The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is MonitoringA contractor for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and many other U.S. government agencies has developed a tool that lets analysts more easily pull a target individual’s publicly available data from a wide array of sites, social networks, apps, and services across the web at once, including Bluesky, OnlyFans, and various Meta platforms, according to a leaked list of the sites obtained by 404 Media. In all the list names more than 200 sites that the contractor, called ShadowDragon, pulls data from and makes available to its government clients, allowing them to map out a person’s activity, movements, and relationships.
The news comes after ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent Columbia University protester and green card holding legal permanent resident of the U.S., on Saturday with the intention of deporting him. It also comes as Secretary of State Marco Rubio is reportedly launching an AI-fueled “Catch and Revoke” effort to scan the social media accounts for tens of thousands of student visa holders’ social media accounts, looking for what Axios reported as foreign nationals who appear to support Hamas or other designated terror groups.
People need to be careful about being identifiable on social media. And if they are identifiable (even if you use an alias, if your email is associated with the account, you can be identified because I wouldn't trust these companies to protect them all that well), they need to be careful about what they say or like.
Speaking of which, I've never considered turning JS off in my browser because it would be incredibly inconvenient, but
this post has me considering using
NoScript.
Facebook and TikTok had been given access to read what medication I'm on by the development team responsible for the Pharmacy2U web site.
Get
uBlock Origin, too, if you're not using it.
On the phone, I rely on the
Pi-Hole to block a whole bunch of stuff for everyone on the wi-fi.
I will face up to the fact that this all seems like way too much work for most people, and some of them are going to face unfortunate consequences, and all of us will probably face aggregate consequences as a result.