ICE protester says her Global Entry was revoked after agent scanned her face
arstechnica.comSmall discussion earlier (18 points, 7 comments) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46845610
Since she was in her car they could have identified her by her car’s number plate - but facial recognition sounds scarier - which I guess is the point.
it's not speculation, they specifically tell people that they're using facial recognition. They threaten protestors that they're entering them into a domestic terrorist database using facial recognition. They're arresting people and detaining them for long periods of time without due process, even while having proof of citizenship (real id, passports) on them, because of a facial recognition hit.
>They threaten protestors that they're entering them into a domestic terrorist database using facial recognition.
Is this in article? I figured it was using traveler photos stored in Customs/Border Patrol systems (e.g., Global Entry).
Who knows, but ICE agents are terrorizing people with the threat. It’s fascinating that the Ministry of Information is trying to redefine terrorist to mean something other than the people who try to induce mass terror for political gain:
https://newrepublic.com/post/205629/ice-agent-threat-domesti...
Would be cool if America required law enforcement not to be able to lie to citizens so we could actually know what is going on, and what law enforcement is doing. But I guess police secrets/secret policing/lies are better for an open society.
I mean, they kind of have to, when they are the ones falling under that very same definition, right?
Along with MAGA supporters who buy pizzas and leave threatening messages for judges and politicians who rule against or oppose Trump after he makes a social media post decrying them. Senator Elissa Slotkin talked about all the death threats she and her family received when the president was calling her treasonous and saying she along with the five others who were reminding military and intelligence members of their oath to the Constitution.
A plate identifies a car, not a driver.
In the case of Global Entry you can enter your license plate into your profile to allow using it in the NEXUS lanes heading into the US.
With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
ICE routinely (and illegally) puts on fake plates, claiming sovereign immunity to violate state law.
It seems easy enough to not cover your face, not look like you're itching to kill someone, and honk your horn in support when you see some protestors. I'd be more worried that they had been smoking meth in the car.
> With the protestors entering in rental car license plates of ICE or suspected ICE agents into their own database, I wouldn't want to rent a car anytime soon - the possibility of getting a car previously rented by ICE or suspected ICE, and being assaulted by having whistles blown in my ears, is off-putting.
Oh this, 1000 times. I believe some of the protesters are also targeting cars out-of-state plates.
I recently had a rental with out-of-state Texas plates, which just gave me another reason to avoid any place where there was ICE activity. Otherwise I'd have to show my passport to one group and I suppose point to my child car seat to the other, just to avoid getting caught in the middle.
you know this sounds like a dystopian storyline.
due to the vehicles recent usage:
it starts with a rental car trip, an "incidental roadrage" incident while travelling, then the surveillance and whistle blowing starts at a rest stop, and then the complete lockout from any business, lodgings, or financial dealings.
no fuel, no food no water...
i wonder how the story ends.
Unless you have permissive use or named drivers, the registered person should be driving the car.
Besides, it's a good guess:
>Hey Maggie
>I'm not Maggie. I'm Sarah. Here's my ID. Maggie loaned me her car.
As if the DHS cares about your ID.
They might not, but a plaintiff's civil rights attorney care$.
Completely authoritarian and unacceptable. This entire saga shows the American political system has serious flaws where it cannot hold the executive branch accountable.
Agree. This is absolutely unacceptable by any measurement you can name. They are not respecting equality under the law, they are behaving like a terrorist regime. Every one of these people needs to be held accountable and prosecuted to the fullest extent the US Constitution allows. End of Story.
It's not "cannot" but "will not", and the flaw is not with the American political system but with the GOP and the American populace. Congress could absolutely rein this in at any time if Republicans in Congress cared to do so; the Supreme Court could rein this in at any time if the Republicans on the Supreme Court cared to do so. Do not let yourself be convinced that the problem is Trump or a too-powerful executive; the problem is an entire party and the people who cheerfully vote for it.
But neither congress nor the presidency is an accurate representation of the will of the people, and that is one of the flaws with the American political system.
The problem is that it does represent a lot of people in America. A very vocal and active part of America. It’s not some tiny demographic either. It doesn’t represent the majority but the majority doesn’t vote, doesn’t take action, and is overall extremely passive in their political position. Some of this is good because most Americans are wildly uneducated. Problem is that people are more likely to try to protect what exists than try to move towards a new paradigm. That’s the biggest reason we have such a slow moving system in the US. Most people in the US are very wary of change at this point because they’re not educated about anything.
