#data dragnet

[mariacallous]

The United States government has collected DNA samples from upwards of 133,000 migrant children and teenagers—including at least one 4-year-old—and uploaded their genetic data into a national criminal database used by local, state, and federal law enforcement, according to documents reviewed by WIRED.

The records, quietly released by the US Customs and Border Protection earlier this year, offer the most detailed look to date at the scale of CBP’s controversial DNA collection program. They reveal for the first time just how deeply the government’s biometric surveillance reaches into the lives of migrant children, some of whom may still be learning to read or tie their shoes—yet whose DNA is now stored in a system originally built for convicted sex offenders and violent criminals.

The Department of Justice has argued that extensive DNA collection activity at the border provides “an assessment of the danger” a migrant potentially “poses to the public” and will essentially help solve crimes that may be committed in the future. Experts say that the children’s raw genetic material will be stored indefinitely and worry that, without proper guardrails, the DNA dragnet could eventually be used for more extensive profiling.

Spanning from October 2020 through the end of 2024, the records show that CBP swabbed the cheeks of between 829,000 and 2.8 million people, with experts estimating that the true figure, excluding duplicates, is likely well over 1.5 million. That number includes as many as 133,539 children and teenagers. These figures mark a sweeping expansion of biometric surveillance—one that explicitly targets migrant populations, including children.

The DNA samples are registered in the Combined DNA Index System, or CODIS, a database administered by the FBI, which processes the DNA and stores the resulting genetic profiles. A network of criminal forensic databases, CODIS is used by local, state, and federal enforcement agencies to match DNA collected from crime scenes or convictions to identify suspects.

On May 10, 2024, for instance, records say that CBP agents from the El Paso, Texas, field office collected a DNA sample from the mouth of an individual in its custody whom CBP identified as Cuban and who was detained for allegedly being an “immigrant w/o docs.” Swabbing the individuals’ cheek, the agents obtained a DNA sample containing the individual's entire genetic code and then sent the sample to the FBI for processing.

According to CBP records, the individual was just 4 years old.

Of the tens of thousands of minors whose DNA was collected by Customs and Border Protection over the past four years, as many as 227 were 13 or younger, including the 4-year-old. Department of Homeland Security policy states that individuals under 14 are generally exempt from DNA collection, but field officers have the discretion to collect DNA in some circumstances. The data shows additional entries for kids aged 10, 11, 12, and 13. The numbers spike beginning at age 14; more than 30,000 entries were logged for each age group from 14 to 17.

Under current rules, DNA is generally collected from anyone who is also fingerprinted. According to DHS policy, 14 is the minimum age at which fingerprinting becomes routine.

As many as 122 minors were categorized as American citizens, 53 of whom were not detained for any criminal arrest, CBP records say. (People asking to enter the United States to apply for asylum are put in civil rather than criminal custody.)

Neither DHS nor CBP provided comment ahead of publication.

Multiple legal, privacy, and immigration experts described the findings as deeply troubling. “It’s horribly dystopian,” says Vera Eidelman, a senior staff attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union's Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “It’s impossible for me to think of a reason to collect a 4-year-old’s DNA and upload it to a database that’s explicitly supposed to be about criminal activity.”

As one of the world’s largest law enforcement agencies, CBP is responsible for intercepting and processing individuals who cross the US border without authorization. While Immigration and Customs Enforcement handles long-term detention and deportation, CBP controls the earliest, most vulnerable hours of a migrant’s legal journey in the US, often when they are first taken into custody, questioned, and in many cases fingerprinted and swabbed for DNA.

Both CBP and ICE operate under the Department of Homeland Security and, under current policy, are authorized to collect fingerprints and DNA from anyone in their custody as young as 14 years old. Exceptions for younger children can be made in certain cases involving “potentially criminal situations”; however, the CBP data analyzed by WIRED indicates this was the case in as few as 2.2 percent of the hundreds of kids subjected to DNA swabs.

Of the 227 people listed in the data as children under 14 and having their DNA submitted to the FBI, most of them are simply labeled “detainee.” Only five were listed as arrestees or linked to criminal charges.Got a Tip?Are you a current or former government employee who wants to talk about what's happening? We'd like to hear from you. Using a nonwork phone or computer, contact the reporter securely on Signal at dmehro.89.

CBP’s participation in the CODIS program isn’t new, though it expanded significantly after a 2020 Department of Justice rule amending a previous exemption that effectively allowed DHS to avoid collecting DNA from civil immigration detainees.

Sara Huston, an expert in genomics policy and the principal investigator at the Genetics and Justice Laboratory and a research assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, tells WIRED that CODIS is a powerful tool for law enforcement when solving violent crimes, sexual assaults, and missing persons cases.

Huston explains that typically when DNA is collected from a crime scene—such as in a sexual assault case—it’s processed and uploaded to CODIS and compared with DNA from anyone in the database, which includes people who have been previously arrested for certain crimes or convicted. A match can help investigators connect unsolved cases, identify suspects, and share critical leads across jurisdictions.

But the inclusion of migrants, the vast majority of whom were not listed in CBP data as having been accused of any felonies, raises deeper questions about what kind of data belongs in a criminal database. CODIS was designed to track criminal offenders, not to permanently catalog the genetic information of undocumented children passing through immigration custody.

