How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE

EFF update
5 hours 49 minutes ago

ICE has been invading U.S. cities, targeting, surveilling, harassing, assaulting, detaining, and torturing people who are undocumented immigrants. They also have targeted people with work permits, asylum seekers, permanent residents (people holding “green cards”), naturalized citizens, and even citizens by birth. ICE has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on surveillance technology to spy on anyone—and potentially everyone—in the United States. It can be hard to imagine how to defend oneself against such an overwhelming force. But a few enterprising hackers have started projects to do counter surveillance against ICE, and hopefully protect their communities through clever use of technology. 

Let’s start with Flock, the company behind a number of automated license plate reader (ALPR) and other camera technologies. You might be surprised at how many Flock cameras there are in your community. Many large and small municipalities around the country have signed deals with Flock for license plate readers to track the movement of all cars in their city. Even though these deals are signed by local police departments, oftentimes ICE also gains access. 

Because of their ubiquity, people are interested in finding out where and how many Flock cameras are in their community. One project that can help with this is the OUI-SPY, a small piece of open source hardware. The OUI-SPY runs on a cheap Arduino compatible chip called an ESP-32. There are multiple programs available for loading on the chip, such as “Flock You,” which allows people to detect Flock cameras and “Sky-Spy” to detect overhead drones. There’s also “BLE Detect,” which detects various Bluetooth signals including ones from Axon, Meta’s Ray-Bans that secretly record you, and more. It also has a mode commonly known as “fox hunting” to track down a specific device. Activists and researchers can use this tool to map out different technologies and quantify the spread of surveillance. 

There’s also the open source Wigle app which is primarily designed for mapping out Wi-Fi, but also has the ability to make an audio alert when a specific Wi-Fi or Bluetooth identifier is detected. This means you can set it up to get a notification when it detects products from Flock, Axon, or other nasties in their vicinity. 

One enterprising YouTuber, Benn Jordan, figured out a way to fool Flock cameras into not recording his license plate simply by painting some minor visual noise on his license plate. This is innocuous enough that any human will still be able to read his license plate, but it completely prevented Flock devices from recognizing his license plate as a license plate at the time. Some states have outlawed drivers obscuring their license plates, so taking such action is not recommended. 

Jordan later went on to discover hundreds of misconfigured Flock cameras that were exposing their administrator interface without a password on the public internet. This would allow anyone with an internet connection to view a live surveillance feed, download 30 days of video, view logs, and more. The cameras pointed at parks, public trails, busy intersections, and even a playground. This was a massive breach of public trust and a huge mistake for a company that claims to be working for public safety.

Other hackers have taken on the task of open-source intelligence and community reporting. One interesting example is deflock.me and alpr.watch, which are crowdsourced maps of ALPR cameras. Much like the OUI-SPY project, this allows activists to map out and expose Flock surveillance cameras in their community. 

There have also been several ICE reporting apps released, including apps to report ICE sightings in your area such Stop ICE Alerts, ICEOUT.org, and ICE Block. ICEBlock was delisted by Apple at the request of Attorney General Pam Bondi, a fact we are suing over. There is also Eyes Up, an app to securely record and archive ICE raids, which was taken down by Apple earlier this year. 

Another interesting project documenting ICE and creating a trove of open-source intelligence is ICE List Wiki which contains info on companies that have contracts with ICE, incidents and encounters with ICE, and vehicles ICE uses. 

People without programming knowledge can also get involved. In Chicago, people used whistles to warn their neighbors that ICE was present or in the area. Many people 3D-printed whistles along with instructional booklets to hand out to their communities, allowing a wider distribution of whistles and consequently earlier warnings for their neighbors. 

Many hackers have started hosting digital security trainings for their communities or building web sites with security advice, including how to remove your data from the watchful eyes of the surveillance industry. To reach a broader community, trainers have even started hosting trainings on how to defend their communities and what to do in an ICE raid in video games, such as Fortnight. 

There is also EFF’s own Rayhunter project for detecting cell-site simulators, about which we have written extensively. Rayhunter runs on a cheap mobile hotspot and doesn’t require deep technical knowledge to use.

It’s important to remember that we are not powerless. Even in the face of a domestic law enforcement presence with massive surveillance capabilities and military-esque technologies, there are still ways to engage in surveillance self-defense. We cannot give into nihilism and fear. We must continue to find small ways to protect ourselves and our communities, and when we can, fight back. 

EFF is not affiliated with any of these projects (other than Rayhunter) and does not endorse them. We don’t make any statements about the legality of using any of these projects. Please consult with an attorney to determine what risks there may be. 