That's true to a certain extent, but I think a significant reason for Trump's success is precisely that the government is so unresponsive that many people were willing to suffer an extremely painful self-inflicted wound just to break out of the status quo.
I agree the voters and party are a problem, but disagree that we shouldn’t do more. We need better checks and balances on an administration that willfully and casually violates constitutional rights all the time. Not to mention the constant corruption and grifting that enriches the Trump family. We should have a system that can protect against this even when the majority makes a bad voting decision.
There were some. They all got dismantled. Loyalists have been systematically installed into all relevant positions. What system is immune to this? There is none. Voters have to take responsibility for what they voted for, which is the complete destruction of the United States of America as a political unit.
Goverment is corrupt. Solution - more goverment. Give me a brake.
SCOTUS can only rule on cases presented to it. AFAIK there has not been a relevant case submitted to them.
How on earth can you say that with a straight face?
> Attached to this order is an appendix that identifies 96 court orders that ICE has violated in 74 cases. The extent of ICE’s noncompliance is almost certainly substantially understated. This list is confined to orders issued since January 1, 2026, and the list was hurriedly compiled by extraordinarily busy judges.
> ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence.
Ref: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mnd.230...
This is an official filing--facts, not a news report. A judge placed his job on the line and said these things in a written, filed, official ruling.
The problem isn't judicial rulings; the problems are petulant bullies who simply ignore the rulings; and completely subservient sycophants who only can say "As you wish, master."
SCOTUS has already ruled on cases that were presented to them and now we're contending with a mad king.
"While becoming a U.S. citizen, Kurt Gödel confided in his friend Albert Einstein that he had found an inconsistency in the U.S. Constitution that would allow the U.S. to become a dictatorship, causing Einstein to worry that Gödel's unpredictability would lead to his application being denied."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del#Princeton,_Ein...
It is not a flaw but a choice made by the GOP.
The flaw is that they are able to make such a choice.
Every government is always able to turn totalitarian. That's why voting is important. You don't vote for the totalitarian.
Well yes, but the US was supposed to have three separate branches of government to keep each other in check.
Unfortunately turns out that in practice two of the three don't actually have any power at all when push comes to shove.
I think Congress does have power, it's just chosen not to wield it to control this presidency.
Based on what we've seen of the courts, I have doubts about that.
Congress does not have an army they can send out to enforce any law they pass, so turns out the president can simply just ignore it all without consequences. What are they going to do?
Courts don't have an army either. Only the executive has an army. Actually the president doesn't have an army. The generals have an army. You know we've never invented a system that stops the guys who have an army from taking over the guys who don't have an army, and we call it a coup d'etat, and it happens all over the world with some regularity. The best we can do is make sure the guys who have the army are guys who are committed to the wellbeing of the country.
> Courts don't have an army either. Only the executive has an army.
Exactly, that's the bug. Two of the three branches of government can only write sternly worded opinions on paper. Only one has the brute force to impose their will. So there really is only one branch of government in the US.
It was a long period of time voting for totalitarians. Checks and balances worked by design: preventing immediate radical changes. And they worked by design: allowing changes gradually over a period of time if people keep voting for the same thing. And now it's here.
If it can be exploited by a bad actor, it is a flaw.
Everything can be exploited by a bad actor if the bad actor is put in a position of authority over it.
There's no democratic system of government that's completely immune to a majority of voters actively trying to erode and damage the system.
This story in particular seems like a flaw. There should not be such a thing as a privilege that the executive branch can revoke with no explanation or process.
The American political system has definite problems, but so does every other system. If you rank democracies by any metric, the USA has done rather well, if not the best. If you disagree with that statement, I invite you to list the countries you consider democratic, in your order of ‘successfulness’.
Lol nowhere near the best, unfortunately. By multiple rankings.
https://www.democracymatrix.com/ranking
LOL, the first list also seems to use the US as the cut-off & first country that is a “deficient democracy”. The magic number must be between somewhere between 0.811 and 0.821.
Having spent a good chunk of my life in Canada and the US, a list that has Canada as more democratic doesn’t make any sense to me. In the end, it’s just a random mix of different measurements, weighted to tell whatever story you want to tell.
