Privacy issues and politics aside, the title doesn't really seem to describe the content of the article.
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?
Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually “verify” the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents—a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used.
That quote from the source wired article, does not allege that the DHS makes any claim that the app can itself verify anyone's identity.
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.
ICE told a ranking member of the House homeland security committee:
[...] 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 [...]
It's an excuse generator, nothing more. They could use Hotdog / Not Hotdog and get the same result.
DHS, ICE, CBP - seems like a lot of redundancy.
DHS -> Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of both others created after 9/11
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.
ICE was not “created from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies”, it was created at the same time, by the same law, as CBP and DHS, from some of the investigation and enforcement arms of INS and the Customs Service, with much of the rest of those agencies (including the Border Patrol, which had been one of the enforcement arm of INS) becoming CBP, and the routine "happy path" immigration functions of INS moving to USCIS under the Department of State.
> 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.)
That trend of blurred lines has been going on for quite a while. Iirc a big callout of the 9/11 commission report was lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA. Even on the local side increasingly it seems every major crime gets a mixture of various federal, state and local law enforcement response.
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 CIA and FBI had been deliberately separated, after the Church Commission found many, many abuses.
The Patriot Act removed and lowered many of the barriers. And now we're back to what the Church Commission found.
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In my own country the border guard is part of the military- its a special form of military police. They also protect embassies for some reason.
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.
Technology wise, I’m more interested to have a platform or site that tracks the people who build these technologies and apps, rather than the runner boy in the streets. Those people have no morals or ethics, I want to know them and know their names/company names if contractors, so I never work with them or hire them or share any sort of collaboration with them.
And you'll work with moral/ethical companies that slowly become the thing you're trying to avoid
And we thought the UK jailing people for postage fraud based on a faulty AI was bad...
I don't think that's anywhere close to an accurate description of the UK's recent post office scandal?
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?
Indeed, that scandal vastly predated AI everywhere, and was just vanilla consultant-grade software (i.e. trash) coupled with vast incompetence at every stage.
Incompetence is not sufficient to explain that case. Many high level leaders were aware of deficiencies in the software and wanted to prosecute anyway. That is active malice or indifference to human suffering.
I wonder when it will sink in for the average (especially non-white) American citizen that you are one false positive in an algorithm away from being arrested and detained / deported. If you’re lucky there will be a public outcry large enough that you’re released (like 5 year old Liam Ramos). Given expectations built into the constitution, this is should be disturbing. As a white, upper middle class, multigenerational citizen of the US, I find ICE’s actions disturbing at a fundamental level. Probably because I can extrapolate to the logical conclusion of this. Other people are extrapolating as well and it wouldn’t surprise me if continued ICE actions spur a public rebellion against surveillance of all forms, after seeing how it can be combined with a lawless federal government to subvert basic rights. I also think it will result in a backlash against private prisons in general as people then extrapolate from the ICE situation to the daily reality faced by primarily black men when interacting with the police. With a simple head nod, the cops can plant evidence and present a narrative to a judge and jury that puts you away for 20 years over nothing more than a dirty look at a cop.
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.
Papers are not just physical objects. The issuing agency records your details and the date of issuance. This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
> This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.
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.
I was told in a Know Your Rights training to carry copies of documents, so they can't steal / burn the originals.
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.
If things get worse we’ll need to wear body cams live-streaming to the cloud at all times to ensure our rights are upheld. Now that I think about it - not a bad product idea!
Anecdotally I've seen a significant uptick in folks installing dash cams in their cars.
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
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> I think the better path forward is more open, peaceful, extended discussion.
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?
No. (for the sake of the game/time) Do I think it is happening? Probably. If so, Punish them? Yes.
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?
What’s with the sword talk? We don’t live in mediaeval England.
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No, your favored extremists taking control of the government, attacking American cities, and executing Americans who protest is not "squashing a rebellion". These are straight up violations of individual liberty and rejection of limited government, as laid out by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.
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.
Are you sure you are aware what tribe I belong to, if any? I was speaking from a position of "anyone" with the power of the sword.
The tribe currently wielding the sword is the red tribe. Framing their actions as "squashing a rebellion" rather than seditious conspiracy to undermine our Constitutionally-limited government is a form of empathizing with their particular violence.
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".
This is just one more thing in a time of all the things. When all this backlash comes to roost at techs door this site I expect will be shocked. How could the average American confuse the rich VCs with the moloch worshiping pedophiles and the fascist government populists?
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.
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You answered your own question.
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Your Gestapo is as good as mine
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Hmmm did you try googling the things you're claiming? Its happening constantly: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths,_detentions_and_deporta...
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The Wired article is higher quality, agreed, but "race-baiting", really? It seems quite relevant that a specific ethnic group is much more likely to suffer consequences due to this flawed mass facial recognition given how the enforcement is targeted.
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.”I'm focused on the initial paragraph more than anything else.
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
The explicit goal of this administration is to have mass deportations of anyone who isn't white. Stephen Miller wants to deport 100 million Americans. I cannot take any arguments seriously from people who deny these kinds of facts.
Can you cite someone in an official capacity saying that? I believe you, just want to verify.
The DHS posted it on their official twitter account, which literally 2 seconds with Google could tell you.
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?
Here you go. “Supreme Court said ICE can stop you based on race, accent, job and location.”
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.
Profiling - which we probably agree is not a good thing - in the course of a stop, is not the same as deporting someone. Cold day in hell (on earth) when Supreme Court says you can be deported based on race, accent, job or location.
I can just imagine "not hotdog" tech demo they showed Trump and Hesgeth.
The only training image is the skin tone chart from Family Guy.