The app seems to be doing what they say it can do. Is there any actual data as to it's effectiveness, match and false positive rate?
Where has the DHS made any statement that the app does something that it does not do?
The closest thing I can find is from the 2025 DHS AI use case inventory, where the entry for Mobile fortify states it's benefits are:
"Utilizing facial comparison or fingerprint matching services, agents/officers in the field are able to quickly verify identity utilizing trusted source photos."
The claim is not that the app verifies someone's identity, but that it can potentially find trusted source photos that look similar to the person in question.
The officer could then evaluate the match, and make a determination to their own satisfaction that their subject is one and the same as the person in the database.
[...] an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship [...]
CBP -> Customs and Border Protection, descended from U.S. Customs Service, which traces back to the end of the 18th century, but added to DHS at the beginning of the 21st
ICE -> Immigration and Customs Enforcement, created in 2003 from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies
They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred. As a result, you're seeing ICE doing crowd control, BORTAC (basically CBP's tactical / SWAT unit) doing run-of-the-mill immigration enforcement, and all kinds of other wackiness. The DHS does much much more than just CBP/ICE stuff too.
> They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred.
A large part of that is that notional function of the “immigration crackdown” falls logically in ICE's domain, and this was the justification for massively increasing ICE funding, but CBP (and particularly the Border Patrol) having much more of the no-rules culture that was sought for the operation, leading to CBP and Border Patrol personnel taking key roles in the operation (which is why, until he became something of a political scapegoat for the Administration policy, a Border Patrol area commander got redesignated a "commander at large" and then given operational command not just of Border Patrol involvement but the notionally ICE-led operation.)
A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.
The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.
The Patriot Act removed and lowered many of the barriers. And now we're back to what the Church Commission found.
Trust me the US does not have a patent on bureaucracy... Over the centuries things just develop. One can only assume it made sense once.
I haven't seen AI feature in any reporting. Rather, the software had bugs, some people decided the software couldn't be wrong and convinced others to the point of conviction?
If you think carrying a form of ID or passport will save you from ICE, I just want you to imagine a scenario where you are alone with several federal agents who, when provided with your proof of citizenship, light it on fire with a match and throw you in a van. Papers are just physical objects and unless ICE is wearing 24/7 streaming body cams, the above scenario could happen to literally anyone.
The cops are issuing a citation, which you can contest in a court with a reference to that agency record. ICE has a habit of snatching people off the streets and stashing them in not-quite-black sites in Texas or Florida until they can book them on a private airplane to Guatemala.
Readers, whatever you're doing right now is what you would be doing during the rise of Nazi Germany... Be kind, be a good neighbor, don't talk to cops.
There was a local incident where ICE drove erratically to make it look as though a legal observer initiated a crash. They then called and lied to the local police department. The activist was then released when he provided dash cam footage proving that they lied about the incident. https://lataco.com/oxnard-dash-cam-ice-crash
There is a good format for two people to have a discussion in good faith: https://yesnodebate.org/
I'll start - Do you think it is good that federal agents are ignoring due process?
My turn? A hypothetical group of men with a swords are intent on doing something you disagree with. Would it be wise to attempt to stop them while unarmed and outnumbered?
The framing of your injustices is specious - while I'd normally be right with you about the synergy of corporate power forming a de-facto government, that these became mainstream political issues really just demonstrates how far your bubble has been warped by propagandists. Do you know how you can look at the blue tribe media and easily pick out the inflammatory extremist wackos? Your tribe has that also. If you are unable to see it, this means you are saturated in it.
The framing of corporate vaccine mandates is from the same vein - both the implication that it's at the same level of coercion as de jure government action, and also the normalization of what would normally be a fringe viewpoint as a mainstream political rallying cry (a direct result of tribal propaganda). If you want to talk about needless escalation, sane leadership would have unequivocally told everyone they should get vaccinated, and then the number of people defecting would have been small enough to just cope with.
Furthermore addressing your original appeal for "open, peaceful, extended discussion", this doesn't particularly work when the red tribe is still fully cheering on their spite-candidate looting and burning our country's institutions to "own the libs". From what I've seen there are many Democrats still asking "how can we compromise" (even if half are tone deaf about the reasons), while the red tribe continues to reject any criticism of what they're told is "winning".
When the giant finally wakes in America it won't be reasonable or well targeted. I'm reminded that violence in gang neighborhoods is modeled as a contaigen. Have we ever seen a violence "pandemic"?
Which I guess is why Zuck has been building compounds.
Particularly given the example from the article:
In Oregon testimony last year, an agent said two photos of a woman in custody taken with his face-recognition app produced different identities. The woman was handcuffed and looking downward, the agent said, prompting him to physically reposition her to obtain the first image. The movement, he testified, caused her to yelp in pain. The app returned a name and photo of a woman named Maria; a match that the agent rated “a maybe.”
Agents called out the name, “Maria, Maria,” to gauge her reaction. When she failed to respond, they took another photo. The agent testified the second result was “possible,” but added, “I don’t know.” Asked what supported probable cause, the agent cited the woman speaking Spanish, her presence with others who appeared to be noncitizens, and a “possible match" via facial recognition. The agent testified that the app did not indicate how confident the system was in a match. “It’s just an image, your honor. You have to look at the eyes and the nose and the mouth and the lips.”OP's lead sentence is race-baiting, bubble-coded hyperbolic misinformation, and the entire first paragraph is completely unnecessary and uncharacteristic of appropriate HN content. We know how to have better discussions here. Starting with primary source and not editorialized re-posts is one of them.
Also, "non-white" is not really a "specific ethnic group" imo; and the article does not lead with "much more likely to suffer consequences" but rather "DHS want to find non-white people to deport by any means necessary" which is a gross mischaracterization of the stated intention of actual government officials. If you have direct evidence to the contrary lmk
Here's a whole article about it! https://www.commondreams.org/news/dhs-100-million-deportatio...
Have you thought of doing even a tiny bit of research?
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/10/immi...
Your vocabulary indicates that this information will go right above your head and I anticipate a lot of illogical rationalization in response so this is more for the edification of others reading.