No doubt everyone in law
enforcement will want one of these, attached to their own databases.
https://www.bespacific.com/new-ice-mobile-app-pushes-biometric-policing-onto-american-streets/
New
ICE mobile app pushes biometric policing onto American streets
BiometricUpdate.com:
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)
has quietly deployed a new surveillance tool in its Enforcement and
Removal Operations (ERO) arsenal – a smartphone app known
as Mobile Fortify. Designed for ICE field agents, the app
enables real-time biometric identity verification using facial
recognition or contactless fingerprints. Based on leaked emails
reported by 404
Media,
the introduction of Mobile Fortify marks a profound shift in ICE’s
operational methodology of using traditional fingerprint-based
stationary checks to using mobile, on-the-go biometric profiling that
echoes the type of border surveillance previously confined to
airports and ports of entry. Mobile Fortify was built to integrate
seamlessly with multiple Department of Homeland Security (DHS)
biometric systems. Agents using ICE-issued mobile devices can now
photograph a subject’s face or fingerprint, triggering a
near-instant biometric match against data sources that include CBP’s
Traveler Verification Service and DHS’s broader Automated
Biometric Identification System (IDENT)
database which contains biometric records on over 270 million
individuals. This level of portability and automation suggests a
capability that is poised to extend biometric
surveillance far
beyond designated checkpoints and into neighborhoods, local transport
hubs, and any environment in which ICE officers operate. Facial
recognition, though notably less reliable than fingerprints, is
nevertheless embedded in the app’s core functionality. A February
2025 DHS Inspector General audit
had
warned that reliance on facial recognition risked misidentification.
ICE agents have been observed pointing phones at individuals in cars
during protests and other domestic operations, although it remains
unclear whether Mobile Fortify was active in those encounters. The
presence of a “training mode” within the app’s software though
suggests that ICE envisions a spectrum of deployments from casual
identity checks to more deliberate urban biometric sweeps. Although
ICE officials stress that biometric matching happens in real time,
the underlying model appears to be automated. A mobile photo or
print is captured, transmitted to a DHS server linked to identity
repositories, and compared through algorithmic matching – most
likely involving AI-enhanced pattern recognition.
(Related)
https://www.bespacific.com/deportation-data-project/
Deportation
Data Project
Immigration
and Customs Enforcement.
ICE
collects data on every person it encounters,
arrests, detains, transports via flight, and deports. We post below
data that ICE produced in response to several FOIA requests by
multiple organizations. Crucially, in some data releases, there are
linked identifiers across data types such as arrests and detainers,
allowing merges that enable tracing immigrants’ pathways
(anonymously) through the immigration enforcement pipeline. The
identifiers are, unfortunately, different across releases, only
enabling merging within a data release. See below
for
a description of each release. Our ICE
codebook describes
each data table and the fields within them.
Sounds
like someone who does not understand technology. Of course it is
‘do-able’ it’s just expensive. (and not even very expensive.)
https://deadline.com/2025/07/trump-ai-action-plan-copyright-1236466617/
Donald
Trump Says AI Companies Can’t Be Expected To Pay For All
Copyrighted Content Used In Their Training Models: “Not Do-Able”
Donald
Trump said that AI companies can’t be expected to pay for the use
of copyrighted content in their systems, amid a fierce debate over
the use of intellectual property in training models.
I
don’t use social media. I could never get a visa…
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/you-shouldnt-have-make-your-social-media-public-get-visa
You
Shouldn’t Have to Make Your Social Media Public to Get a Visa
The
Trump administration is continuing
its
dangerous
push to
surveil and suppress foreign students’ social media activity. The
State Department recently announced
an
unprecedented new requirement that applicants for student and
exchange visas must set all social media accounts to “public” for
government review. The State Department also
indicated that
if applicants refuse to unlock their accounts or
otherwise don’t maintain a social media presence,
the government may interpret it as an attempt to evade the
requirement or deliberately hide online activity.
Perspective.
https://www.zdnet.com/article/will-ai-think-like-humans-were-not-even-close-and-were-asking-the-wrong-question/
Will
AI think like humans? We're not even close - and we're asking the
wrong question
Artificial
intelligence may have impressive inferencing powers, but don't count
on it to have anything close to human reasoning powers anytime soon.
The march to so-called artificial
general intelligence (AGI),
or AI capable of applying reasoning through changing tasks or
environments in the same manner as humans, is still a long way off.
Large
reasoning models (LRMs),
while not perfect, do offer a tentative step in that direction.
In other
words, don't count on your meal-prep service robot to react
appropriately to a kitchen fire or a pet jumping on the table and
slurping up food.