Re: Surveillance
Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2020 5:54 pm
Via Cryptogon:
https://www.wsj.com/articles/federal-ag ... 1581078600Federal Agencies Use Cellphone Location Data for Immigration Enforcement
Commercial database that maps movements of millions of cellphones is deployed by immigration and border authorities
By Byron Tau and Michelle Hackman
Feb. 7, 2020 7:30 am ET
The Trump administration has bought access to a commercial database that maps the movements of millions of cellphones in America and is using it for immigration and border enforcement, according to people familiar with the matter and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
The location data is drawn from ordinary cellphone apps, including those for games, weather and e-commerce, for which the user has granted permission to log the phone’s location.
The Department of Homeland Security has used the information to detect undocumented immigrants and others who may be entering the U.S. unlawfully, according to these people and documents.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a division of DHS, has used the data to help identify immigrants who were later arrested, these people said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection, another agency under DHS, uses the information to look for cellphone activity in unusual places, such as remote stretches of desert that straddle the Mexican border, the people said.
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https://news.yahoo.com/exclusive-fbi-do ... 17370.html
Exclusive: FBI document reveals local and state police are collecting intelligence to expand terrorism watch list
Martin de Bourmont and Jana Winter, Yahoo News - February 7, 2020
Despite a federal judge’s ruling last September that the U.S. government’s terror watch list violates constitutional rights, an FBI report obtained by Yahoo News shows local and state law enforcement agencies are being used to gather intelligence on individuals to collect information about those already in the database.
Law enforcement “encounters of watchlisted individuals almost certainly yield increased opportunities for intelligence collection,” says the FBI document, dated more than a month after the federal court ruling. The FBI says such encounters could include traffic stops or domestic disputes, which gives law enforcement “the opportunity to acquire additional biographic identifiers, fraudulent identification documents, financial information and associates of watchlisted individuals,” which might assist in thwarting terrorist acts.
The Terrorism Screening Database, widely known as the watch list, was created in 2003 and consists of names of people suspected of being involved with terrorism. Over the years, the list has grown to include the names of 1.1 million people, raising concerns that many of those on the list have no involvement in terrorism but have little or no legal resources with which to challenge the designation.
People can be put on the watch list for “reasonable suspicion,” a loosely defined category that allows anyone related to a suspected terrorist or considered somehow to be an “associate” to end up on the list, even if the government has no evidence of the individual’s involvement in terrorist activity, according to a copy of the guidelines published in 2014 by the Intercept.
Last year, a federal judge found in favor of 23 Muslim Americans who argued that their inclusion in the Terrorist Screening Database violated their constitutional right to due process.
“There is no evidence, or contention, that any of these plaintiffs satisfy the definition of a ‘known terrorist,’” wrote Judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia on Sept. 4, 2019. Trenga noted that being put on the watch list “does not require any evidence that the person engaged in criminal activity, committed a crime, or will commit a crime in the future and individuals who have been acquitted of a terrorism-related crime may still be listed.”
Trenga asked the government to propose revisions to the watchlist. Instead, the government filed an appeal and a motion to stay the district court case. A hearing in that case is now scheduled for Feb. 14.
Yet even as the government is under pressure to revise the watch list, it appears to be using police to rapidly expand the information it is collecting for those currently on it, and possibly adding new names. The FBI document on law enforcement encounters with watch-listed individuals says that between 2015 and 2018, the government was able to collect almost 5,000 new “biographical identifiers.”
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