AI is Unmasking ICE
- Thomas Neuburger
- 7 hours ago
- 2 min read
By Thomas Neuburger
Still on a holiday. Still can’t stay away. I thought this was worth noticing. AI has a dark side. This is the light side of that.
From Politico:
AI is unmasking ICE officers. Can Washington do anything about it? An activist has started using artificial intelligence to identify Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents beneath their masks — a use of the technology sparking new political concerns over AI-powered surveillance. Dominick Skinner, a Netherlands-based immigration activist, estimates he and a group of volunteers have publicly identified at least 20 ICE officials recorded wearing masks during arrests. He told POLITICO his experts are “able to reveal a face using AI, if they have 35 percent or more of the face visible.” The AI-powered project adds a new twist to the debates over both ICE masking and government surveillance tools, as immigration enforcement becomes more widespread and aggressive.
The rest of the piece is Politico saying “poor them” — either sincerely or pro forma, so Trump doesn’t pull their funding, or access, whatever.
ICE agents “don’t deserve to be hunted online by activists using AI,” said Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), who chairs the Senate Homeland Security subcommittee on border management and the federal workforce.
The article notes that “some Democrats” are concerned about the masking, but apparently not too much: “they [the same Democrats] still say they’re uneasy that vigilante campaigns have begun using technology to do it.” Because law and order, I’m sure.
Two things to note:
Oppressive states inspire guerrilla war.
The activist is safely in Europe, not the U.S.
Worth paying attention to. More than a decade ago, when Julian Assange was forced to flee to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, I expected an Anonymous hactivist counter-attack. Never took place.
Will this time be different? Has the world changed since then? We’ll have to see.