Gaby Del Valle is a policy reporter at The Verge, where she covers privacy, the Department of Homeland Security, and the tech-right. “The most surveilled place in America,” her report on border technology in the Arizona borderlands, was a finalist for the 2023 Livingston Award for National Reporting. Have a tip? Contact her at gaby@theverge.com or via Signal at gabydvj.26
New hire deportation agents were issued phones equipped with ELITE (Enhanced Lead Identification and Targeting).
ELITE analyzes government data to create “confidence scores” for potential targets; it also maps their location.
On The Intercept, one anonymous ICE agent called the app “1984 shit:” “ELITE is used on illegal immigrants right now but can easily be used on Americans.”
The US has one of the most advanced “smart” surveillance apparatuses in the world. So why does this administration insist on building environmentally destructive, physical walls?
The conservative backlash is about jobs, the environment, quality of life — and China.
New York City health officials traced an April cyclosporiasis outbreak to cilantro served at one Brooklyn restaurant. The restaurant had bought the cilantro from a local supplier, which had obtained it from a national supplier; the national supplier had purchased it from an international supplier.
This outbreak is much smaller — and apparently more localized — than the national outbreak that may be linked to Taylor Farms lettuce.
Mayor Zohran Mamdani issued a spate of new housing policies, including a provision requiring landlords to disclose when rental listings have been altered by AI or with other tools.
The new regulations may not stop brokers from using AI to gussy up mediocre listings, but disclosures may at least prevent prospective tenants from wasting their time touring apartments that look much better online than they do in person.
[The official website of the City of New York]
Budget cuts are blowing up US health infrastructure — and your toilet.
Federal immigration agents shot a 26-year-old Colombian man in Biddeford, Maine, on Monday morning, the Portland Press-Herald reports.
Nationally, it’s the second fatal shooting involving immigration agents in less than a week — and just like last time, agents weren’t wearing body cameras.
ICE claims that the unnamed victim “attempted to flee in a vehicle in the direction of the officer,” but an eyewitness told NBC News that he heard the man, who was bleeding from his head, say “I tried to stop.”