US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.
The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.
That pause has now been lifted, according to public procurement documents, which list US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as the contracting agency.
I already know the answer to this, but I’m going to ask if anyway.
How did we go from the most paranoid group of people choosing death over vaccinations bc of government surveillance conspiracies, literally storming the capital in an uprising over false rumors, and now that we have multiple confirmations of the most insane and ongoing 1984 government surveillance programs: fucking crickets?
Because the people spreading the first conspiracy are also the people doing the second.
It’s a cult.
Who think that these methods and policies will never be targeted at them because they are white and so were their grandparents.
It’s always projection. They always assume the other side is doing what they do or plan to do. They tell on themselves years in advance.
Fucking crickets is tough, wrap some tape around them first so they don’t burst.
Brainless idiots
Found an article that says this software is usually in-memory only and restarting regularly will purge it (obviously you could get reinfected): ~~https://www.zdnet.com/article/is-meta-secretly-scanning-your-phones-camera-roll-check-this-setting-to-find-out/~~
Edit: wrong article, someone replied with the correct one
After I didn’t see the mentioned content I looked around Zdnet, and I think you might have meant to link this article instead:
Bad click, it happens. Good article, though. Thanks!
So weird. I don’t even remember viewing that article. Maybe it was a link just above my address bar.
Every early morning. Mine is right before my alarm goes off, so the notification sounds just meld.
Also, no one should be using biometric data to log into thier phones. 6 digit pin isn’t very obtrusive once you get used to it
6 digit pin will be broken in less than 40 minutes by a graybox. A 6-digit pin is way more vulnerable than someone who uses a 30-digit password + biometrics
edit: sorry it’s instantly in 2025 https://www.hivesystems.com/blog/are-your-passwords-in-the-green
Sure bro, put a 30 character password into your phone every time you want to find the nearest fucking coffee shop.
edit: I guess I should explain. I’m into privacy not necessarily absolute security. If a cop wants in my phone I forgot my PIN. There’s no biometric to get into it so he’s going to have to get a warrant if he wants anything to actually stick. With face ID he just holds it up to my face. With fingerprint he can force my finger onto the sensor. In the USA, don’t know about Europe.
I just needed this info out there, I don’t really care what you do - I just need to make sure Lemmy stays safe and you’re spouting leaky insecurity disguised as best practices.
Best of luck
I think I just leaked a little right now. I don’t believe you have a 30 character unlock on your phone. That doesn’t make sense on a device someone uses multiple times a day in one hand at like a bus stop or something.
And I’m no security professional, just some dumbass out in the street.
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On a phone. On the lock screen. Every time.
Nah, I don’t buy it.
Of course I do. FaceID allows me to input it exactly once a week, sometimes less.
What don’t you understand?
Wait, so you’re using faceid but you think you’re secure?
Are you stupid?
30 characters is like five words. Entirely doable. You can take your favorite TV show, sort character names by some logic and mispell a few of them to make a very strong very long password.
With biometrics I only enter it once a week, at the very most. It’s insane to me that people want their phones to be less secure, but best of luck to you and your super secure TSA lock on your phone lol
'the fuck kind of biometric unlock is that? I’m actually curious what you’re using.
FaceID on an iPhone
So the cop can just use that FaceID to unlock your phone?
If you’re in the USA and a cop gets your phone they’re going to pop it onto a graybox and will be digging through your shit up to their elbows. I wish I were wrong
That’s fine. I didn’t help them.
Hope your high horse can get a job and feed your family when you lose your government career over an edgy Modern Warfare 3 chat lobby
how does my high horse feel when it’s riding over you, sub bitch?
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worthless when there’s cameras in every corner that record as you unlock your phone all 40 times through the day
Fuck you too, buddy. You’re being recorded as you input your absurdly long password into your phone. They probably got it on camera. haha
my password? which one? I very rarely type any passwords in public… but fuck me for having forethought!
This motherfucker runs to the bathroom to unlock his phone
https://docs.mvt.re/en/latest/
Stay safe, stay ungovernable.
For the Democrats/liberals who think they’re leftist in the room, note that this done by Biden, how it was put on hold for review so that news spread and pacifies the anger, and how it came back stronger when you forgot about it. And now Democrats will shrug and say “Trump is in charge, we’re powerles.”
Democrats are not your friends, they are not a lesser evil, we need a revolution.
Based on what has already happened, I’d definitely say Dems are the lesser evil. That’s literally what this means in this context. Still evil, just not as much as Donald dump.
Dems didn’t invent ice.
Nor Epstein
Nor trump.
Voters need to take some culpability to their own mistakes here and stop blaming it on anyone else but themselves for this shit show they created.
ICE was created by the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which passed with overwhelming bipartisan support. 90-9 in the senate and 42 Yeas came from Dems.
And how many from the republicans?