Related Cases: EFF v. DOJ, DHS (ICE tracking apps)
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Annual activity report 2024

Statewatch
17 hours 29 minutes ago

You can find our full annual report and accounts on the website of the Charity Commission.

Seeking optimism in troubling times

2024 made even clear what many of us have been saying for some time: authoritarianism and racism are firmly on the rise, and despite many brave and important struggles against it, definitive responses are yet to be found. Our work throughout the year reflected this ongoing tension; it also shows reasons for optimism, despite the gloomy political outlook.

We exposed, reported on and analysed ongoing attempts to undermine the rule of law, basic rights and liberties, and democratic safeguards: plans to offshore asylum processing; the influencing of police and internal security officials over new laws; increased surveillance powers; and crackdowns on protest and free speech. In doing so, we continued to provide a vital resource for activists, advocates, journalists and others.

That reporting and analysis is, in and of itself, a form of opposition to these nefarious developments. Within the terms of our charitable status, we also gave our support to movements and campaigns seeking to oppose them more directly: amongst others, those demanding that states uphold the rights of refugees and the right to asylum; halt new measures for ethnic profiling; ensure democratic scrutiny of border externalisation policies; ban invasive and authoritarian surveillance technologies; and to halt European governments’ complicity in breaches of international law in Palestine.

That complicity has helped to further derail and undermine the international norms and institutions created to halt military violence against civilians and civil infrastructure. This has had horrifying consequences for those subject to displacement, and to attacks on the ground and from the air. Faced with widespread popular protest against these positions, many European governments have resorted to unjustifiable restrictions on protest and freedom of speech, including through the use of criminal and anti-terrorism laws.

It is however by no means an entirely new situation. Foreign policy has always been linked to domestic repression and rights abuses.

It was demonstrations against the Vietnam War in 1968 that led to the formation of Britain’s Special Demonstration Squad, an undercover police unit tasked with infiltrating and undermining left-wing and progressive movements. Europe’s strategic alliance with Turkey means supporters of Kurdish autonomy and independence continue to face suspicion (at the very least) from European authorities. The ‘war on terror’ was and is animated by racism and criminalisation, in particular against Muslims – but it was prefigured by history, such as the British response to campaigns for self-determination in Ireland and other colonies.

As Tony Bunyan, Statewatch’s founder, Director (1991-2020) and Director Emeritus (2020-24) wrote in 2006:

Five years on we know that the ‘war on terrorism’ is going to be permanent, not temporary. This is not just because of 11 March 2004 (Madrid), 7 and 21 July 2005 (London) and terrible terrorist bombings elsewhere. It is also because the pre-conditions for further attacks persist and show no signs of abating – Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, US militarism, Guantanamo Bay, rendition and global free market economics which perpetuate poverty and gross inequality.

In September last year, Tony passed away. Though age slowed him towards the end of his life, his commitment to the cause never wavered: he was constantly planning, plotting and proposing. He was born in 1941, and his early experiences and involvement in political activism in the 1960s and 1970s profoundly influenced his outlook on the world for the rest of his remarkable life. He made profound contributions to the struggle against state secrecy and for civil liberties, and while he himself never set foot outside Europe, he was deeply-aware of and informed by political events and struggles elsewhere in the world.

He took this view with him when he founded Statewatch, along with a similar-minded group of other activists, journalists and lawyers in 1991. We have always been primarily concerned with the state of civil liberties in the European Union and the UK, but Europe is not an isolated island – the very reason it remains one of the richest parts of the world is because plunder, exploitation and expropriation carried out elsewhere.

This history, the present it has created, and the implications of both are becoming increasingly well-known – though there of course legions of people doggedly opposed to honest discussion and dissection of the legacies of racism, colonialism and empire.

It is this latter group that have been in the political ascendancy for some time now. Halting their ongoing attacks on rights and liberties is no small task, but it is more urgent than ever. It would be simple to say that the results of failing to do so do not bear thinking about – but, in fact, the results of failure can already be seen, from Los Angeles, to the Mediterranean Sea, to Gaza.

With that in mind, it might seem difficult to be optimistic. Yet there are still many reasons for optimism. They can be seen throughout the campaigns and movements we worked alongside throughout 2024, and will continue to provide information and analysis to in the future. And they can be seen in the growing number of groups and organisations that, regardless of growing state repression, continue to stand up for the rights of themselves and others.

It is these struggles that Statewatch has always sought to support with its work. Into 2025 and beyond we will build upon our legacy and past achievements, to increase our role in the struggle against state secrecy and repression, for rights and freedoms, and, ultimately, for a better world.

Statewatch