October 22, 2025 • 34 mins
ICEBlock was an app created to help people report ICE sightings. Then, Apple pulled it from the App Store. But in between those events, there was a semi-public fight over whether the app was actually helpful to immigrants. Dexter talks with security researcher and journalist Micah Lee about why he criticized ICEBlock (calling it “activism theater”), why he still supports the app’s developer in fighting censorship, and what all this means for your ability to use your phone how you want.
Got something you’re curious about? Hit us up killswitch@kaleidoscope.nyc, or @killswitchpod, or @dexdigi on IG or Bluesky.
Read + Watch:
ICEBlock app homepage:
https://www.iceblock.app
Micah’s blog posts on ICEBlock:
https://micahflee.com/unfortunately-the-iceblock-app-is-activism-theater/
https://micahflee.com/iceblock-handled-my-vulnerability-report-in-the-worst-possible-way/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
There is now an Apple learning people when ICE agents
are operating in their area.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's called ice Block, which allowed users to track and
report any public sightings that immigration agents deployed or detaining people.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Apple says they have pulled an app that allows users
to track ICE agents after getting pressure from the Department
of Justice.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
So ice Block was an iPhone app that helps people
anonymously report ice sightings that are in their neighborhood, that
are nearby within a five miler adias, and you've got
notifications when other people are report ice sightings near you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Michael Lee is an independent security researcher and journalist. He's
talking about an ice reporting app called ice Block. The
tagline was quote see something, tap something. A lot of
people were looking for ways to deal with the Trump
administration's immigration policies, and in June, ice block went viral.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
And I think the thing that makes it different than
other various products is that it went viral. CNN did
some reporting on ice block, like early on, they had
like on TV all day one day, and then the
right wing Twitter or x blew up and started attacking it,
and so then it ended up getting like a million users.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Despite the popularity Micah was skeptical of ice block, so
he did some digging.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I called it active as in theater because it seemed
like it wasn't actually like aimed at helping people. It
was just aimed at, like, you know, making his app
that was going viral, get more users and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I'm afraid with a kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is
kill switch. I'm dextrats, I'm sing.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'm goodbye.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
When did you first hear about ice block?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I heard ice black after I was on the and
then I heard about the right wing backlash.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The backlash that MICA's referring to is the White House
Press Secretary saying.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence
against our ice The.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
White House boarders are saying THEO Jane's look at this
and see if they're crossing that line. And United States
Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Saying we are looking at it, we are looking at him,
and he better watch out because that's not a protected speech.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And the United States Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Nome
posted on Twitter or x calling it an obstruction of
justice and said quote, if you obstruct or assault or
law enforcement. We will hunt you down and you will
be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law end quote.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
I thought it was very interesting, but at the same time,
I have been doing some local work in my own
community in northern California, and I was very skeptical about
how useful it was just from my own experiences.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
If you were to describe how ice block works in
terms of the reporting function, is there anything you would
use to compare it to.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I mean, it's super similar to just on typical map
apps where warns you have a speed trap right like
you're driving, and then it says cops have been reported
up ahead, and then you know, people all get that
on their phones and they start slowing down. That's basically
what it is. It's just like a location based app
where people can report here's an ice sighting, and then
(04:19):
other people who are nearby get the notification and then
they're like, oh, there's an ice sighting there. It's actually
overall pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Ice Block was created by a solo developer named Joshua
Aaron back in April, just a few months into President
Trump's second term. He told CNN that he made the
app because he wanted to do something to fight back
against what was happening in the US. He made ice
Block only available on iPhone because he said that making
it available on Android could require collecting information that could
put users at risk. Maybe that's annoyed Android users, but
(04:50):
there is some merit to this, at least in the
way that the app was doing things.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
From my understanding is it uses the Apple Cloud cat.
So normally what you'd have as an app running on
phones and then you'd have a server, and so when
you report something, it would communicate with the server and
save stuff in the database. So he's saying he's not
collecting any data, but instead he's essentially outsourcing this to Apples.
He doesn't need to like collect the location of users
(05:15):
who have this app installed. Instead, Apple's already collecting everyone's
location who has location services on and so it's just
relying on that. So that's that's like roughly the technical
way that he's keeping it completely anonymous, although it's really
not completely anonymous because you know, Apple can see everything.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
If ice Block.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Gets data requests from you know, the FBI or DHS
or something, maybe they won't be able to comply because
they don't have data. But if Apple gets data requests
from the FBI or DHS, Apple actually has a lot
of data that they can turn over, including you know,
everyone who's installed the.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
App, right because relatively speaking, Apple does have a fairly
good reputation or good record in not just turning stuff
over willingly to the authorities. Like somebody comes and asks
for it, and they generally say no, right.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
When it's a valid law enforcement request. They like don't
really have much of the option to say no. They
can fight it with lawyers, but if they lose, then
they have to turn it over. And so what Apple
has a good reputation for is building in extra security
to make it so that it's harder for them to
turn stuff over. They have something called the Advanced Data
Production and anyone that wants to can turn it on
(06:26):
in their iCloud account, and it means that all that
data in your iCloud account is encrypted. So if Apple's
forced to turn it over, they can still turn it over.
It's just that it'll be encrypted data they're turning over,
and you, the user, will have a key that can
decrypt it. So they're doing work to make it harder
to turnover data, but they still are you know they're
(06:46):
a US company.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
They give data to the BLISS.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
There were some researchers who initially were a little skeptical
of how ice block worked. A colleague of MICA has
looked into it and confirmed that it did seem to
legitimately be working how it promised.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I didn't spend much time digging and stuff until a
Hope conference Hackers on Planet Earth that now happens every year.
It's in New York, and Joshua Aaron, the developer of
ice block, was giving a talk about ice block at Hope.
And as he was talking and then especially throughout the
Q and A, the audience was getting more and more
(07:20):
visibly frustrated because it was very clear that this guy
just doesn't know what he's talking about, and he kept
like making these big promises. He kept talking about how
he runs a server and he's like, believe me, my
server is highly secure, no one could hack it. I
built it myself, and I think of everything, and like
this is like an audience full of hackers and people
(07:41):
are like scanning his server and being like there's various
problems already.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Just starting the.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Talk, maybe a little late here, but it's probably worth
mentioning here that Micah isn't just some hobbyist programmer. In
twenty thirteen, he helped Edward Snowden league government spying documents.
So if Micah says that he's concerned about security, that's
going to hold some weight for people. And one big
issue that he and some other researchers had at this
conference was the fact that the developer didn't want to
(08:09):
make the apps code open source, which raised a big
red flag from Mica.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
In computer security, if you're making security products or privacy
products and you want people to trust you, the way
of doing this is to show your work to like
make your software open source, to invite outside researchers to
like look into it to try and find flaws. Anyone
can look at the code, anyone can use the code.
