How ICE Already Knows Who Minneapolis Protesters Are
On the morning of Jan. 10, Nicole Cleland was in her car trailing an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent through Richfield, Minn., her hometown.
Suddenly, the agent turned into a series of one-way streets and stopped, getting out of his white Dodge Ram, said Ms. Cleland, who volunteers with a local watchdog group that observes the activity of immigration officers. The agent then walked over to Ms. Cleland’s car and surprised her by addressing her as Nicole.
“He said he had facial recognition and that his body camera was on,” said Ms. Cleland, 56, who had not met the agent before.
Ms. Cleland was one of at least seven American citizens told by ICE agents this month that they were being recorded with facial recognition technology in and around Minneapolis, according to local activists and videos posted to social media, which were verified by The New York Times. None had given consent for their faces to be recorded.
Facial recognition is just one technology tool that ICE has deployed in Minneapolis, where thousands of agents are conducting a crackdown. The technologies are being used not only to identify undocumented immigrants but also to track citizens who have protested ICE’s presence, said three current and former officials of the Department of Homeland Security who were not authorized to discuss confidential matters.
As much as it may excite trump fans to know that technology is being used to create a data base to track protesters, it's not what we do here. Not here. At least it wasn't until the means authoritarian governments use to control and intimidate the populace were rolled out in MN.
The regime has already tried to normalize the military and or masked agents of the government patrolling the streets of selected (meaning blue) US cities. They are violating court orders, using excessive force, and occasionally killing people. Now they are surveilling them as well.
I gotta ask, are you OK with this?