“It’s not that we can’t solve crimes by collecting these samples—that’s why CODIS exists, and it’s a wonderful tool,” Huston says. “But it’s not a fair system to keep DNA of people who have not committed crimes on the assumption that they likely will.”

Apprehensions of migrants who crossed the border unlawfully between ports of entry have since fallen to historic lows during the current Trump administration; it's unclear whether the pace of DNA collection has also slowed, as the most recent data ends on December 31, 2024.

The data, which CBP published to its website in February, shows that DNA collection accelerated under the Biden administration, with daily submissions to CODIS increasing sharply in 2024 alongside a reported rise in border apprehensions. On a single day in January 2024, for example, the Laredo, Texas, field office submitted as many as 3,930 DNA samples to the FBI—252 were listed as 17 or younger, CBP records show.

The DOJ has defended the mass collection of DNA at the border as necessary for solving crimes. In its official rationale, the agency argues that this sweeping effort is “essential” not only for identifying migrants who may have committed crimes in the past but also for potentially solving crimes they might commit in the future.

For Stevie Glaberson, the director of research and advocacy at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law, the implication is clear: The US government is treating every person who crosses the border, regardless of age, legal status, or whether they’re accused of any wrongdoing, as a possible suspect in crimes yet to occur.

If the government’s goal is to determine whether a detainee is connected to past crimes, Glaberson tells WIRED, there would be no need to add that person’s DNA to CODIS—they could simply check for a match against existing profiles. “It’s hard to imagine a situation where a 4-year-old was involved in criminal activity,” Glaberson says.

“Taking DNA from a 4-year old and adding it into CODIS flies in the face of any immigration purpose,” she says, adding, “That’s not immigration enforcement. That’s genetic surveillance.”

Multiple studies show no link between immigration and increased crime.

In 2024, Glaberson coauthored a report called “Raiding the Genome” that was the first to try to quantify DHS’s 2020 expansion of DNA collection. It found that if DHS continues to collect DNA at the rate the agency itself projects, one-third of the DNA profiles in CODIS by 2034 will have been taken by DHS, and seemingly without any real due process—the protections that are supposed to be in place before law enforcement compels a person to hand over their most sensitive information.

CBP collects DNA using buccal swab kits—long cotton-tipped sticks used to scrape the inside of a detainee’s cheek. While the DNA sample itself contains a person’s entire genetic code, Huston says that what’s uploaded to CODIS is better understood as a lower-resolution snapshot—a DNA profile made up of select genetic markers used solely to identify individuals—and is not intended to reveal traits, health conditions, or genetic predispositions. However, both she and Glaberson note that the raw DNA sample itself could be stored indefinitely.

The DOJ did not respond to multiple requests for comment, nor did it answer questions about how long raw DNA samples are stored. However, a current DOJ official, speaking to WIRED on the condition of anonymity due to fear of retribution, defended the collection and retention of migrant DNA. Storing raw samples, they say, is necessary for due process—to confirm that a match in CODIS can be traced back to the original raw material. “If you aren’t committing a crime, being in this database isn’t going to affect you,” they say, arguing that a larger pool of DNA increases the chances of finding a match.

Under federal law, CODIS data and the raw genetic samples can only be used for identification in criminal cases. DHS policy states that DNA samples may not be used to discriminate “in the provision of health benefits or other services” and that DNA samples are not used by the FBI to “reveal any physical traits, race, ethnicity, disease susceptibility, or other sensitive information about an individual.”

But privacy advocates worry that those rules aren’t enough, since policies can change and new uses can emerge alongside new technology. For instance, privacy and civil liberties experts have warned that the government could one day use DNA to link immigrants to family members, who could also be targeted by law enforcement. Another concern is that genetic data might be reanalyzed to predict health-related markers or inherited conditions—potentially influencing decisions about admissibility or whether someone is likely to require government support.

As Glaberson warns, “The warehousing of genetic samples containing the entirety of people's genetic code presents a risk in the future.”

[darkeagleruins]

Biden Admin trying to use the “drone” situation to pass a bill giving government wireless surveillance access to our phones

“The bill before us would grant law enforcement significant authority to intercept private electronic communications without consent — To grant sweeping surveillance powers”

“The bill would allow the government to conduct dragnet surveillance of the phones, innocent Americans traveling through US airports as long as the government claims they're doing it to neutralize a drone. So in order to look at the information that might be coming to a drone, it may be that you capture all the information of everybody surrounding an airport or everybody who lives near an airport. Once you have all that data, what are the assurances that the government isn't looking at your data in addition to the data that may be related to flying a drone?”

“This is not just about security. It's about unchecked government overreach. It's about capitalizing on fear and media driven austerity to jam through sweeping legislation that could violate the civil liberties of American people.”

[darkmaga-returns]

“He sees you when you’re sleeping He knows when you’re awake He knows when you’ve been bad or good So be good for goodness’ sake!”“Santa Claus Is Coming to Town”

You’d better watch out—you’d better not pout—you’d better not cry—‘cos I’m telling you why: this Christmas, it’s the Surveillance State that’s making a list and checking it twice, and it won’t matter whether you’ve been bad or good.

You’ll be on this list whether you like it or not.

Mass surveillance is the Deep State’s version of a “gift” that keeps on giving…back to the Deep State.

