ICE Is the US Stasi

Because of course they are. American Dragnet | Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century

Our two-year investigation, including hundreds of Freedom of Information Act requests and a comprehensive review of ICE’s contracting and procurement records, reveals that ICE now operates as a domestic surveillance agency. Since its founding in 2003, ICE has not only been building its own capacity to use surveillance to carry out deportations but has also played a key role in the federal government’s larger push to amass as much information as possible about all of our lives. By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time.

Because you belong to the state. You have no privacy. They want to know everything about you. The Stasi said that if they knew everything, they could control anyone. I guess we live in the revamped East Germany.

Most Americans probably do not imagine that their information is captured by ICE’s surveillance networks. In fact, ICE has used face recognition technology to search through the driver’s license photographs of around 1 in 3 (32%) of all adults in the U.S. The agency has access to the driver’s license data of 3 in 4 (74%) adults and tracks the movements of cars in cities home to nearly 3 in 4 (70%) adults. When 3 in 4 (74%) adults in the U.S. connected the gas, electricity, phone or internet in a new home, ICE was able to automatically learn their new address. Almost all of that has been done warrantlessly and in secret.

Hat tip to Schneier on Secuity.

And for you children who didn't pay attention to the Cold War, the Stasi, or Ministerium für Staatssicherheit, (Ministry for State Security) was the old East German Secret Police. Well, they were not so secret, just bastards of the 1st order.