ICE and CBP agents are scanning faces on the street to verify citizenship

Technology, Vendors, and Data Sources

• Speculation about who built/hosts the system: suggestions include Palantir, Oracle, NEC, Thales, Clearview, social-media scrapes, and existing government ID databases (DMV, passports, airports). Some argue Palantir “doesn’t collect” but plausibly stores/processes data others collect.
• The specific app (Mobile Fortify) is discussed; commenters note DHS contracts for facial biometrics and a broader FBI history of biometric databases.
• Concern that agents may use semi-personal phones; people expect eventual leaks, APK extraction, and hacking. Others say devices should be hardened, signed, and centrally managed.
• Several mention integration with license-plate readers, EZ-Pass infrastructure, Amazon/Ring, and Flock cameras as creating a nationwide, warrantless tracking mesh.

Privacy, Law, and Constitutionality

• Katz v. United States is cited: no expectation of privacy for one’s face in public. Debate centers on the difference between taking a photo vs. building and querying biometric databases at scale.
• Illinois’s Biometric Information Privacy Act comes up; some note it exempts state/local government and may not reach federal agencies, and federal supremacy likely dominates.
• Serious concern that ICE officers reportedly treat a facial-recognition “match” as definitive and may ignore other evidence of citizenship (e.g. birth certificates). Many call this “lawless” and incompatible with due process.
• Commenters highlight that minors aren’t required to carry ID, yet are being scanned and even strip-searched; this is seen as especially egregious.
• Others note that courts have largely removed avenues to sue ICE/DHS, leaving victims with little recourse beyond unlikely DOJ prosecutions or complex state-level strategies.

Racism, Power, and “Fascism”

• Many see this as racial profiling in high-tech form: “looking Hispanic” or deviating from a white norm is cited as explicit or de facto probable cause. SCOTUS’s acceptance of “apparent ethnicity” as a factor is referenced.
• Language like “alien” is criticized as dehumanizing; some note it’s long-standing legal terminology, others argue that doesn’t mitigate its current use.
• Frequent comparisons to KKK-style terror, Gestapo tactics, and “fascist” governance; belief that hypocrisy (agents masked while scanning others) is a feature of domination, not a bug.
• Some insist immigration laws and enforcement are legitimate in principle but say ICE/CBP are operating as largely unaccountable thugs, especially within the 100‑mile “border zone.”

Tech Worker Ethics and Counter-Surveillance

• Several technologists express regret that their skills now power domestic repression; calls for a “Hippocratic oath” for tech, collective organization, and refusal to build such systems.
• One commenter built a public tool to detect and track ICE-style agents via computer vision and vector databases; others question its legality under biometric-privacy laws, leading to talk of hosting outside U.S. jurisdiction.
• Broader reflection that industry dismissed these dangers years ago; now, integrated commercial systems (Flock + Ring, etc.) are becoming a turnkey state surveillance backbone.

Resistance, Risk, and Slippery Slope

• Suggestions range from filming agents and documenting abuses to physically intervening. Lawyers and others warn that resisting federal officers risks serious felony charges and long prison terms.
• Some urge states to empower local police to arrest lawbreaking federal agents and to allow civil suits in state courts, while others argue this would quickly escalate into federal–state armed confrontation and federal preemption fights.
• Multiple commenters insist this will not stay confined to undocumented immigrants: once normalized, the same apparatus can target “dissidents,” ordinary citizens, and eventually anyone in disfavored groups, edging toward a U.S.-style “social credit” environment.