Geofencing dragnets. Fusion centers. Smart devices. Behavioral threat assessments. Terror watch lists. Facial recognition. Snitch tip lines. Biometric scanners. Pre-crime. DNA databases. Data mining. Precognitive technology. Drones. Contact tracing apps. License plate readers. Social media vetting. Surveillance towers.

What these add up to is a world in which, on any given day, the average person is now monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways by both government and corporate eyes and ears.

Big Tech wedded to Big Government has become Big Brother.

Every second of every day, the American people are being spied on by a vast network of digital Peeping Toms, electronic eavesdroppers and robotic snoops.

This creepy new era of government/corporate spying—in which we’re being listened to, watched, tracked, followed, mapped, bought, sold and targeted—has been made possible by a global army of techno-tyrants, fusion centers and Peeping Toms.

[yourreddancer]

A few months ago, Sen. Ted Cruz announced that he had uncovered $2 billion of science grants funded by former President Joe Biden’s administration that prioritized “radical political perspectives” or “neo-Marxist theories.’’ His aides on a congressional committee assembled the list by searching the project descriptions for 699 key terms like “women,” “diversify,” “segregation” and “Hispanic culture.”

When Cruz released the database of this allegedly “woke” research earlier this month, we decided to run our own experiment. We asked one of the models powering ChatGPT, which can sift through large amounts of data, to evaluate all 3,500 grant descriptions in the database as if it were an investigative journalist looking for Marxist propaganda, “woke ideology,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.

We found that Cruz’s dragnet had swept up numerous examples of scientific projects funded by the National Science Foundation that simply acknowledged social inequalities or were completely unrelated to the social or economic themes cited by his committee

[myconetted]

u installed an app with access to all ur urls and web page contents specifically so it could find deals for u from the ether. learn to expect this type of shit, especially from vendors who don't make it clear how they actually make money. honestly an even better version, if they were less self-serving: treat your userbase like a dragnet for discount links and use the best ones at a given time. but people would probably have wised up to that earlier b/c the coincidences prompt someone to actually figure it out. and it would probably be a much bigger scandal because urls can have tons of PII/PHI in them hehe.

now obviously i don't think users deserve blame for this, whether they "fell" for it or not, cause it's actively exhausting to check all this shit out yourself. even more so when they're actively misrepresenting the underlying functionality. but consider adopting a heuristic where you default against installing things with super broad access to all of your data, because unless it's open-source* you never know what it's really doing.

[s3znl-gr3znl]

INCOMING COMMS

From: Lt Farelight, PCA

To: [ redacted ] AC // DRAGNET

Message: The PCA has been subject to a heist carried out by a splinter faction of Dosers. Theyre calling themselves the Guff. Three ACs penetrated one of our storage facilities and absconded with valuable cargo.

Your mission is to recover or destroy the stolen items before the Dosers can make use of it. An added reward will be given for each AC you take out in the process. Luckily they arent very smart and we managed to get a full readout of their ACs; I've gone ahead and forwarded the data.

Time is of the essence.

// END TRANSMISSION

"Justice. Answers. Revenge. Doesn't matter what you're looking for, nothing escapes the Dragnet."

Utilizing mid-range tactics, AC // DRAGNET casts a wide net to outnumber and entrap their targets. Having failed out of AC training for the PCA, the pilot of Dragnet has taken a less conventional approach to peacekeeping activities, though they must keep their identity a secret if they wish to remain employed. Easy enough since neither the PCA nor the Corps seem to care as long as they deliver.

Fuck man this was so much work and i havent even posted everything yet! Its crazy how much this game has to offer in setting, style, good ol fashioned fun, theories, and memes. Can honestly say it feels like this game changed the trajectory of my life in some ways.

[signalfog]

US Constitution - A Critique and Upgrade Options

SACCO & VANZETTI PRESENT:

THE CONSTITUTION IN FIRE AND CODE

A hard-nosed, ethical teardown of America's source code BASE SYSTEM: U.S. CONSTITUTION v1.0.1787

VANZETTI: The Constitution is not sacred. It’s a contract—one written by 55 elite white men, many of whom owned humans, and none of whom trusted the masses.

It’s a political OS designed to stabilize a fragile post-revolutionary elite consensus. It featured:

Separation of Powers: Isolation of functions to prevent autocracy, but also to slow democracy.

Checks and Balances: Not equilibrium—just distributed veto points.

Enumerated Powers: Core federal functions, tightly scoped.

Elastic Clause: An escape hatch for future relevance, designed to expand federal power slowly.

But its core failure? It was engineered for a low-bandwidth, low-population, literate-male landowning republic. It has not been significantly refactored since muskets and messengers. It is a creaking system straining under incompatible load.

SACCO: This wasn’t “for the people.” It was designed to keep the people contained. That was the function. The Senate was an elite kill switch. The Electoral College? A manual override in case democracy got uppity.

It’s not a broken system. It’s a functioning oligarchy framework with ceremonial democratic syntax.

BILL OF RIGHTS: PATCH OR PROP?

VANZETTI: The Bill of Rights was a retrofit—a patch to suppress anti-federalist rage. It formalized personal liberties but offered no systemic guarantees. It assumes good-faith actors will respect vague principles like “unreasonable” and “excessive.” No enforcement layer. No recursion. Just faith.

They are declarative rights. Not executable rights.