Anyone can, you know, take a copy of the code
(08:35):
and change it and release their own version. The big
benefit from a privacy and security perspective of open source
is it means that you're not like hiding how you
do stuff.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
You're being transparent about it.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And for something like this where people are very concerned
that it's collecting their data, the basic stuff that a
developer can do is make it open source, and then
this way they can just like be like, look, you
don't have to trust us as much because maybe you
don't read code, but like someone else who does readcode
can like look through the code and confirm that it's
done what I say it's done. It has other benefits too,
(09:12):
like other people can actually help you fix bugs. Other
people can help you find vulnerabilities. Other people can add
features to it, and this is like common for security
software and privacy software.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
When he was asked in the Q and A if
you would accept help programming the app, Joshua Aaron said, no.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Believe me when I say I would love help. Okay,
I'm supporting over a million users myself. There's not some
giant company behind this, but it's really really hard for
me to put my trust in somebody and share the
source code and share the access to this. So I
got to just say, so far, the answer is I'm
just not the trusting person. So no, I haven't entertained
(09:50):
having anybody else involved with it.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Joshua Aaron was adamant that his ice block app is secure,
but he wouldn't budge on this open source issue. So
I could decided to ask a different question.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I actually went and said another question, which was basically,
would you be open to publishing like a white paper
that explains how it works, so that you know, researchers
could like look at this and give feedback and make
it better, and also like security audits, Like you don't
need to open the source code to everyone, but there
are all of these security firms that will do a
(10:22):
like a penetration test of your code. They try to
hack it, and then if they find any problems, they
give you a report and then you fix them all.
And we were even like we could raise money for
a security audit. These are things that you can do
without making an open source it'll still make people trust
it more. But he was just like, Nope, I'm not
doing any of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
All right, let's just leave aside the cybersecurity talk for
a second. Micah had another concern what would happen if
someone falsely reported in ice sighting or if they just
made a mistake. Mike has been volunteering with an organization
in his area called Norkel Resist. This group does a
lot of things, from fixing your car's break lights were free,
to distributing food to families who need it. But recently
(11:03):
they've been doing a lot of work supporting immigrants and
because of this, Micah has seen firsthand how a false
eye sighting can really cause panic.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
And a big thing is that lots of people are like,
oh my god, there's ice in this neighborhood, and they
like post that online and then a lot of people
like boost it, and most of the time that's not
actually true. One that I checked out there was this
overpass bridge looked like there was like a bunch of
people in uniforms on the bridge what looked kind of
like police vehicles, and like multiple people reported this bridge
(11:33):
and I went and confirmed that it was like a
fireman funeral service then, so.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
It wasn't ice at all.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Sometimes it's actually just like a local police action, and
it just causes people to panic because the problem is
that there's like millions of people who are undocumented, and
then there's even more millions of people who are friends
and loves ones with people who are undocumented. There's all
of these teenagers whose parents are undocumented in their citizens
and stuff, and they're like scared out of their minds,
like constantly, and so if you're sitting there scrolling on
(12:03):
social media, and you're just seeing like, oh my god,
there's ice everywhere. It's really scary. And so it's like
very important to not cause panic and instead to just
spread the news about real things that are happening and
not just a bunch of big things that aren't happening.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So at this Hacker's Conference talk, Micah asked Joshua Aaron
about this directly, and I.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Guess my question is, how do you know that ice
block isn't just full of false positives? And have you
done any like user research or work with local immigration
groups to like figure out, you know, how reliable this is,
how much it's actually helping people versus causing panic.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I'm not going to tell you there's no false sightings
in ice Block.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Of course there are. That's what nefarious users do.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
They think it's really funny to scare people and hurt people.
But there are safeguards in the app.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
He eventually said that, like in the off chance that
someone posts something that's not real, then people will just
stay away from that area for a little.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Bit, and that's not that bad.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So, in an effort for user anonymity, the decision was
made that if there are false sightings, the worst case
scenario is that those people simply stay away from that
location for a few hours, much better than having user
identifiable data that could come under government subpoena. So I
(13:24):
hope that answers your question and kind of alleviates those concerns.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That does sound kind of bad, though.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I do think it's kind of bad because it's causing
people to like panic and to worry that there's way
more ice activity than there actually is. There was this
one other person who who also asked about you know,
there's all of these immigrant communities across the country that
have these pretty strong support networks and they're already doing
stuff in their own ways. As she asked, have you
(13:54):
planned on working with any of these groups? And basically
his answer was, I've talked to some community organizers and
they all do things their own way, and I wouldn't
be able to like make ice block work for this
group and then for this group and then for this group,
so he's just going to ignore their advice.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
After the conference, Micah did some more digging around and
he tried to ask the developers some questions via DMS.
That's when things started to get weird. More on that
after the.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Break, After this Hope Talk. A group of us started
a signal group and we were basically like, Okay, this
app has promise. We think that the developer is like
(14:41):
not malicious, we think his heart is in the right place.
Maybe we can affect us to make it so that
it's actually a useful app for people, and then especially
like that will be so much better because there's already
like a million users. So we spent a bunch of
energy trying to figure out how to improve the app.
We wrote him a letter and then he just like
immediately rejected the letter and rejected our offer of various support.
(15:03):
Then I was like, okay, I'm going to write basically
about the Hope Talk. So I just started a blog
post about the Hope Talk and with like little clips
from the most frustrating parts. And then at the end
of my blog post.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Michael wrote about all this in a post on his blog.
The title was Unfortunately the ice Block app is activism Theater.
But before we published it, he gave Joshua Aaron heads
up and he also flagged a potential security problem that
he'd found.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
So I messaged him on Blue Sky being like, I'm
that published this blog post about the hope talk. It's
not very flattering, but I also wanted to like privately
tell you that I discovered a problem with your server.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
I basically did a n MAP scan real quick.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Aside here in map or a network mapper is basically
a tool that lets you find devices on a network
and also potentially detect vulnerabilities.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
So I didn't en map scan to see what ports
were a and then I also use this one feature
that just does version detection, so like, if it sees
that this server runs a web server, it tells you
what software is running on that web server. And this
was like the step zero before you start like trying
to hack something, you do basic reconnaissance. So this was
(16:18):
a very basic reconnaissance.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Right, just see what software they running?
Speaker 5 (16:22):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
And I saw that he was running Apache, which is
a common web server software. But the version of Apache
that was running was like eight months old or something.
And the thing about this is it's always important to
install updates, and the reason is because updates fixed security problems.
And so I like looked up that version and there
were all of these known vulnerabilities in that version of
apatching I just told him, hey, your version of Apache
(16:45):
has all these known vulnerabilities and some of them are
marked critical. You should probably update and he blocked me.
So that was the response, and then he uh sent
me a message on his other blue Sky account and
his personal account and was like, stop telling lies about
me and ice block. This is my last communication. And
I was like, hey, let me know if I got
(17:07):
anything wrong in the blog post, I'm happy to post
a correction. But then a few days later I checked
and his server was still running the vulnerable version of Apache.
So I sent him another message and I was like, hey,
you should really update this. I'll give you a deadline.
I'll give you a week to fix it. And it's
like really really really easy to fix. It's just running
the update command. That's it. That will fix the problem.
