Unfortunately, the ICEBlock app is activism theater

Summary

At this summer's HOPE conference, Joshua Aaron spoke about ICEBlock, his iPhone app that allows users to anonymously report ICE sightings within a 5 mile radius, and to get notifications when others report ICE sightings near them. You can see the full talk, and the lively/infuriating Q&A, here, starting at 6:12:10.Thanks to repression from the highest levels of the Trump administration, his app has gone viral and garnered over a million downloads from the App Store. Karoline Leavitt called it "an incitement of further violence against our ICE officers." Tom Homan said, "DOJ needs to look at this and see if they're crossing that line." Kristi Noem called the app "obstruction of justice." Pam Bondi announced "we are looking at it, we are looking at him, and he better watch out, because that's not a protected speech." (Notifying people about ICE sightings is protected speech, no matter what the fascist Attorney General says.) Joshua and his family have been receiving threats.But unfortunately, despite the app’s goal of protecting people from ICE, its viral success, and the state repression against it, ICEBlock has serious issues:Most importantly, it wasn’t developed with input from people who actually defend immigrants from deportation. As a result, it doesn’t provide people with what they need to stay safe.Because ICE sightings in the app aren’t verified in any way, it's likely that most reports in the app aren't actually ICE, even if they’re posted by people who mean well – as I describe below, the vast majority of ICE reports are false positives.And judging by the App Store reviews, it’s clear that not everyone means well. One review says: “This is a great app for safety information. Unfortunately MAGA is now posting false information on there and making racist comments in the comment section.”Joshua makes strong claims about the security and privacy of his app without backing any of them up with technical details. Many of his claims are false. He also chose to targ...