SACCO: You have the right to speak, sure. But no right to reach. You can protest, unless the city denies your permit. You can be tried by jury—if you can afford not to plead out.

These aren’t rights. They’re permissions granted by an extractive system when it suits the optics.

They tell you the government can’t search your house. They don’t tell you about digital surveillance dragnets, predictive policing, and facial recognition at protest marches.

The Bill of Rights is a beautiful lie in cursive. It reads clean. It runs dirty.

SYSTEMIC LIMITATIONS — 2025 REALITY

VANZETTI: The Constitution is brittle under modern load:

Elections: Electoral College and Senate distort democracy beyond recognition.

Legal System: Lifetime judicial appointments become ideological hard forks.

Rights Enforcement: Subjective interpretation, no auto-execution.

Transparency: Black-box governance remains default.

Corporations: Treated as persons with infinite speech budget.

Privacy: Undefined. Loophole the size of AWS.

Its failure modes are increasingly exploited by well-funded actors who’ve read the source code and know no one’s enforcing the terms.

SACCO: Don’t talk to me about founding wisdom when your “more perfect union” doesn’t define “truth,” doesn’t define “justice,” and doesn’t protect the poor from being data-mined, indebted, and incarcerated.

They wrote this to protect wealth from mobs. We’re the mobs now.

THE UPGRADE PATH: BLOCKCHAIN GOVERNANCE

VANZETTI: A new system must execute governance as code, not wishful interpretation. Here’s how it looks:

1. ConstitutionChain All laws, interpretations, amendments, and precedents recorded immutably. Transparent. Auditable. Every ruling is version-controlled. We no longer interpret the Constitution—we query it.

2. Smart Contract Rights Each civil liberty is codified. Violate it, and the system triggers penalties automatically. No discretion. No delay. Rights exist only if they execute.

3. ZK-ID Voting System Anonymous, verifiable, cryptographically secure civic identity. One citizen, one unforgeable vote. Gerrymandering becomes obsolete. Voter suppression becomes mathematically visible.

4. Distributed Judicial Logic No more black-robed oracles. Rulings handled by time-limited panels of legal professionals, selected randomly and transparently. All opinions stored, auditable, and revisable based on new precedent or revelation.

5. Public Key Legislative Tracking Every bill, every edit, every lobbyist fingerprint on public record. Representational corruption becomes a provable dataset.

SACCO: This isn’t utopian. It’s survival.

The current system runs on the belief that words written by slavers can protect the data rights of your daughter on a school Chromebook.

It can’t. You need a constitution that logs, executes, and cannot lie.

DEPLOYMENT STRATEGY

Phase 0: Parallel Chain Shadow legal and civic frameworks built at city and state levels. Use real elections as dry runs for blockchain voting. Publicly track existing corruption as a proof-of-need.

Phase 1: Digital Citizenship Opt-in constitutional layer for a new federated digital public. Users choose citizenship by protocol, not geography.

Phase 2: Critical Fork When the legacy system hits unsustainable entropy—financial collapse, legal legitimacy crisis, climate-triggered authoritarianism—the constitutional fork becomes the continuity government.

SACCO: When the Republic dies, it won’t announce it. It will just stop executing your rights and blame you for noticing.

We’re not trying to fix the system.

We’re building a better one in its shadow.

CONCLUSION:

VANZETTI: The Constitution was a brilliant v1.0. But it cannot scale, cannot adapt, and cannot protect. It needs to be replaced by something that runs honestly in real time.

SACCO: It’s not about preserving liberty. It’s about enforcing it.

If your freedom isn’t programmable, it’s marketing.

“In the beginning, they wrote it in ink. Now we write it in code.”

[eastofurban]

Also, the US has surveillance *everywhere*. Lots of Americans have Internet connected cameras as doorbell now - which routinely get used by police. We have red light cameras, license plate cameras, automated photo ticket enforcement systems, mobile surveillance carts running on solar power and attached to the AI dragnet. Stores have cameras everywhere. Anything that has a voice assistant is recording your conversations and sending them to a data store over the Internet. The government has been caught multiple times doing illegal wiretapping as have private corporations. It just doesn't end.

I will forever find it funny the way Americans are so scared of "Chinese surviellance" like bro you live in THE surviellance state

[mariacallous]

A grant to study linguistic differences between Hebrew and English was flagged as an example of “woke DEI grants” in a new database released by Sen. Ted Cruz.

The database is part of ongoing Republican efforts to justify significant cuts to federal research funding and diversity programs under President Donald Trump.

The $226,000 grant, given by the National Science Foundation to the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2022, was flagged by the Texas Republican senator’s team as having an inappropriate focus on “gender.” 

But according to the description of the research in Cruz’s own database, the sole mention of gender in the grant’s description is in reference to the fact that the Hebrew language (like many) assigns gender to nouns.

The UMass grant was also one of seven in Cruz’s database of Biden-era grants that stated an intent to promote partnerships between American and Israeli research institutions — something that did not appear to mitigate opposition from Cruz, an avowed supporter of Israel. He said in a statement that the more than 3,400 grants in his database demonstrated that the NSF had funded “questionable projects that promoted Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) or advanced neo-Marxist class warfare propaganda.”

A request for comment to Cruz’s office was not returned; nor was an inquiry sent to UMass. Cruz, the chair of the Senate committee on Commerce, Science & Transportation, said in a statement that his data “exposes how the Biden administration weaponized federal agencies to push a far-left ideology.”��

He added, “Congress must end the politicization of NSF funding and restore integrity to scientific research.”