(17:29):
And so then he blocked me there too, And this
is just basically like really bad way to handle a
vulnerability report. I would imagine that at the very least
he will walk his server to not get hacked. I
waited until the week was up, and then I just
like wrote a short blog post being like here's what
I found. I hope this encourages them to actually install updates,
(17:51):
and then like within two hours he installed updates after
I published the blog post, so it worked.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I mean, you publicly bullied my man into updating the
Apache server. Yeah, we'll talk. You can come off is
kind of being just like a hater, Like, what's this
dude doing? Why is this guy being being on the
internet about this really well intentioned software, right?
Speaker 4 (18:18):
I mean, so I don't want to come off as
a hater. And the entire time I've tried to help
make his app useful, but it was just so frustrating.
He's just saying all these things with such confidence that
aren't true. And honestly, like, I think that the problems
that we're facing with mass deportation, they're not solved by
an app. They're much bigger than an app, And so
(18:40):
I think the apps can be maybe a helpful component,
but there's a much bigger situation. And I think that
maybe if ice block was like working directly with a
network of local groups around the country and had betting
built in, that would actually make it really usefulat for
people to get like verified information. But like you know,
and if he's not doing any of that, then like
(19:01):
what's the point?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
To some people, it might sound weird that computer programmers
would publicly have an argument over an app, but trust me,
this stuff is very normal. Entire operating systems have been
written because someone couldn't agree on something as minor as
how the computer should boot up. The stakes just feel
a lot higher here because both of these people really
care about the cause of helping immigrants, and applying technology
(19:25):
to civil rights issues is way harder than most people think.
Just as an example, I have a friend who is
working on a totally different national campaign to help undocumented immigrants.
The project wasn't an app, but they created basically this
downloadable infocard. The idea was that if you get stopped
by ice, you could pull out your phone and you
could pull up this card from a digital wallet and
(19:47):
would have all this information on it, like your rights
stay silent, your right to a lawyer, people to contact,
things like that. And it looked really slick, and they
had all these social media influencers who are excited about it,
and they wanted to help them promote it, and things
were looking great. But then they showed their project to
some local groups who actually work with assisting undocumented immigrants,
(20:08):
and the group said, no, this is not a good idea.
You do not want people opening up their phone around
ice because they might take it or they might coerce
them into showing personal information. They said, look, here's what
actually works in this community. Paper cards with your rights
printed on it. If you want to help us, help
us print those up and distribute them in a bunch
(20:28):
of different languages. No digital nonsense, just paper. Now. The
activists who worked on this other digital wallet thing were
pretty humiliated, but they ended up taking the local group's
advice and said, you know what, this is what's called
being a good ally, and you know, maybe so. In
software development, though there's a simpler term for it, we
(20:48):
just call it user research, putting aside all the cool
things that you want the user to do with your
software and figuring out what the people who would actually
use your software actually need.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
I think that if you're actually like doing user research,
trying to figure out what do we need, there's a
lot of undocumented people who work in like the service
industry or who work in farming, and actually talking to
those people, I think that what will be really helpful
is to make it so that a bunch of people
who like work in the kitchen at restaurants they know
how to report an ICE sighting, because what happens when
(21:22):
like ice comes into the restaurant, like someone should report it? Like,
I don't know if you're going to get like the
people who really need this, most of them don't have
iPhones right to begin with. What you really need is
like how do you get this person working in the
kitchen to be able to report, oh, God, ice is here.
And then at that point, what do you actually want?
(21:43):
Do you just want to like tell people that ice
is at this restaurant and then that's it, or do
you want to actually like have community come out and
support of the people there, start documenting stuff, start providing
legal support. I think it's kind of shortsighted, Like none
of this has been really like thought through. It's more
just like, ooh, location based apps are cool. It's a
really hard problem. We can't use technology to solve this problem.
(22:07):
It's a political problem. We need your restore democracy, and
an app is not gonna help us restore democracy.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So after all this, you've written about this, you've kind
of gone back and forth, but then just recently the
app gets taken out of the app store m H.
And then the day after that there's a similar app
that gets pulled off the Google Play Store.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Apple says it took it down due to safety risks,
and they're not the only ones. Google says they removed
similar apps from the app store for Android devices, and
all of it coming as Ice is ramping upraids across
the country.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Apple removed ice Block from their app store and Google
removed a similar app called red Dot. Considering that Micah
had been criticizing ice Block, you might think that he'd
be happy about this. Well, no, he's not, and he
says that this is a sign of a bigger problem.
That's after the break in early October, Apple removed ice
(23:15):
Block from the app store, no warning, just gone. But
it wasn't just ice Block. Other apps also disappeared, like,
for example, an app called eyes Up. This app was
different from ice Block. It wasn't about real time location reporting.
It was just about preserving evidence of encounters with Ice
and maintaining a public record that couldn't be hidden or censored.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
And so it's like people keep posting videos to like TikTok,
to Instagram, to cts of Ice arresting people and being
violent with people, and this is just an app that
archives them.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
That's it. It's a map, and.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
You can browse the map, and you can click on
an area, and you click on a video and watch
the video. It's just archiving ice abuse with the goal
of preserving evidence in case the materials ever needed in court.
On the Fitch and Apple just took this down as well.
And I think that both Apple and Google they got
a bunch of pressure from Paanbandi from the Department of Justice,
(24:10):
and they both basically did this like absolutely mind boggling
thing where they're basically saying that, like masked ice stones
are a protected class.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Now that phrasing might sound weird, but it's not something
that Mike had just made up. Google told four or
four Media that they had, and I'm reading four or
Four's article on this, removed apps because they shared the
location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that
recently faced a violent act connected to those sorts of
ice spotting apps. I won't editorialize here, but I'll just
(24:41):
point out that Google calling ICE, which again is a
government agency, a vulnerable group, is unusual for a tech company.
Before this, the only people using this sort of language
was the Trump administration.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
I think that the bigger picture for me is that
we have like a duopoly smartphones. We have iPhones and
we have Android phones. That's it, and both of them
are now just like arms of the US government. I
think that they've both had like various histories of removing
apps from the app stores. But I feel like this
(25:14):
is actually really dangerous, not just for apps that like
activists might rely on in the United States, but like
around the world, all of the phones that everyone in
the world uses.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
Are essentially like what software they're allowed to run.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
On those are controlled by the Trump administration, And that's
like a really bad situation to be in for the world.
This experience is showing that, like in the United States,
if you're trying to like fight ice abuses, or if
you're trying to do anything that like the trauma administration
doesn't like.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I think that we need to.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Stop relying on apps, start relying on websites, stop relying
on US companies because we can't trust them, right.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I think that this is not a good sign for
things to come.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
When you say something like the what we're allowed to
put on our phones is basically controlled by the Trump
and administration sounds kind of nuts, But you know, maybe
it's not an overstatement, given that ice Block was repeatedly
called out by the Trump administration as being something that
they did not want available, and then it becomes not available,
and then a similar app becomes not available anymore on
(26:21):
both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Tam Bondi has given interviews being like, oh, yeah, we
went to Apple and Google. We told them to like,
you know, they need to do more to protect ice Yeah.
