2w ago

Meet ICEblock: The app that lets residents know when immigration agents are in their community

www.yahoo.com

Official site: https://www.iceblock.app/

The CNN article talks a bit more about privacy issues. This bit caught my eye:

It’s only available on iOS because Aaron says the app would have to collect information that could ultimately put users at risk to provide the same experience on Android.

I would like to see some details about this. Perhaps there's a way to work around that problem, even if it meant publishing on F-Droid instead of Google Play.

104 comments

remember when these guys couldn't breathe while wearing a mask during lockdown?
edit: "e"
- Breath - rhymes with 'death', and is what comes out of your mouth
  Breathe - the action of breathing
  Try to remember it this way: when you add the 'e' on the end, you're really breeeething.
  
  i just can't type worth shit on a touch screen
- While i agree with the point you are making, its just quite the obvious difference. Medical masks have much much denser material so they dont let water droplets through. These masks are usually just some clothing fabric that is full of big openings and really easy to breathe through.
  
  I have tumor riddled lungs and chest muscles that don't quite do their job any more and I was able to breath just fine with a N95 on for hours at a time. These gigantic turd burglers must be more out of shape than my dead gran if not being able to breathe was their excuse.
  
  These idiots didn't wear medical masks during, I live in conservative hell and they all wore neck gaiters and kept them under their noses and still bitched that they couldn't breathe.
  
  Oh yes, specially designed masks for MEDICAL purposes, designed to be usable for childreb abd the elderly are harder to breathe through for tough macho guys like this than some bullshit they bought at a gunstore.
  Clearly they only care about protecting themselves and can't be bothered to protect others.
  
  I can't speak for the states but here people I absolutely know wore balaclavas and neck masks before covid also started complaining about those just the same because the medical authorities were saying it was better than nothing.
Without open source, it could be a honey pot.
- I did check to see what permissions and data it wants access to. None. That seems like a good sign.
  A nefarious app might also want permissions to see all your contacts.
  Edit to clarify: The app install page says only "Data Not Collected". I would presume they would list IP and/or location if that were amongst the data collected as I have seen other apps do, but I am certainly no expert. The dev is All U Chart, Inc.
  
  Don’t apps self-report this stuff? You presumably need to make a DB query from their backend to see any reportings in a 5mi radius, so at minimum they have your GPS coordinates and IP address (which when combined would uniquely identify you)
  
  that mainly applies to trackers and analytics. the company still makes backend calls to its own servers and can do whatever it wants there with the location data it collects from you
- TechCrunch did a traffic analysis: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/iceblock-an-app-for-anonymously-reporting-ice-sightings-goes-viral-overnight-after-bondi-criticism/
- the fact that i cannot use the app at all if i deny location permissions is a red flag. there’s no reason not to have a read only mode.
  there may be no trackers as the other commenter mentioned about the TechCrunch analysis, but who is this random company that owns it: ALL U Chart, Inc. They’re likely pinging back their own servers with your coords
  
  Fake your GPS and put it inside Republican homes
- Looks like honey to me
Good stuff, but IOS only at the moment.
Edit to include link: https://www.iceblock.app/
- Only for iOS... Oof.
  
  At this point my understanding from other sources is that they can't distribute via the android App Store in a way that uses location tracking and notifications but is still anonymous where they can with iOS because location services is device side only.
Nice masks. Must feel like they're doing something wrong.
- I love how, even when they're using them to hide their face, half of them still don't know how to use a mask and put it under their nose
  
  Yeah way to advertise that you're a mouth-breather, right?
- I thought they were talking about banning masks?
If a person is armed and masked and does not identify itself, it is most likely a terrorist and a threat to the public.
- I'm surprised how non of them were gunned down on self defense,
  
  I think they have been. But they're not reporting it to avoid copycats.
  There was a large number of police shootings in my state when one guy opened fire on a state trooper. Then we were hearing stories every week.
  So I'm supposed to believe groups of people with masks running up to folks and grabbing them haven't been getting retaliation back?
- I agree with every part of this except for the word "most likely," since the incidence of ICE arrests are extremely high right now but terrorism is otherwise not.
  
  The ICE kidnappings are terrorism.
What a good country we live in when this app is the #1 app in the Social Networking category.
Why can't it just be a website? Why does everything have to be a fucking "app"?
- Chrome?
  It's probably a security risk like Android, and the vast majority use it.
  Also, apps are better at sending notifications (like ICE warnings). IMO this is a pretty decent justification for an 'iOS only' app.
Would it be possible to create a webapp version of this? With ICE and CBP freely able to search phones now, I am worried about retaliation if they find this app on the phone.
- Yes, it’s not hard for a full stack developer to make. Probably a thousand people already in the fediverse can, including me.
  But it cannot be hosted on USA controlled servers, and the developers need to find a way to be anonymous to USA offices
  Edit: also some other issues. Cannot put it as an onion service because most people in the USA do not use tor. This means regular domain.
  register domain where cannot be seized
  server must be load balanced or using something like kubernetes
  heavy traffic costs money , how to pay bills without crossing USA banking system? And cannot expose payers or contributors
  where to host?
  many people can build it, but most of us have no clue to the obstacles
  
  This is actually a spot where I think a public blockchain could work and it's censorship resistant properties will be crucial one day.
  The server is the blockchain, so it's not hosted anywhere specific and can't be taken down. It's also a smart contract which ended up working in favor of the devs of TornadoCash (A coin mixing service that provides privacy) where a judge overturned the sanctions on it since it was just immutable public code, not owned by anyone.
  Now that Tornado Cash isn't sanctioned, you could mix your coins through it to then pay the sub cent fee to post the sighting on one of the layer 2s like Arbitrium (the fee which will also help combat spam)
  The app could then be open source (web/android/iphone) and monitor the blockchain for the sightings in your area.
  The problem still becomes push notifications if it's all being done locally... It would need to be your device itself monitoring. Apple is also bad about background processing, but it's a better on Android, and especially easier if you don't deploy to the store and can bypass some of the requirements.
  This way incurs no hosting costs for the developer, no load balancing, nothing to be seized etc.
  It's also harder to set up than what you listed, so even fewer people could do it.
  It does require adoption of something like Ethereum though.
  Edit: Some clarity, but also to post that transactions fees for example on Arbitrium today are $0.00087 for a 15 second confirmation. Add on a very tiny similar cost to post some GPS coordinates and a small description.
  
  Maybe with something like this? With veilid in the backend. No servers used for communication.
  https://github.com/LGro/coagulate
- https://tildegit.org/ubergeek/ICEWatch/src/branch/main/README.md
- There's a page "People Over Papers" or something along those lines. A linktree has the current working URL that I don't have on hand at the moment
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Regarding the Android version:
https://www.iceblock.app/android
TL,DR: "It's difficult, so we'll hide behind privacy excuses rather than helping the largest number of at-risk people."
Seriously, if VPN companies and every other company that handles sensitive data anonymously can do it, so can these developers. When 70% of the worldwide smartphone user base uses Android, an iOS-only app is just not good enough anymore.
- I think their argument is sounding.
  Offering VPN is different from storing private information like a device ID. You don’t get notifications from your VPN.
Sounds like the dev is just not that familiar with Android.
- I think you aren't that familiar with android. Android's main purpose is to collect as much information on you as possible. Google did not offer it up out of the goodness of their heart. It's integral to their data collection and resale business model.
  
  You act like Apple doesn't collect an absolute massive amount of data on every one of their devices and users. Sure it's done In a more clandestine way than Google but they still do.
  With Google I can run a security focused ROM like GrapheneOS and have virtually no data collection on my device, while with apple black boxes you will enjoy the illusion of data privacy and be happy about it.
  I know installing custom ROMs is not standard user behaviour and I will concede that in many instances apple is better than stock android for privacy /security, but the way you framed your argument erked me because you cant say or prove anything with their closed source black boxes. Apple aren't good people, they are anti consumer and exist to make money. Of course they collect data.
"If it's a legitimate disappearing, the public has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
- JUST SAY NO!!!
Why not just release it as a self install not connected to an appstore?
- Not disagreeing. The issues that come with it:
  1 - Not many people will install it because you have to disable default security features. Android gives a huge "Your device is insecure" scary message.
  2 - Then you'll get the people who will use this for malicious reasons. Even the app store gets copycats that do nothing but steal information.
  
  Regarding (1), it still gets the network effect because of iOS users. That it's harder for android users to install does not mean the marginal utility of an android user installing the app is lower than that of an iOS user installing the app.
  
  If the goal is to get this in the hands of as many people as possible to fight I.C.E. should it not be in as many forms as possible?
- Yeah. They literally relying on ios walled garden.
Super skeptical that this is a Honeypot, or they'd just make it a web app.
- A honeypot in a walled garden? What has this nation become?
even if it meant publishing on F-Droid instead of Google Play.
Sadly this means it’s not accessible to like 95% of people, even if driven to install it.
- BS,
  it's way better to release to F-droid than to just not release it at all for android.
I just got a spare vest from the security department, I could totally costume change into an ICE agent if I wanted...
- Anyone can cosplay as an ICE agent; all you've gotta do is remove your license plate and wear a facemask+hat.
Yeah that doesn't make sense to me. They could easily release it on fdroid and through a website where you can download the apk.
- Yep. Pathetic. They think ios will save them
I don't know. An app that only people with direct interest in this matter would use regularly, seems like a pretty convenient way to mark people of interest, no?
Not even in a sci-fk distopían way. Imaginet: TSE sees the app on your screen as you're powering it down in line? BOOM baby, alligator town.
No?
As much as I trash DeCeNtrAlIZaTiOn, maybe THIS is when you actually need DeCeNtrAlIZaTiOn, to protect all participants
There needs to be an Icebook. A Facebook for tracking them with the express purpose of naming, shaming, and black listing.
- If people can remove their masks I guess
The developer put up more specific details: https://www.iceblock.app/android
- Thanks for the link.
  So the problem is that using Android's push notification system would require ICEBlock to store people's device IDs, which could then be used against them.
  I wonder if this could be avoided by using Web Push instead of google's native push notification system. Or perhaps some other push notification system using rotating ephemeral IDs.
  
  Not an expert but ephemeral IDs would not give you much.
  AFIK under the hoods android notifications is just… a chat app (Ehehe classic google). So for sending a notification you need to send it to the ID of your mobile. Even if you manage to convince Android to register with an additional ephemeral ID Google would be able to map the ephemeral to the real since… well… it is running on the mobile
- …almost none of what is said about Android push notification is true. A lot of apps uses firebase, which does not require the creation of user accounts or whatever to send push notifications to a device.
  Either they're completely unfamiliar with it, or they don't want to do it, but what they claim is dubious at best.
  
  How can you tell firebase who to notify?
  I guess you need a firebase id of sort… and firebase needs the device id… and firebase is an US Company… so it’s just an extra step but the result is the same. They have to store IDs that can link to devices

104 comments