The public database of grants compiled by Cruz provides a window into how Trump and his allies are thinking about cuts to research funding. The flagged grants mentioning Israel were made to six universities including Brown, the University of Michigan and the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. They cover a range of scientific topics, from studying cognition to magnetic technologies to energy storage. 

What they have in common is a stated intent to collaborate with an Israeli university. For example, Michigan’s grant specifically references a partnership with Ben-Gurion University in the southern Israeli city of Beersheva, while a second UMass grant mentions partnering with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in the port city of Haifa, as well as “outreach by the Israeli collaborator to local high schools in Haifa.”

The second common thread among the Israel-related grant descriptions is the use of keywords flagged by the database as related to gender or DEI. Cruz’s team sorted the grants based on the presence of keywords related to the categories of “gender,” “status,” “social justice,” “race” and “environmental justice.”

None of the grants to mention Israeli partnerships make such topics the focus of their research, though some state a general commitment to “groups underrepresented in science” or “outreach to women and underrepresented minorities.” UMBC’s grant states that it will allow participation “for local high school students from underrepresented groups on the US side, and from various nationalities on the IL [Israeli] side.”

The UMass grant exploring the Hebrew and English languages makes no such commitment to diversity. Its reference to gender comes as it states that “English and Hebrew differ in how they organize the words within sentences and whether they assign gender to nouns; Hebrew assigns masculine and feminine genders to nouns, similar to languages like Spanish and French but unlike English.” 

The project’s stated focus is to study how such linguistic differences affect “interpretation errors” among people who speak both languages.

Cruz’s dragnet of so-called “woke” research grants also comes as a number of American researchers and campus groups have pushed for boycotts of all Israeli institutions, in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza. 

The database was posted as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency has targeted federal research funding on the basis of keywords that, the Trump team claims, reveal evidence of gender- and DEI-driven agendas. On Tuesday a federal judge intervened to block steep cuts to medical research funding at the National Institutes of Health. Another injunction blocked key parts of Musk’s effort to shut down the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

A report last week in the Washington Post found that NSF staff were also being directed to comb through their research projects in search of dozens of offending keywords, including “women,” “victims,” “trauma” and “ethnicity.” Such efforts are part of a larger slashing of federal spending, including the shuttering of entire departments, that scholars say is unlawful and may be leading to a constitutional crisis.

[darkmaga-returns]

The US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, which is considering the United States v. Chatrie case revolving around dragnet-style geofence surveillance, has announced it will revisit its original decision that stated a geofence warrant issued in connection to a bank robbery did not represent a violation of the Fourth Amendment.

Specifically, the appellate court first ruled that regardless of the fact the warrant was used to gain access to location data belonging to all those who happened to be in the busy area during the commission of the crime – this should not be treated as a search.

Related: Geofence Warrants Are Dangerous For Everyone

The Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution is there to prevent the government from conducting unreasonable searches and seizures.

Initially, the court found that Okello Chatrie was not entitled to protections provided by this amendment, since he “voluntarily exposed” (i.e., turned on the location feature on his device) to Google, which then responded to the warrant by handing over the data to law enforcement.

[stxalq]

their opt-in/opt-out ux was definitely designed to make sure they're competing with apple right out the gate and less about giving people an easy time opting out

but there are some things that maybe change the exact level of paranoia you take to these changes:

google doesn't have the key to decrypt your location history, the data and keys are stored only on your phone or other location enabled device. they deleted everything they had so they could reasonably say no to dragnet style location warrants. it's a recent change and why there's no more webapp version of location history. they just don't have that data any more

having done android development, i can't think of a reason why permissions wouldn't work the way they say they work. google apps are just apks like everyone else on the device. apks that people have been decompiling for decades and so far no one's noticed them ignoring system permissions

the airtag stalking issue got a "fix" last year. both apple and android devices automatically notify you if it detects an unknown airtag. you can manually scan as well and force them to chirp to find them

Critical PSA for anyone with Android devices!

I got the following email this morning:

Basically Google is rolling out the ability to track you via your android devices even when you're offline and you have to manually opt out of it. Many android devices no longer come with a wired headphone jack, so if you have Bluetooth headphones or a keyboard or anything, your location will be tracked and stored by your device unless you opt out of this.

I tried using the link they gave me in the email to opt out of it, but it didn't really seem to do anything. So I looked up how to opt out and found the following steps, which worked for my phone:

Opting out from the Find My Device network is as simple as tapping a toggle in your phone's settings. 1. On your Android device, go to Settings. 2. Tap the Google setting. 3. Tap the Find My Device setting. 4. Tap the toggle to off next to "Use Find My Device." 5. Confirm with pin, pattern, or biometrics. That's it. Your device is no longer participating in the Find My Device network. To rejoin, just flip the toggle back on.

Please reblog to spread awareness. My husband has the same phone as me and he didn't get any emails about this.

[ashadowofburnedoutstardust]

Finally I'm included in one of the weird tiktok community mod conspiracies

I think people will find this is related to the sale of people's data by Israel using the NSA social media backdoor access onto the dark web and "scammers are attempting to use the data they have bought to target their potential victims"

In reality they are building a surveillance dragnet of people that oppose Israel

There is a reason this is only happening on tiktok and not on other platforms, it is the main one that is not US owned

When did the NSA get the backdoor access into tiktok like they have with IG, Facebook, twitter, Tumblr etc?

Remember when tiktok "got banned" in the USA?

[biblenewsprophecy]

Could Palantir-Type Surveillance Help Turn Much of the World Into a Digital Prison?

COGwriter

There are concerns that the Trump Administration’s data merging plans will eliminate privacy and cause other problems:

‘Destroy the Ring’: Trump’s Palantir deal alarms Hill Republicans

Republican privacy advocates in Congress are criticizing the Trump administration’s work with the tech giant Palantir to analyze what could become a massive pool of government data on Americans.

President Donald Trump signed an order in March that directed federal agencies to remove “unnecessary barriers” to data consolidation. Even before that, as The New York Times reported last week, Palantir had expanded the reach of its artificial intelligence product within the US government — potentially building an interagency database that would merge huge sets of government information on Americans, from medical to financial.

Palantir provides tech to companies and governments that helps them act on the information they collect — a service gaining traction as large language models make it easier to analyze data at scale. …

“It’s dangerous,” Rep. Warren Davidson, R-Ohio, told Semafor. “When you start combining all those data points on an individual into one database, it really essentially creates a digital ID. And it’s a power that history says will eventually be abused.”

“I hope to turn it off, fundamentally,” Davidson added. He compared a Palantir-facilitated merged database to the dangerously powerful ring from the Lord of The Rings: “The only good thing to do with One Ring to Rule Them All is to destroy the Ring.’”

Resistance like Davidson’s is striking because few congressional Republicans have publicly challenged the president since his second term began. https://www.semafor.com/article/06/05/2025/destroy-the-ring-trumps-palantir-deal-alarms-hill-republicans

The Big Tech of USA already has massive databases–and if the USA government taps in, this will encourage other governments around the world to do the same type of thing.

Could Palantir help turn the USA into a type of digital prison?

(Palantir logo)

The Rutherford Institute suggest that is so:

Palantir-Powered Surveillance Is Turning America Into a Digital Prison

We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission.” — Ayn Rand

Call it what it is: a panopticon presidency.

President Trump’s plan to fuse government power with private surveillance tech to build a centralized, national citizen database is the final step in transforming America from a constitutional republic into a digital dictatorship armed with algorithms and powered by unaccountable, all-seeing artificial intelligence.

This isn’t about national security. It’s about control.

According to news reports, the Trump administration is quietly collaborating with Palantir Technologies—the data-mining behemoth co-founded by billionaire Peter Thiel—to construct a centralized, government-wide surveillance system that would consolidate biometric, behavioral, and geolocation data into a single, weaponized database of Americans’ private information.

This isn’t about protecting freedom. It’s about rendering freedom obsolete.

What we’re witnessing is the transformation of America into a digital prison—one where the inmates are told we’re free while every move, every word, every thought is monitored, recorded, and used to assign a “threat score” that determines our place in the new hierarchy of obedience.

This puts us one more step down the road to China’s dystopian system of social credit scores and Big Brother surveillance.

The tools enabling this all-seeing surveillance regime are not new, but under Trump’s direction, they are being fused together in unprecedented ways—with Palantir at the center of this digital dragnet.

Palantir, long criticized for its role in powering ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids and predictive policing, is now poised to become the brain of Trump’s surveillance regime.

Under the guise of “data integration” and “public safety,” this public-private partnership would deploy AI-enhanced systems to comb through everything from facial recognition feeds and license plate readers to social media posts and cellphone metadata—cross-referencing it all to assess a person’s risk to the state. …

Building on this foundation of historical abuse, the government has evolved its tactics, replacing human informants with algorithms and wiretaps with metadata, ushering in an age where pre-crime prediction is treated as prosecution.

In the age of AI, your digital footprint is enough to convict you—not in a court of law, but in the court of preemptive suspicion.

Every smartphone ping, GPS coordinate, facial scan, online purchase, and social media like becomes part of your “digital exhaust”—a breadcrumb trail of metadata that the government now uses to build behavioral profiles. The FBI calls it “open-source intelligence.” But make no mistake: this is dragnet surveillance, and it is fundamentally unconstitutional. 06/03/25 https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentary/trumps_palantir_powered_surveillance_is_turning_america_into_a_digital_prison

Yes, this sounds like the USA is getting closer to the UK which is also looking at “pre-crime” etc. in a way reminiscent of the Tom Cruise movie called Minority Report (see UK working with Artificial Intelligence to identify people before they commit crimes–idea reminiscient of ‘Minority Report’).

Despite some claiming that the USA is the land of the free and home of the brave, like some other nations, it is the land of the surveilled and the home of the highly regulated.

Prior to Donald Trump’s re-election, we put out the following video on our Bible News Prophecy YouTube channel:

15:12

666, the Censorship Industrial Complex, and AI

We are seeing more and more censorship, particularly on the internet. Matt Taibi has termed the coordination of this from governments, academia, Big Tech, and “fact checkers,” the ‘Censorship Industrial Complex.’ Is more censorship prophesied to happen? What did the prophet Amos write in the 5th and 8th chapter of his book? What about writings from the Apostle Peter? Is the USA government coercing censorship in violation of the first amendment to its constitution according to federal judges? What about the Digital Services Act from the European Union. Is artificial intelligence (AI) being used? What about for the video game ‘Call of Duty’? Has Google made changes that are against religious speech? Has YouTube, Facebook, Twitter (X), and others in Big Tech been censoring factually accurate information? Is the US government using AI to monitor social media to look for emotions in order to suppress information? What is mal-information? Is a famine of the word of God prophesied to come? Will the 666 Beast and the Antichrist use computers and AI for totalitarian censorship and control?

Here is a link to our video: 666, the Censorship Industrial Complex, and AI.

We are getting closer to the day, with technologies unheard of when God inspired Amos and John to warn what would happen–like computers and AI–that the totalitarian Beast of Revelation will be able use to assist his 666 reign as well as enforce the coming ‘famine of the word’ of God.

Snares are being laid. The Trump Administration is assisting in that.

Notice item 10 of my list of 25 items to prophetically watch in 2025:

10. Knowledge Increasing

Notice something from ancient times:

6 And the LORD said, “Indeed the people are one and they all have one language, and this is what they begin to do; now nothing that they propose to do will be withheld from them. 7 Come, let Us go down and there confuse their language, that they may not understand one another’s speech.”

8 So the LORD scattered them abroad from there over the face of all the earth, and they ceased building the city. 9 Therefore its name is called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth; and from there the Lord scattered them abroad over the face of all the earth. (Genesis 11:6-9)

While many languages came out of this, notice another prophecy for the end times:

4 “But you, Daniel, shut up the words, and seal the book until the time of the end; many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall increase.” (Daniel 12:4)

We are seeing massive developments in health, robotics, artificial intelligence, and various sciences.

The arrival and use of “artificial intelligence,” automobiles, jet planes, computers, cellular telephones, and the internet certainly align with that prophecy.

Computers have also made it easier to communicate, even among people of different languages. And while that can be a good thing … they also have the ability to increase surveillance.

The Bible shows more restrictions are coming.

In my book, Unintended Consequences and Donald Trump’s Presidency: Is Donald Trump Fulfilling Biblical, Islamic, Greco-Roman Catholic, Buddhist, and other America-Related Prophecies?, I had the following warnings:

Donald Trump has been in favor of many aspects of government surveillance and loss of personal privacy rights. (p. 54)

Donald Trump is Apocalyptic … He has made statements suggesting a loss of privacy and favoring unlimited government control. This type of thing will be exploited by 666 of Revelation 13:16-18. (pp. 86,91)

Deceit and surveillance is prophesied to increase.

Notice what will be coming to at least Europe:

14 And he deceives those who dwell on the earth by those signs which he was granted to do in the sight of the beast, telling those who dwell on the earth to make an image to the beast who was wounded by the sword and lived. 15 He was granted power to give breath to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should both speak and cause as many as would not worship the image of the beast to be killed. 16 He causes all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and slave, to receive a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 17 and that no one may buy or sell except one who has the mark or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

18 Here is wisdom. Let him who has understanding calculate the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man: His number is 666. (Revelation 13:14-18)

The above will help make much of the world a “digital prison.”

Let me add that Europe has already taken steps to push Big Tech to remove speech it does not want to allow–and it is also increasing its ability to surveil.

Some of what the Trump Administration is doing will likely be used by European leaders to justify the beastly surveillance and control the Bible prophesies will occur.

Do not place your confidence in any governments in this world, but in Jesus and the coming Kingdom of God.

Related Items:

Preparing for the ‘Short Work’ and The Famine of the Word What is the ‘short work’ of Romans 9:28? Who is preparing for it? Will Philadelphian Christians instruct many in the end times? Here is a link to a related video sermon titled: The Short Work. Here is a link to another: Preparing to Instruct Many.

25 items to prophetically watch in 2025 Much is happening. Dr. Thiel points to 25 items to watch (cf. Mark 13:37) in this article. Here is a link to a related sermon video: 25 Items to Watch in 2025.

When Will the Great Tribulation Begin? 2025, 2026, or 2027? Can the Great Tribulation begin today? What happens before the Great Tribulation in the “beginning of sorrows”? What happens in the Great Tribulation and the Day of the Lord? Is this the time of the Gentiles? When is the earliest that the Great Tribulation can begin? What is the Day of the Lord? Who are the 144,000? A short video is available titled: Great Tribulation Trends 2025.

Lost Tribes and Prophecies: What will happen to Australia, the British Isles, Canada, Europe, New Zealand and the United States of America? Where did those people come from? Can you totally rely on DNA? What about other peoples? Do you really know what will happen to Europe and the English-speaking peoples? What about Africa, Asia, South America, and the Islands? This free online book provides scriptural, scientific, historical references, and commentary to address those matters. Here are links to related sermons: Lost tribes, the Bible, and DNA; Lost tribes, prophecies, and identifications; 11 Tribes, 144,000, and Multitudes; Israel, Jeremiah, Tea Tephi, and British Royalty; Gentile European Beast; Royal Succession, Samaria, and Prophecies; Asia, Islands, Latin America, Africa, and Armageddon;  When Will the End of the Age Come?;  Rise of the Prophesied King of the North; Christian Persecution from the Beast; WWIII and the Coming New World Order; and Woes, WWIV, and the Good News of the Kingdom of God.