See also this metric, showing how fast the US is falling away from a democracy:
https://www.ft.com/content/b474855e-66b0-4e6e-9b73-7e252bd88...
looks like objective data to me. Look at our democracy number, it's lower than a ton of other countries!
By the time this is all said and done we’re going to wind down the DHS in its entirety, bogus lists of political enemies included
That won't happen. This only ends with the collapse of the country.
The US existed just fine before 2003. We can structure any replacement organization to hold it accountable with checks and balances, like every other agency.
Yeah, but there is quite a gulf between possible and even likely.
I can think of very few time seen the state give up extra powers it gives itself in emergencies, and the few places where I see it give up powers are at the behest of industries demanding "de-regulation".
Even, say, cannabis decriminalization can be understood (from the stand point of the legislators) as pro-business.
So serious question: when has the US given up powers? It'd do my brain a lot of good to have a picture of how this has happened in the past so I can be less cynical in the present.
You might site the Church commission, maybe, but that seems to be exactly the kind of thing that is both likely and wholly ineffective beyond a the 5-10 year timescale.
The end of Reconstruction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconstruction_era
Fair enough I guess. Not exactly the kind of reassurance I'm looking for, though :D !
Well, the rest of the world rejoices when that happens
Not at all, most of us want to live in peace and prosper.
Why the fuck would I want the country most capable to destroy us all to deteriorate?
No it doesn’t, when the US influence wanes you think that void is just gonna sit there untouched?
I certainly prefer the dice being rolled again the US has been a net negative so far.
I've been thinking and more and more along these lines; this doesn't end, WE end.
That’s not helpful
Maybe this is not helpful either, but I wonder if that person is correct. The national debt is already bad. With the trillions of new national debt from the Trump administration, and also the destruction of basically every foreign relationship, how will the country manage its finances? I feel like the only way out is to print money and cause extreme inflation. But that also means the death of the US dollar as the global reserve currency.
Look at any other country that went through a similar period. These regimes never voluntarily relinquish power, but they're forced to within 20 years due to some crushing military defeat, economic collapse, assassination, violent revolt, etcetera. It's never ended with a peaceful transition of power and a smooth winding down of the bad stuff.
The most recent historical example, the USSR, did so. How does that square with your premise and assertion?
The Berlin wall fell when a hundred thousand people were standing at the wall waiting for it to fall.
Was this reply meant as anything but complementary to my position?
This is a bit thin to be drawing any conclusions. Only what one person claims. Has this happened to anyone else? Might there be another reason (that they're not telling us) that this happened?
https://onemileatatime.com/news/people-losing-global-entry/ Papers please.
My son, an 18 year college student with no legal issues ever (except a speeding ticket) - had his Global Entry revoked last year. For no apparent reason. We filed an appeal and are waiting for a response. From everything I've read on it, it seems it could take upwards of 18 months to get a response. But per the article you linked, it seems that less than half are able to get it reinstated. So I'm not really hopeful.
Sucks that we can't trust our own Government to tell us what is going on/what they are doing. WTF happened to the USA being an open society?
The authoritarianism infrastructure was always there, it's been built for decades from red scare, McCarthyism, post 9/11 legislation, carnivore type monitoring with joke oversight, and now AI for the firehose.
We are extremely lucky that this is the form of authoritarianism is currently being exerted.
It could be so so so much worse
What? Spell that out
The GOP is the party of censorship
I censor your censorship word and replace it with fascism
That's not fair, it's only fascism after you build a death camp with a sign that says "fascist extermination camp" on it!
Even then it's just one camp, it's not that bad. Real fascism is when you have hundreds.
> The agent stated that I was impeding their work
Note how these thugs just casually lie to create some fantasy narrative that runs completely counter to the ideas of the Constitution, an open society, and government responsible to The People. When the fascist talking heads get on TV and claim that agents had no choice but to execute another American because they were being "impeded", everyone would do well to remember how readily their whole organization characterizes passive and peaceful democratic activity as "impeding".
Technically, talking to and dealing with someone random instead of hunting their pray is literally impeding their work.
Distractions are not serious until they are.
So they're impeding themselves because they're unable to perform their own jobs, which include accepting that they're accountable to citizens?