And in fact, actually, just like last week, tam Bondi
testified in front of Congress where she said that, like
they asked them to remove ice Block, and she said
that ice block was posting the home addresses of ice
(26:44):
officers and it was dosing them and that's not what
ice block was doing. But that was just just like
a little example of lying under oath that Lottie's just dead.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Last week.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Let me ask you this, the ice Block got removed
from the Apple App Store. Do you think it should
be rein stated? Do you think it should be back up? Oh?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's that useful. But I
feel like this is like a bigger issue regardless of
what the problems are with this one app, Like anyone
that wants to make an app that whatever their idea is,
that they should be able to make those apps. It's
fundamentally it's like a free speech essuo. It's not very
good for democracy that these two major corporations that are
(27:23):
basically like just like bending the knee to authoritarianism control
the gates.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Free speech might not be something you would think applies
to computer code, but actually it does. In nineteen ninety nine,
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the code was
considered speech. A grad student had written an encryption program
and wanted to publish the code online, but under US law,
encryption was basically treated like a weapon. If this student
wanted to share his code, he would have had to
(27:53):
register as an arms dealer and get government approval. The
student sued, and the court eventually ruled that those restrictions
had violated his First Amendment rights. He could publish his code,
and now if you got code, you want to publish,
so can you.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
The Core ruled that, hey, this is this person's speech.
This code that they wrote is their speech. We can't
restrict their speech because of the First Amendment. That's what
made encryption legal in the United SAIDs.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But true free speech in this context becomes kind of
irrelevant when Apple has made it so that basically nothing
can be installed on their iPhone without going through the
official app store first. So what about Google. Well, Android,
historically you've basically been able to treat it like any
other computer. Most people just use the Google Play Store,
but if you wanted to, you could do something called
(28:41):
sideloading and pretty easily install whatever you want on your phone.
But starting next year, Google's going to require that all apps,
whether downloaded from the Google Play Store or not, be
verified by them.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
The change that Google is making is basically preventing any
app that's not digitally signed by Google Key from getting
installed on your phone. It basically is like essentially getting
rid of sideloading and making it so that you can't
run anything on your phone if it's not approved by Google.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Which is kind of nuts, right because I mean, if
you told somebody you know, you're not allowed to have
certain programs on your Windows machine. I mean, first off,
Napster never would have happened. Ever, that that entire saga
never would have happened, which maybe you think it shouldn't.
But the idea that if there's an app that the
(29:30):
app store doesn't want you to have, or that a
certain company doesn't want you to have, and they don't
want you to have it because a government doesn't want
you to have it. I mean, these are the things
that freak people out about other countries, and this is
now something that we deal with the United States.
Speaker 5 (29:43):
We in the United States have been very privileged.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
It's like we're not used to getting everything like spied
on as much as we as other countries are. We're
used to being in this privileged situation where all of
this technological dystopia stuff happens to other people. I think
that's over. I think it's gonna start happening to us
now too.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
For you looking at ice Block and looking that everything's
happened since it was banned and all that, what are
you thinking about now and what do you think other
people should be thinking about.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
I'm thinking that we can't rely on apps anymore. Like
I rely so much on the Signal app. That's the
number one app that I use a whole lot. And
I think that for the moment, signal safe, especially because
if Trump people all use it. But I could totally
foresee a future soon where basically the Trump administration is like, no,
(30:39):
we want a back to around a signal because Antifa
uses it. And then I think that there might be
some sort of signal might not be allowed to be
installed on iPhones or Android phones.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So this really isn't about ice block or any app
in particular for Micah, the solution might not be in
an app.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I think that what you need to do is find
like trusted local grips. So there are people all over
the country locally that are organizing. And if you live
in a town where there are a bunch of immigrants
and there isn't like a support network that already exists,
then maybe you should start like talking to people there
and start one. If you care about this stuff and
you want to get involved, you should actually talk to
(31:17):
people and not just play on your phone.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
As complicated as this might be, ice Block did serve
a purpose for people. It's gone now and it's only
getting harder to find out what Ice is doing. But
Ice is expanding their ability to find out what we're doing.
Ice recently signed a deal with a facial recognition company,
Clearview AI. They've bought spyware that's supposed to be able
to hack into lock smartphones and extract data. And they've
(31:43):
also announced that they're planning to launch a social media
monitoring team that's aimed at tracking people based on the
posts that they make online. The Department of Homeland Security
has claimed that their officials are now facing a quote
more than one thousand percent increase and assault against them,
and their families are being doxed and threatened online.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
They haven't explained where they're getting that thousand percent figure from.
And I don't think you can call an app that
reports sightings as dosing. But after those apps were taken down,
a group of hackers have posted the names and some
personal information of hundreds of government officials, including people working
for DHS and ICE. But bringing it back to ice
(32:25):
block for just a minute, for real computer programmers arguing
in public is very normal. I mean, there could be
a whole Netflix series of just computer beef. I mean,
episode one, WordPress versus WP Engine, Episode two, GPL versus BSD,
Episode three, whatever the hell they're doing over at Ruby
Central right now. Maybe this stuff sounds weird to you,
(32:45):
but just going back to how computer code was defined
legally as free speech and follow me here. If we
think of speech as expression and as art. I think
it makes sense. I mean, you pour hours of your
life into creating things, gonna care about the craft and
the product, and add on top of that the stakes.
(33:07):
If people can disagree over a bootloader, of course they're
going to disagree on the best way to help people
that they care about. A lot of times activist groups
agree with each other on like ninety nine percent of things.
They just disagree with each other on how something should
be done. Software is no different from that, and that
(33:33):
is gonna be it for this one. Thank you so
much for listening to this episode of kill Switch. If
you want to email us, we're at kill Switch at
Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram we're at kill switchpods.
And also we got some good news. Kill Switch just
won gold in the Technology category with the Signal Awards.
So shout out and thank you to everyone who's been
(33:53):
with us. As you know, we keep trying to figure
out how to navigate living in the future. And if
you like our show and help us win some more awards,
you know, why not leave us a review. It helps
other people find the show, which in turn helps us
keep doing our thing. And in case you didn't know,
kill Switch is on YouTube, so if you've ever been
wondering what the Fisker cars or the anime VTuber avatars
(34:14):
look like, there you go. The link for that and
everything else is in the show notes. Killswitch is hosted
by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts,
and Julia Nutter. Our theme song is by me and
Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes the show. From Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozma lashin On, Gesh Hadi Kadur,
(34:35):
and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina
Norvil and Nikki E. Tor
There is now an Apple learning people when ICE agents
are operating in their area.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
It's called ice Block, which allowed users to track and
report any public sightings that immigration agents deployed or detaining people.
Speaker 3 (00:23):
Apple says they have pulled an app that allows users
to track ICE agents after getting pressure from the Department
of Justice.
Speaker 4 (00:29):
So ice Block was an iPhone app that helps people
anonymously report ice sightings that are in their neighborhood, that
are nearby within a five miler adias, and you've got
notifications when other people are report ice sightings near you.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
Michael Lee is an independent security researcher and journalist. He's
talking about an ice reporting app called ice Block. The
tagline was quote see something, tap something. A lot of
people were looking for ways to deal with the Trump
administration's immigration policies, and in June, ice block went viral.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
And I think the thing that makes it different than
other various products is that it went viral. CNN did
some reporting on ice block, like early on, they had
like on TV all day one day, and then the
right wing Twitter or x blew up and started attacking it,
and so then it ended up getting like a million users.
Speaker 1 (01:23):
Despite the popularity Micah was skeptical of ice block, so
he did some digging.
Speaker 4 (01:29):
I called it active as in theater because it seemed
like it wasn't actually like aimed at helping people. It
was just aimed at, like, you know, making his app
that was going viral, get more users and stuff like that.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I'm afraid with a kaleidoscope and iHeart podcasts. This is
kill switch. I'm dextrats, I'm sing.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
I'm goodbye.
Speaker 1 (02:43):
When did you first hear about ice block?
Speaker 4 (02:47):
I heard ice black after I was on the and
then I heard about the right wing backlash.
Speaker 1 (02:51):
The backlash that MICA's referring to is the White House
Press Secretary saying.
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Sounds like this would be an incitement of further violence
against our ice The.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
White House boarders are saying THEO Jane's look at this
and see if they're crossing that line. And United States
Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Speaker 2 (03:08):
Saying we are looking at it, we are looking at him,
and he better watch out because that's not a protected speech.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
And the United States Secretary of Homeland Security Christy Nome
posted on Twitter or x calling it an obstruction of
justice and said quote, if you obstruct or assault or
law enforcement. We will hunt you down and you will
be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law end quote.
Speaker 4 (03:33):
I thought it was very interesting, but at the same time,
I have been doing some local work in my own
community in northern California, and I was very skeptical about
how useful it was just from my own experiences.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
If you were to describe how ice block works in
terms of the reporting function, is there anything you would
use to compare it to.
Speaker 4 (03:58):
I mean, it's super similar to just on typical map
apps where warns you have a speed trap right like
you're driving, and then it says cops have been reported
up ahead, and then you know, people all get that
on their phones and they start slowing down. That's basically
what it is. It's just like a location based app
where people can report here's an ice sighting, and then
(04:19):
other people who are nearby get the notification and then
they're like, oh, there's an ice sighting there. It's actually
overall pretty simple.
Speaker 1 (04:26):
Ice Block was created by a solo developer named Joshua
Aaron back in April, just a few months into President
Trump's second term. He told CNN that he made the
app because he wanted to do something to fight back
against what was happening in the US. He made ice
Block only available on iPhone because he said that making
it available on Android could require collecting information that could
put users at risk. Maybe that's annoyed Android users, but
(04:50):
there is some merit to this, at least in the
way that the app was doing things.
Speaker 4 (04:54):
From my understanding is it uses the Apple Cloud cat.
So normally what you'd have as an app running on
phones and then you'd have a server, and so when
you report something, it would communicate with the server and
save stuff in the database. So he's saying he's not
collecting any data, but instead he's essentially outsourcing this to Apples.
He doesn't need to like collect the location of users
(05:15):
who have this app installed. Instead, Apple's already collecting everyone's
location who has location services on and so it's just
relying on that. So that's that's like roughly the technical
way that he's keeping it completely anonymous, although it's really
not completely anonymous because you know, Apple can see everything.
Speaker 5 (05:32):
If ice Block.
Speaker 4 (05:32):
Gets data requests from you know, the FBI or DHS
or something, maybe they won't be able to comply because
they don't have data. But if Apple gets data requests
from the FBI or DHS, Apple actually has a lot
of data that they can turn over, including you know,
everyone who's installed the.
Speaker 1 (05:48):
App, right because relatively speaking, Apple does have a fairly
good reputation or good record in not just turning stuff
over willingly to the authorities. Like somebody comes and asks
for it, and they generally say no, right.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
When it's a valid law enforcement request. They like don't
really have much of the option to say no. They
can fight it with lawyers, but if they lose, then
they have to turn it over. And so what Apple
has a good reputation for is building in extra security
to make it so that it's harder for them to
turn stuff over. They have something called the Advanced Data
Production and anyone that wants to can turn it on
(06:26):
in their iCloud account, and it means that all that
data in your iCloud account is encrypted. So if Apple's
forced to turn it over, they can still turn it over.
It's just that it'll be encrypted data they're turning over,
and you, the user, will have a key that can
decrypt it. So they're doing work to make it harder
to turnover data, but they still are you know they're
(06:46):
a US company.
Speaker 5 (06:47):
They give data to the BLISS.
Speaker 1 (06:50):
There were some researchers who initially were a little skeptical
of how ice block worked. A colleague of MICA has
looked into it and confirmed that it did seem to
legitimately be working how it promised.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I didn't spend much time digging and stuff until a
Hope conference Hackers on Planet Earth that now happens every year.
It's in New York, and Joshua Aaron, the developer of
ice block, was giving a talk about ice block at Hope.
And as he was talking and then especially throughout the
Q and A, the audience was getting more and more
(07:20):
visibly frustrated because it was very clear that this guy
just doesn't know what he's talking about, and he kept
like making these big promises. He kept talking about how
he runs a server and he's like, believe me, my
server is highly secure, no one could hack it. I
built it myself, and I think of everything, and like
this is like an audience full of hackers and people
(07:41):
are like scanning his server and being like there's various
problems already.
Speaker 5 (07:46):
Just starting the.
Speaker 1 (07:47):
Talk, maybe a little late here, but it's probably worth
mentioning here that Micah isn't just some hobbyist programmer. In
twenty thirteen, he helped Edward Snowden league government spying documents.
So if Micah says that he's concerned about security, that's
going to hold some weight for people. And one big
issue that he and some other researchers had at this
conference was the fact that the developer didn't want to
(08:09):
make the apps code open source, which raised a big
red flag from Mica.
Speaker 4 (08:14):
In computer security, if you're making security products or privacy
products and you want people to trust you, the way
of doing this is to show your work to like
make your software open source, to invite outside researchers to
like look into it to try and find flaws. Anyone
can look at the code, anyone can use the code.
Anyone can, you know, take a copy of the code
(08:35):
and change it and release their own version. The big
benefit from a privacy and security perspective of open source
is it means that you're not like hiding how you
do stuff.
Speaker 5 (08:47):
You're being transparent about it.
Speaker 4 (08:48):
And for something like this where people are very concerned
that it's collecting their data, the basic stuff that a
developer can do is make it open source, and then
this way they can just like be like, look, you
don't have to trust us as much because maybe you
don't read code, but like someone else who does readcode
can like look through the code and confirm that it's
done what I say it's done. It has other benefits too,
(09:12):
like other people can actually help you fix bugs. Other
people can help you find vulnerabilities. Other people can add
features to it, and this is like common for security
software and privacy software.
Speaker 1 (09:23):
When he was asked in the Q and A if
you would accept help programming the app, Joshua Aaron said, no.
Speaker 2 (09:28):
Believe me when I say I would love help. Okay,
I'm supporting over a million users myself. There's not some
giant company behind this, but it's really really hard for
me to put my trust in somebody and share the
source code and share the access to this. So I
got to just say, so far, the answer is I'm
just not the trusting person. So no, I haven't entertained
(09:50):
having anybody else involved with it.
Speaker 1 (09:52):
Joshua Aaron was adamant that his ice block app is secure,
but he wouldn't budge on this open source issue. So
I could decided to ask a different question.
Speaker 4 (10:02):
I actually went and said another question, which was basically,
would you be open to publishing like a white paper
that explains how it works, so that you know, researchers
could like look at this and give feedback and make
it better, and also like security audits, Like you don't
need to open the source code to everyone, but there
are all of these security firms that will do a
(10:22):
like a penetration test of your code. They try to
hack it, and then if they find any problems, they
give you a report and then you fix them all.
And we were even like we could raise money for
a security audit. These are things that you can do
without making an open source it'll still make people trust
it more. But he was just like, Nope, I'm not
doing any of this stuff.
Speaker 1 (10:42):
All right, let's just leave aside the cybersecurity talk for
a second. Micah had another concern what would happen if
someone falsely reported in ice sighting or if they just
made a mistake. Mike has been volunteering with an organization
in his area called Norkel Resist. This group does a
lot of things, from fixing your car's break lights were free,
to distributing food to families who need it. But recently
(11:03):
they've been doing a lot of work supporting immigrants and
because of this, Micah has seen firsthand how a false
eye sighting can really cause panic.
Speaker 4 (11:12):
And a big thing is that lots of people are like,
oh my god, there's ice in this neighborhood, and they
like post that online and then a lot of people
like boost it, and most of the time that's not
actually true. One that I checked out there was this
overpass bridge looked like there was like a bunch of
people in uniforms on the bridge what looked kind of
like police vehicles, and like multiple people reported this bridge
(11:33):
and I went and confirmed that it was like a
fireman funeral service then, so.
Speaker 5 (11:39):
It wasn't ice at all.
Speaker 4 (11:40):
Sometimes it's actually just like a local police action, and
it just causes people to panic because the problem is
that there's like millions of people who are undocumented, and
then there's even more millions of people who are friends
and loves ones with people who are undocumented. There's all
of these teenagers whose parents are undocumented in their citizens
and stuff, and they're like scared out of their minds,
like constantly, and so if you're sitting there scrolling on
(12:03):
social media, and you're just seeing like, oh my god,
there's ice everywhere. It's really scary. And so it's like
very important to not cause panic and instead to just
spread the news about real things that are happening and
not just a bunch of big things that aren't happening.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
So at this Hacker's Conference talk, Micah asked Joshua Aaron
about this directly, and I.
Speaker 4 (12:22):
Guess my question is, how do you know that ice
block isn't just full of false positives? And have you
done any like user research or work with local immigration
groups to like figure out, you know, how reliable this is,
how much it's actually helping people versus causing panic.
Speaker 2 (12:41):
I'm not going to tell you there's no false sightings
in ice Block.
Speaker 5 (12:44):
Of course there are. That's what nefarious users do.
Speaker 2 (12:47):
They think it's really funny to scare people and hurt people.
But there are safeguards in the app.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
He eventually said that, like in the off chance that
someone posts something that's not real, then people will just
stay away from that area for a little.
Speaker 5 (13:01):
Bit, and that's not that bad.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
So, in an effort for user anonymity, the decision was
made that if there are false sightings, the worst case
scenario is that those people simply stay away from that
location for a few hours, much better than having user
identifiable data that could come under government subpoena. So I
(13:24):
hope that answers your question and kind of alleviates those concerns.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
That does sound kind of bad, though.
Speaker 4 (13:31):
I do think it's kind of bad because it's causing
people to like panic and to worry that there's way
more ice activity than there actually is. There was this
one other person who who also asked about you know,
there's all of these immigrant communities across the country that
have these pretty strong support networks and they're already doing
stuff in their own ways. As she asked, have you
(13:54):
planned on working with any of these groups? And basically
his answer was, I've talked to some community organizers and
they all do things their own way, and I wouldn't
be able to like make ice block work for this
group and then for this group and then for this group,
so he's just going to ignore their advice.
Speaker 1 (14:10):
After the conference, Micah did some more digging around and
he tried to ask the developers some questions via DMS.
That's when things started to get weird. More on that
after the.
Speaker 4 (14:20):
Break, After this Hope Talk. A group of us started
a signal group and we were basically like, Okay, this
app has promise. We think that the developer is like
(14:41):
not malicious, we think his heart is in the right place.
Maybe we can affect us to make it so that
it's actually a useful app for people, and then especially
like that will be so much better because there's already
like a million users. So we spent a bunch of
energy trying to figure out how to improve the app.
We wrote him a letter and then he just like
immediately rejected the letter and rejected our offer of various support.
(15:03):
Then I was like, okay, I'm going to write basically
about the Hope Talk. So I just started a blog
post about the Hope Talk and with like little clips
from the most frustrating parts. And then at the end
of my blog post.
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Michael wrote about all this in a post on his blog.
The title was Unfortunately the ice Block app is activism Theater.
But before we published it, he gave Joshua Aaron heads
up and he also flagged a potential security problem that
he'd found.
Speaker 4 (15:31):
So I messaged him on Blue Sky being like, I'm
that published this blog post about the hope talk. It's
not very flattering, but I also wanted to like privately
tell you that I discovered a problem with your server.
Speaker 5 (15:46):
I basically did a n MAP scan real quick.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Aside here in map or a network mapper is basically
a tool that lets you find devices on a network
and also potentially detect vulnerabilities.
Speaker 4 (15:58):
So I didn't en map scan to see what ports
were a and then I also use this one feature
that just does version detection, so like, if it sees
that this server runs a web server, it tells you
what software is running on that web server. And this
was like the step zero before you start like trying
to hack something, you do basic reconnaissance. So this was
(16:18):
a very basic reconnaissance.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
Right, just see what software they running?
Speaker 5 (16:22):
Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
And I saw that he was running Apache, which is
a common web server software. But the version of Apache
that was running was like eight months old or something.
And the thing about this is it's always important to
install updates, and the reason is because updates fixed security problems.
And so I like looked up that version and there
were all of these known vulnerabilities in that version of
apatching I just told him, hey, your version of Apache
(16:45):
has all these known vulnerabilities and some of them are
marked critical. You should probably update and he blocked me.
So that was the response, and then he uh sent
me a message on his other blue Sky account and
his personal account and was like, stop telling lies about
me and ice block. This is my last communication. And
I was like, hey, let me know if I got
(17:07):
anything wrong in the blog post, I'm happy to post
a correction. But then a few days later I checked
and his server was still running the vulnerable version of Apache.
So I sent him another message and I was like, hey,
you should really update this. I'll give you a deadline.
I'll give you a week to fix it. And it's
like really really really easy to fix. It's just running
the update command. That's it. That will fix the problem.
(17:29):
And so then he blocked me there too, And this
is just basically like really bad way to handle a
vulnerability report. I would imagine that at the very least
he will walk his server to not get hacked. I
waited until the week was up, and then I just
like wrote a short blog post being like here's what
I found. I hope this encourages them to actually install updates,
(17:51):
and then like within two hours he installed updates after
I published the blog post, so it worked.
Speaker 1 (18:00):
I mean, you publicly bullied my man into updating the
Apache server. Yeah, we'll talk. You can come off is
kind of being just like a hater, Like, what's this
dude doing? Why is this guy being being on the
internet about this really well intentioned software, right?
Speaker 4 (18:18):
I mean, so I don't want to come off as
a hater. And the entire time I've tried to help
make his app useful, but it was just so frustrating.
He's just saying all these things with such confidence that
aren't true. And honestly, like, I think that the problems
that we're facing with mass deportation, they're not solved by
an app. They're much bigger than an app, And so
(18:40):
I think the apps can be maybe a helpful component,
but there's a much bigger situation. And I think that
maybe if ice block was like working directly with a
network of local groups around the country and had betting
built in, that would actually make it really usefulat for
people to get like verified information. But like you know,
and if he's not doing any of that, then like
(19:01):
what's the point?
Speaker 1 (19:03):
To some people, it might sound weird that computer programmers
would publicly have an argument over an app, but trust me,
this stuff is very normal. Entire operating systems have been
written because someone couldn't agree on something as minor as
how the computer should boot up. The stakes just feel
a lot higher here because both of these people really
care about the cause of helping immigrants, and applying technology
(19:25):
to civil rights issues is way harder than most people think.
Just as an example, I have a friend who is
working on a totally different national campaign to help undocumented immigrants.
The project wasn't an app, but they created basically this
downloadable infocard. The idea was that if you get stopped
by ice, you could pull out your phone and you
could pull up this card from a digital wallet and
(19:47):
would have all this information on it, like your rights
stay silent, your right to a lawyer, people to contact,
things like that. And it looked really slick, and they
had all these social media influencers who are excited about it,
and they wanted to help them promote it, and things
were looking great. But then they showed their project to
some local groups who actually work with assisting undocumented immigrants,
(20:08):
and the group said, no, this is not a good idea.
You do not want people opening up their phone around
ice because they might take it or they might coerce
them into showing personal information. They said, look, here's what
actually works in this community. Paper cards with your rights
printed on it. If you want to help us, help
us print those up and distribute them in a bunch
(20:28):
of different languages. No digital nonsense, just paper. Now. The
activists who worked on this other digital wallet thing were
pretty humiliated, but they ended up taking the local group's
advice and said, you know what, this is what's called
being a good ally, and you know, maybe so. In
software development, though there's a simpler term for it, we
(20:48):
just call it user research, putting aside all the cool
things that you want the user to do with your
software and figuring out what the people who would actually
use your software actually need.
Speaker 4 (21:00):
I think that if you're actually like doing user research,
trying to figure out what do we need, there's a
lot of undocumented people who work in like the service
industry or who work in farming, and actually talking to
those people, I think that what will be really helpful
is to make it so that a bunch of people
who like work in the kitchen at restaurants they know
how to report an ICE sighting, because what happens when
(21:22):
like ice comes into the restaurant, like someone should report it? Like,
I don't know if you're going to get like the
people who really need this, most of them don't have
iPhones right to begin with. What you really need is
like how do you get this person working in the
kitchen to be able to report, oh, God, ice is here.
And then at that point, what do you actually want?
(21:43):
Do you just want to like tell people that ice
is at this restaurant and then that's it, or do
you want to actually like have community come out and
support of the people there, start documenting stuff, start providing
legal support. I think it's kind of shortsighted, Like none
of this has been really like thought through. It's more
just like, ooh, location based apps are cool. It's a
really hard problem. We can't use technology to solve this problem.
(22:07):
It's a political problem. We need your restore democracy, and
an app is not gonna help us restore democracy.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
So after all this, you've written about this, you've kind
of gone back and forth, but then just recently the
app gets taken out of the app store m H.
And then the day after that there's a similar app
that gets pulled off the Google Play Store.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Apple says it took it down due to safety risks,
and they're not the only ones. Google says they removed
similar apps from the app store for Android devices, and
all of it coming as Ice is ramping upraids across
the country.
Speaker 1 (22:43):
Apple removed ice Block from their app store and Google
removed a similar app called red Dot. Considering that Micah
had been criticizing ice Block, you might think that he'd
be happy about this. Well, no, he's not, and he
says that this is a sign of a bigger problem.
That's after the break in early October, Apple removed ice
(23:15):
Block from the app store, no warning, just gone. But
it wasn't just ice Block. Other apps also disappeared, like,
for example, an app called eyes Up. This app was
different from ice Block. It wasn't about real time location reporting.
It was just about preserving evidence of encounters with Ice
and maintaining a public record that couldn't be hidden or censored.
Speaker 4 (23:35):
And so it's like people keep posting videos to like TikTok,
to Instagram, to cts of Ice arresting people and being
violent with people, and this is just an app that
archives them.
Speaker 5 (23:47):
That's it. It's a map, and.
Speaker 4 (23:49):
You can browse the map, and you can click on
an area, and you click on a video and watch
the video. It's just archiving ice abuse with the goal
of preserving evidence in case the materials ever needed in court.
On the Fitch and Apple just took this down as well.
And I think that both Apple and Google they got
a bunch of pressure from Paanbandi from the Department of Justice,
(24:10):
and they both basically did this like absolutely mind boggling
thing where they're basically saying that, like masked ice stones
are a protected class.
Speaker 1 (24:19):
Now that phrasing might sound weird, but it's not something
that Mike had just made up. Google told four or
four Media that they had, and I'm reading four or
Four's article on this, removed apps because they shared the
location of what it describes as a vulnerable group that
recently faced a violent act connected to those sorts of
ice spotting apps. I won't editorialize here, but I'll just
(24:41):
point out that Google calling ICE, which again is a
government agency, a vulnerable group, is unusual for a tech company.
Before this, the only people using this sort of language
was the Trump administration.
Speaker 4 (24:54):
I think that the bigger picture for me is that
we have like a duopoly smartphones. We have iPhones and
we have Android phones. That's it, and both of them
are now just like arms of the US government. I
think that they've both had like various histories of removing
apps from the app stores. But I feel like this
(25:14):
is actually really dangerous, not just for apps that like
activists might rely on in the United States, but like
around the world, all of the phones that everyone in
the world uses.
Speaker 5 (25:25):
Are essentially like what software they're allowed to run.
Speaker 4 (25:27):
On those are controlled by the Trump administration, And that's
like a really bad situation to be in for the world.
This experience is showing that, like in the United States,
if you're trying to like fight ice abuses, or if
you're trying to do anything that like the trauma administration
doesn't like.
Speaker 5 (25:44):
I think that we need to.
Speaker 4 (25:45):
Stop relying on apps, start relying on websites, stop relying
on US companies because we can't trust them, right.
Speaker 5 (25:52):
I think that this is not a good sign for
things to come.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
When you say something like the what we're allowed to
put on our phones is basically controlled by the Trump
and administration sounds kind of nuts, But you know, maybe
it's not an overstatement, given that ice Block was repeatedly
called out by the Trump administration as being something that
they did not want available, and then it becomes not available,
and then a similar app becomes not available anymore on
(26:21):
both the Apple App Store and the Google Play Store.
Speaker 4 (26:24):
Tam Bondi has given interviews being like, oh, yeah, we
went to Apple and Google. We told them to like,
you know, they need to do more to protect ice Yeah.
And in fact, actually, just like last week, tam Bondi
testified in front of Congress where she said that, like
they asked them to remove ice Block, and she said
that ice block was posting the home addresses of ice
(26:44):
officers and it was dosing them and that's not what
ice block was doing. But that was just just like
a little example of lying under oath that Lottie's just dead.
Speaker 5 (26:53):
Last week.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
Let me ask you this, the ice Block got removed
from the Apple App Store. Do you think it should
be rein stated? Do you think it should be back up? Oh?
Speaker 4 (27:02):
Yeah, absolutely. I don't think it's that useful. But I
feel like this is like a bigger issue regardless of
what the problems are with this one app, Like anyone
that wants to make an app that whatever their idea is,
that they should be able to make those apps. It's
fundamentally it's like a free speech essuo. It's not very
good for democracy that these two major corporations that are
(27:23):
basically like just like bending the knee to authoritarianism control
the gates.
Speaker 1 (27:31):
Free speech might not be something you would think applies
to computer code, but actually it does. In nineteen ninety nine,
the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled the code was
considered speech. A grad student had written an encryption program
and wanted to publish the code online, but under US law,
encryption was basically treated like a weapon. If this student
wanted to share his code, he would have had to
(27:53):
register as an arms dealer and get government approval. The
student sued, and the court eventually ruled that those restrictions
had violated his First Amendment rights. He could publish his code,
and now if you got code, you want to publish,
so can you.
Speaker 4 (28:08):
The Core ruled that, hey, this is this person's speech.
This code that they wrote is their speech. We can't
restrict their speech because of the First Amendment. That's what
made encryption legal in the United SAIDs.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
But true free speech in this context becomes kind of
irrelevant when Apple has made it so that basically nothing
can be installed on their iPhone without going through the
official app store first. So what about Google. Well, Android,
historically you've basically been able to treat it like any
other computer. Most people just use the Google Play Store,
but if you wanted to, you could do something called
(28:41):
sideloading and pretty easily install whatever you want on your phone.
But starting next year, Google's going to require that all apps,
whether downloaded from the Google Play Store or not, be
verified by them.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
The change that Google is making is basically preventing any
app that's not digitally signed by Google Key from getting
installed on your phone. It basically is like essentially getting
rid of sideloading and making it so that you can't
run anything on your phone if it's not approved by Google.
Speaker 1 (29:10):
Which is kind of nuts, right because I mean, if
you told somebody you know, you're not allowed to have
certain programs on your Windows machine. I mean, first off,
Napster never would have happened. Ever, that that entire saga
never would have happened, which maybe you think it shouldn't.
But the idea that if there's an app that the
(29:30):
app store doesn't want you to have, or that a
certain company doesn't want you to have, and they don't
want you to have it because a government doesn't want
you to have it. I mean, these are the things
that freak people out about other countries, and this is
now something that we deal with the United States.
Speaker 5 (29:43):
We in the United States have been very privileged.
Speaker 4 (29:46):
It's like we're not used to getting everything like spied
on as much as we as other countries are. We're
used to being in this privileged situation where all of
this technological dystopia stuff happens to other people. I think
that's over. I think it's gonna start happening to us
now too.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
For you looking at ice Block and looking that everything's
happened since it was banned and all that, what are
you thinking about now and what do you think other
people should be thinking about.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
I'm thinking that we can't rely on apps anymore. Like
I rely so much on the Signal app. That's the
number one app that I use a whole lot. And
I think that for the moment, signal safe, especially because
if Trump people all use it. But I could totally
foresee a future soon where basically the Trump administration is like, no,
(30:39):
we want a back to around a signal because Antifa
uses it. And then I think that there might be
some sort of signal might not be allowed to be
installed on iPhones or Android phones.
Speaker 1 (30:48):
So this really isn't about ice block or any app
in particular for Micah, the solution might not be in
an app.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
I think that what you need to do is find
like trusted local grips. So there are people all over
the country locally that are organizing. And if you live
in a town where there are a bunch of immigrants
and there isn't like a support network that already exists,
then maybe you should start like talking to people there
and start one. If you care about this stuff and
you want to get involved, you should actually talk to
(31:17):
people and not just play on your phone.
Speaker 1 (31:20):
As complicated as this might be, ice Block did serve
a purpose for people. It's gone now and it's only
getting harder to find out what Ice is doing. But
Ice is expanding their ability to find out what we're doing.
Ice recently signed a deal with a facial recognition company,
Clearview AI. They've bought spyware that's supposed to be able
to hack into lock smartphones and extract data. And they've
(31:43):
also announced that they're planning to launch a social media
monitoring team that's aimed at tracking people based on the
posts that they make online. The Department of Homeland Security
has claimed that their officials are now facing a quote
more than one thousand percent increase and assault against them,
and their families are being doxed and threatened online.
Speaker 5 (32:03):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
They haven't explained where they're getting that thousand percent figure from.
And I don't think you can call an app that
reports sightings as dosing. But after those apps were taken down,
a group of hackers have posted the names and some
personal information of hundreds of government officials, including people working
for DHS and ICE. But bringing it back to ice
(32:25):
block for just a minute, for real computer programmers arguing
in public is very normal. I mean, there could be
a whole Netflix series of just computer beef. I mean,
episode one, WordPress versus WP Engine, Episode two, GPL versus BSD,
Episode three, whatever the hell they're doing over at Ruby
Central right now. Maybe this stuff sounds weird to you,
(32:45):
but just going back to how computer code was defined
legally as free speech and follow me here. If we
think of speech as expression and as art. I think
it makes sense. I mean, you pour hours of your
life into creating things, gonna care about the craft and
the product, and add on top of that the stakes.
(33:07):
If people can disagree over a bootloader, of course they're
going to disagree on the best way to help people
that they care about. A lot of times activist groups
agree with each other on like ninety nine percent of things.
They just disagree with each other on how something should
be done. Software is no different from that, and that
(33:33):
is gonna be it for this one. Thank you so
much for listening to this episode of kill Switch. If
you want to email us, we're at kill Switch at
Kaleidoscope dot NYC or on Instagram we're at kill switchpods.
And also we got some good news. Kill Switch just
won gold in the Technology category with the Signal Awards.
So shout out and thank you to everyone who's been
(33:53):
with us. As you know, we keep trying to figure
out how to navigate living in the future. And if
you like our show and help us win some more awards,
you know, why not leave us a review. It helps
other people find the show, which in turn helps us
keep doing our thing. And in case you didn't know,
kill Switch is on YouTube, so if you've ever been
wondering what the Fisker cars or the anime VTuber avatars
(34:14):
look like, there you go. The link for that and
everything else is in the show notes. Killswitch is hosted
by Me Dexter Thomas. It's produced by Sena Ozaki, Darluk Potts,
and Julia Nutter. Our theme song is by me and
Kyle Murdoch, and Kyle also mixes the show. From Kaleidoscope.
Our executive producers are Ozma lashin On, Gesh Hadi Kadur,
(34:35):
and Kate Osborne. From iHeart, our executive producers are Katrina
Norvil and Nikki E. Tor
kill switch News
Hosts And Creators
Oz Woloshyn
Karah Preiss
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