

What is a country? What are borders for? Do you find Mexico a political system and economy to be striving to imitate? Do you wish there were more cartels in the US growing plants to make drugs?

Why insisting on protecting illegals? Should US citizenship be granted to anyone who asks for it? Africa shall have one billion more people from now til 2025: should that billion additional people all be sent to the US and given US citizenship?

[1] my father has lived on a plot land in an abandoned trailer next to gypsies: I can tell a gypsy 100% guaranteed.

Is the stat they keep repeating relevant? Attacks on ICE agents increased 500%? If attacks went from 1 to 6 that is an increase of 500% but if there is also 6x more ICE activity the baseline rate of attack is the same.

It’s like complaining there’s more shark attacks in the summer vs winter and concluding sharks have seasonal mood swings.

Slightly OT, but TIL that I've never heard of the 2nd most popular social networking app on the App Store ("threads").

The application appears to be a geofenced messaging application like Yik Yak. What is to prevent feds from joining and changing their appearance based on reports of their current appearance?

A lot of folks about to discover that interfering with law enforcement is in fact a crime.

The silly app requires iOS 18.2. I have an iPhone 11 and can't get to iOS 18. They shot themselves in the foot with this ridiculous requirement.

There are so many layers of crazy here but the one that strikes me most is attacking CNN for having a piece about the App. I.e. it's not just that reporting police activity is treated as a problem (it's not) but even an article discussing the way that some people are reporting police activity is a problem.

> "CNN is willfully endangering the lives of officers who put their lives on the line every day and enabling dangerous criminal aliens to evade US law,"

If the engadget article gets enough eyeballs will they be also be willfully endangering lives? What about a really popular forum thread discussing that article?

I am worried the app is just a honeypot made by bad actors to get a create a database of the "rebels" they will soon be hunting down.

This seems fine under the 1st amendment. I will enjoy hearing the closing arguments when it finally reaches the Supreme Court.

I think Iran has a similar app for signaling where the religious police is checking haircuts and head covers :)

Has anyone decompiled it yet to make sure it's legit?

As an non-American, this situation seems really crazy and is quite hard to understand for me. Why would anyone want to prevent deportation of someone, who is in the country illegaly?

Is this a cultural thing? Because I've heard that US immigration laws kind of suck (long waiting times etc), but I don't really see how this is a solution to anything?

The techical aspect I get of course - I use Waze & I'm glad when someone reports cop with a radar etc. But ICE is not really something, that should concern normal citizens, right? They don't normally interact with US citizens, so as long as you have some kind of ID, they can check that and that is the end of your interaction with them. Or am I missing something?

I'd honestly be glad, if someone could explain that to me, I'm genuinely interested in understanding what is going on.

I will never understand people defending migration for ideological reasons. This makes absolutely no sense to me. Your empathy or moral display is of no interest to me, yet upholding a social order and public safety is. So why should everyone sacrifice the first for your moral display?

FYI - It's rising to the top rn because it is also being flooded with false reporting as an adversary tactic.

Hong Kong waves from the past.

I wonder how long until this one gets removed under the same ridiculous pretence.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/10/apple-removes-police-trackin...

Why is this an app and not a website?

Reminds me of Warn A Brother (https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/513-ahwUxZL.jpg).

Pity that it's not open source and decentralized using something like iroh.computer, especially given the lacking Android support.

Is this actually legal? When I looked into something similar it said gray area but most likely illegal as they can claim obstruction of justice?

Those commenting on HN should know that ICE has a contract to buy bulk AI profiles on HN commenters (among other specific sites),

https://www.404media.co/the-200-sites-an-ice-surveillance-co... ("The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring")