The devices we never leave home without – that we carry from room to room even in our own homes – have become one of the biggest battlegrounds for surveillance.
ICE’s disturbing invasion of a Chicago apartment building in the dead of night, where agents repelled from helicopters, zip tied children’s hands, and dragged people naked into the streets, was powered by surveillance data harvested from the cell phones in our pockets.
Across the country, ICE is quietly turning our phones into tracking devices with the help of big tech companies. And our data is being weaponized to find, arrest, and detain people.
- Using fake cell towers that trick your phone into connecting, ICE can track your location and see who you’re calling or texting – without a warrant and without you ever knowing.
- Google has handed users’ emails over to ICE, targeting people who exercise their right to protest.
- ICE is even building a 24/7 social media surveillance team to monitor what we say online.
This is all part of a growing surveillance network – powered by corporations and designed to consolidate power, control information, and repress dissent – as ICE marches us toward a totalitarian surveillance state.
Serving authoritarianism has become a profitable business model. But we can make it a liability instead.
Here’s what you can do:
🛡️Protect your people and your data: Secure your phone and protect yourself and your people on the road and in the streets (big thanks to 18MR for this beautiful resource).
📅 If you’re in Philly: Join the City Council hearing on October 15 to demand transparency and accountability on how Philly government uses AI and surveillance.
📵 Everywhere else: Sign the #BoycottTMobile pledge to cancel your plan with T-Mobile or pledge to never use them. T-Mobile is hosting Trump’s new mobile network, and anchoring cell service in remote areas to Elon Musk’s Starlink, giving one man the power to hold our connectivity hostage.
The fight against techno-authoritarianism starts with the devices in our own hands.