Donald Trump in Prophecy Prophecy, Donald Trump? Are there prophecies that Donald Trump may fulfill?  Are there any prophecies that he has already helped fulfill?  Is a Donald Trump presidency proving to be apocalyptic?  Three related videos are available: Donald: ‘Trump of God’ or Apocalyptic? and Donald Trump’s Prophetic Presidency and  Donald Trump and Unintended Consequences.

Unintended Consequences and Donald Trump’s Presidency: Is Donald Trump Fulfilling Biblical, Islamic, Greco-Roman Catholic, Buddhist, and other America-Related Prophecies?  Is Donald Trump going to save the USA or are there going to be many disastrous unintended consequences of his statements and policies? What will happen. The link takes you to a book available at Amazon.com.

Unintended Consequences and Donald Trump’s Presidency: Is Donald Trump Fulfilling Biblical, Islamic, Greco-Roman Catholic, Buddhist, and other America-Related Prophecies? Kindle edition is available for only US$3.99. And you do not need an actual Kindle device to read it. Why? Amazon will allow you to download it to almost any device: Please click HERE to download one of Amazon s Free Reader Apps. After you go to for your free Kindle reader and then go to Unintended Consequences and Donald Trump’s Presidency: Is Donald Trump Fulfilling Biblical, Islamic, Greco-Roman Catholic, Buddhist, and other America-Related Prophecies?

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Your Data on the Line: How Trump and Palantir Are Watching Every American

In recent weeks, a growing network of data‐sharing initiatives has quietly knit together disparate government systems into what increasingly looks like a unified surveillance apparatus.

At the center of this push is Palantir Technologies—Peter Thiel’s data‐analysis firm—which has racked up more than $113 million in federal spending since 2017 and just won a new $795 million Department of Defense contract to expand its “Foundry” platform across the U.S. government.

From Executive Order to “Master Database”

In March, President Trump signed an executive order directing all federal agencies to break down data silos and share information freely. According to The New York Times, the administration has tapped Palantir’s Foundry to stitch together records from the Department of Homeland Security, Health and Human Services, the IRS, Social Security Administration, Medicare and more—raising fears that these once‐separate systems will coalesce into a “master database” of every American’s movements, finances, benefits status, health data, and beyond.

Palantir’s pitch is efficiency: better fraud detection, faster emergency response, and “data-driven governance.” But when “efficiency” means having wall-to-wall access to Americans’ most intimate information, the line between public service and state surveillance blurs—and nobody in the administration has publicly outlined guardrails on who can see or act on this mash-up of personal data.

Real-World Examples: How Camera Feeds Fuel New Abuses

1. Abortion Surveillance via ALPR Cameras

Just last week, reporting by 404 Media revealed that a Texas sheriff’s office ran a nationwide lookup of more than 83,000 automatic license-plate reader (ALPR) cameras to track down a woman who had self-administered an abortion—even searching cameras in states like Washington and Illinois where abortion remains legal 404 Media. Marketed as a tool to stop carjackings or find missing persons, Flock’s ALPR network has been repurposed to enforce contested reproductive-rights laws, granting one state’s law enforcement extraterritorial reach into another’s protected domains.

2. ICE’s Side-Door into Local Camera Systems

Simultaneously, immigration authorities have been piggy-backing on the same Flock network. Internal logs show local police around the country performing thousands of ALPR searches for “ICE,” “immigration,” and “deportation” reasons—even though U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no formal contract with Flock 404 Media. This “informal” access effectively turns small-town camera grids into a nationwide dragnet, enabling federal agents to track immigrant communities without oversight or transparency.

What Else Could This Database Be Used For?

Once data from tax returns, benefit records, license plates, and even social-media accounts are fused into a single pool, the possibilities for invasive—and often illegal—applications multiply:

Political Surveillance & Protest Policing Merge DMV photos with protest footage to identify marchers, then deploy audits or criminal charges to chill dissent.

Predictive Policing & Risk Profiling Feed individuals’ location, purchase, and communications histories into AI models that rank “public-safety risk,” justifying preemptive stops or heavier patrols in certain neighborhoods.

Voting Suppression Cross-reference voter rolls with benefit-recipient lists or travel patterns to flag “suspicious” ballots or intimidate targeted demographics with misleading outreach.

Insurance & Employment Discrimination Insurers and employers could buy or co-opt government data to deny coverage or jobs based on health history (e.g., clinic visits), credit records, or even past travel.

Family Separation & Child Protective Actions Social-services and education records fused with location data could trigger automated CPS investigations—potentially resulting in unwarranted removals of children from their homes.

Commercial Exploitation & Data Brokerage Once assembled, this all-in-one dataset would be a gold mine for marketing firms—enabling ultra-targeted ads and price discrimination down to the individual.

Each of these scenarios leverages the same dynamics: previously siloed data—whether from the IRS, SSA, camera networks, or cell-tower logs—becomes instantly searchable and actionable under Palantir’s dashboard. As more agencies sign on, opt-out becomes nearly impossible without losing access to essential services.

Can We Stop It?

Legal challenges by privacy advocates, labor unions, and student groups are now underway, arguing that this mass data-sharing violates constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and pinpoints marginalized communities for surveillance. Yet until courts impose clear limits or Congress enacts robust privacy legislation, the federal government—and its tech contractors—will continue to expand this unprecedented data empire.