Only good Ice agent is a dead one.
They don’t need to die. They can go back to guarding parking lots.
That’s a bit like blaming the gun instead of the shooter, no?
Yeah, don’t blame the brownshirts kicking teeth in, blame the government that hires them /s
They volunteered for this, they can sleep in the pit for it in the end.
Sure, I get the “just following orders” criticism, my point is that killing ICE agents wouldn’t solve anything. I imagine many of them joined long before the crackdown started and are there to arrest actually bad people (i.e. cartel members) and don’t like the direction the current admin is going. There are also plenty of people who support this nonsense too.
Regardless, attacking the people following orders doesn’t change the orders, we should be attacking the top.
I understand your point, but these people know what they’re signing up for and why they’re putting in the uniform every day. We shouldn’t pretend these people are in anyway innocent or not culpable for their crimes. Regardless of orders, these are people who are willingly causing pain, suffering and death to innocents.
Fuck them. Fuck their bosses. None of them get any credit or sympathy. I don’t care if they started when ice was formed, they know what their orders are and are still there, what they signed up for is entirely immaterial. Also, ice was shit from the start, so even less sympathy from me.
Regardless, attacking the people following orders doesn’t change the orders, we should be attacking the top.
Making people hesitant to throw in with the brownshirts for fear of social reprisal is a perfectly valid strategy for attacking the top. Make less people want to participate in their crimes makes it harder for them to do crimes.
Make less people want to participate in their crimes makes it harder for them to do crimes.
No, it just means the reasonable people will leave and it’ll attract the types who actually agree with it. There will always be more people to take those jobs.
The real solution is changing the leadership and laws.
That’s a much smaller pool of people than those who may willingly go along with it but object otherwise.
Stop giving thugs a pass for being thugs, just because their bosses are shit. You can attack both, this isn’t some kind of mutually exclusive action.
My point is that killing ICE agents won’t make things better and will probably make things worse.
The fuck? How?
“Just following orders” isn’t a valid excuse. We know this from history.
I never said it was.
My point is that killing the soldier doesn’t change the orders, they’ll just find another soldier. If one soldier isn’t willing to follow orders, they’ll find another that is.
You were kind of making the same defense though…
The implication was that we shouldn’t blame the soldiers because they weren’t the ones who made the decision.
That’s not how this works.
No, the implication is that targeting ICE agents doesn’t solve the problem. I’m not saying that ICE agents should be immune from the law, I’m saying that the root of the problem is the orders. If some ICE agents refuse to follow orders, they’ll be replaced by those who will follow them, just like a murder will replace a gun if it doesn’t function properly.
The focus should be on the source of the problems, which is a mix of the law and the leadership. We should certainly hold ICE agents accountable for any laws they break, but targeting them w/ violence shouldn’t be the focus.
If they fear actual consequences, then less people will be willing to join.
They are literal extrajudicial fascist brownshirts that want my friends and neighbors dead. These are actual people under those masks, and they need to understand that their actions have consequences. I’m not saying people should go out and kill them, but I’m saying that they need to fear that.
You can focus on both my dude.
No, recruitment will just focus on hiring people that are okay with those circumstances, which means people with less empathy and quicker to use force. I’m not implying we should ignore illegal actions by ICE agents (we should absolutely hold them legally accountable), I’m just saying that it’s not likely to solve the problem w/o changes to the law and/or the leadership, especially given how the courts tend to give law enforcement officers a pass.
As people target ICE agents more and more w/ violence, the more violence they’ll use in response. Violence begets violence, and that’s not going to solve the problem.
What we need are lawsuits challenging the legality of their actions, and ideally criminal charges against the leadership making illegal orders. We need to pressure our representatives to change the law. We need to protest peacefully and get positive media coverage so our voices cannot be ignored. Violence isn’t going to solve it.
We’re not getting out of this without rivers of blood. Sorry just being realistic
Fascists gonna fasc. They will continue to fasc until somebody decides they’ve had enough.
Can I get a pirated copy so I can finally root my motorola moto z3 running android 9 then ?
Anyone got the torrent ?Fun fact: Americans benefited from Nazi technology after World War II as well.
It has also said it has a no tolerance policy and will cut off government clients who use the spyware to target members of civil society, such as journalists
Citizen Labs confirmed joirnalists have been targeted
Nice of The Guardian to repeat their obvious lie without immediately calling it out. This is just NSO Group 2.0. They’re moving all the engineers over because even the US was willing to sanction NSO Group after everything they did
this just brings them on par with local LEOs. these cabinets have charging ports and run brute force attacks on pins and passcodes, at least the simplest and cheapest options do.
Very surprising from the country of freedom
Thank god! Israel is our greatest ally.
When politicians say “israel is our greatest ally” they aren’t lying.
Their definition of “our” just doesn’t include us
