alt.hn

2/12/2026 at 8:53:30 PM

ICE, CBP Knew Facial Recognition App Couldn't Do What DHS Says It Could

 https://www.techdirt.com/2026/02/12/ice-cbp-knew-facial-recognition-app-couldnt-do-what-dhs-says-it-could-deployed-it-anyway/

by cdrnsf

2/13/2026 at 5:12:24 AM

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m a law abiding citizen of $other_country and at this point I wouldn’t touch the US with a very long pole. Just doesn’t seem worth it

by tbossanova

2/13/2026 at 9:43:51 AM

I wouldn't. Tourism has plummeted already. I don't know how things are going for international conferences, insofar they had survived Covid. Based on anecdata, I assume they do feel the isolation.

Usually big sport events are used to improve optics for authoritarian regimes, often outbidding well-functioning democracies. Quatar, China, Russia, Nazi Germany [1] to name a few. I think the world cup football is a welcome event, as it gives some 'normalcy' to the US regime, and legitimacy to their policies. It is interesting to study the history around [1], as not many things have changed how people approach these kinds of dilemmas.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_Summer_Olympics

by exceptione

2/13/2026 at 4:19:04 PM

Are these ones reich scholars like Rove?

Bush-Rove-Schwarzegnegger: https://www.counterpunch.org/2003/10/06/the-bush-rove-schwar... :

> According to [...], Rove’s grandfather was Karl Heinz Roverer, the Gauleiter of Oldenburg. Roverer was Reich-Statthalter—Nazi State Party Chairman—for his region. He was also a partner and senior engineer in the Roverer Sud-Deutche Ingenieurburo A. G. engineering firm, which built the Birkenau death camp, at which tens of thousands of [...]

Oh, also Rove and Kenneth Lay of the Enron deregulatory debacle that put California hospitals in rolling blackouts in the dark.

vegas empty https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEA&search_query=Vegas+e...

They forced the US into trillions of dollars of debt by cutting taxes and starting wars.

They have not paid the bills for the wars that they started and debt-financed.

"Starve the beast" (Reagan/Bush, Bush, Trump): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starve_the_beast

LIV Golf

"From Infiltrating Wikipedia to Paying Trump Millions in Golf Deals, Saudis Whitewash Rights Record" (2023) https://www.democracynow.org/2023/1/17/saudi_arabia_wikipedi... :

> LIV has paid millions to golf resorts owned by Donald Trump, who has publicly supported the new league which is attempting to compete with the PGA.

Trump takes direct payments from SA for Liv golf.

"Analysis: The real reason Donald Trump is on board with LIV Golf" https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/politics/donald-trump-liv-gol... quoting a presidential masto-toot:

> "All of those golfers that remain ‘loyal’ to the very disloyal PGA, in all of its different forms, will pay a big price when the inevitable MERGER with LIV comes, and you get nothing but a big ‘thank you’ from PGA officials who are making Millions of Dollars a year,” Trump wrote. “If you don’t take the money now, you will get nothing after the merger takes place, and only say how smart the original signees were.”

by stopbulying

2/13/2026 at 6:03:35 AM

I find this stance funny because at least in my experience facial recognition adoption is lagging in the US and privacy implications are discussed.

The other countries I’ve traveled to just adopted with broadly without any discussion of privacy, just a “look how convenient this is!!”

by refurb

2/13/2026 at 2:33:50 PM

As I was told by no lesser expert than Yan LeCun [1], there's a difference between facial recognition and facial verification. The latter is when you stand in front of the automated gates at the airport and your fact is scanned and compared to the photo on your just-scanned passport to, well, verify, that you are the passport holder. Many countries have adopted this technology and after my exchange with LeCun I must say even I, terminally paranoid about being filed away in databases etc, am a little more comfortable with that. At the very least, in an EU country (and also the UK) you can ask for the operators of such services for all the data they have on you and instruct them to destroy it, so even if they keep your picture, you can often do something about it.

Facial recognition is the use of the same technology to match a picture of your face to pictures in some face picture database in order to identify you, without the need of a passport or other photographic id. As the Wired article points out, this use case has a very high rate of failure "in the wild", i.e. with natural lighting conditions, varied body postures and facial accessories etc. There are a few police forces in certain countries that have adopted this tech, but it's not as widely deployed as facial verification.

The article above is complaining about the use of facial recognition. It's a bit confusing because the article keeps using the term "verification" as does the Wired article, but there's a clear description of matching a picture taken on the street to faces in a "database", and there's no mention of using the tech to match a person to the photo on their id, so that's facial recognition, not verification.

There's a serious issue of invasion of privacy from unchecked use of facial recognition. Unfortunately most people are not going to care much, like they didn't care much when e.g. the UK installed surveilance cameras [2] all over the place, and like they don't care much when Meta, Google, Amazon, and everyone else vacuums up their online behavioural patterns for targeted advertisement etc.

___________

[1] Twitter thread, can't find it now.

[2] Or so-called CCTV. Please excuse a long-ago Metal Gear Solid player a small terminological transgression.

by YeGoblynQueenne

2/13/2026 at 8:39:55 AM

This article isn't about facial recognition. It's about the US executive branch repeatedly running roughshod over the law and lying. In that context, your comment is a non sequitur.

by BugsJustFindMe

2/13/2026 at 2:01:38 PM

Exactly. It is not about the technology it is about the implementation.

My country isn't perfect but at least we keep the racists, fascists and religious nut cases in line.

by expedition32

2/12/2026 at 11:24:26 PM

Privacy issues and politics aside, the title doesn't really seem to describe the content of the article.

The app seems to be doing what they say it can do. Is there any actual data as to it's effectiveness, match and false positive rate?

by WatchDog

2/13/2026 at 12:51:44 AM

Despite DHS repeatedly framing Mobile Fortify as a tool for identifying people through facial recognition, however, the app does not actually “verify” the identities of people stopped by federal immigration agents—a well-known limitation of the technology and a function of how Mobile Fortify is designed and used.

by NewJazz

2/13/2026 at 1:33:35 AM

That quote from the source wired article, does not allege that the DHS makes any claim that the app can itself verify anyone's identity.

Where has the DHS made any statement that the app does something that it does not do?

The closest thing I can find is from the 2025 DHS AI use case inventory, where the entry for Mobile fortify states it's benefits are:

"Utilizing facial comparison or fingerprint matching services, agents/officers in the field are able to quickly verify identity utilizing trusted source photos."

The claim is not that the app verifies someone's identity, but that it can potentially find trusted source photos that look similar to the person in question.

The officer could then evaluate the match, and make a determination to their own satisfaction that their subject is one and the same as the person in the database.

by WatchDog

2/13/2026 at 1:47:13 AM

ICE told a ranking member of the House homeland security committee:

    [...] an apparent biometric match by Mobile Fortify is a ‘definitive’ determination of a person’s status and that an ICE officer may ignore evidence of American citizenship [...]
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/ices-forced-face...

by AlotOfReading

2/13/2026 at 2:28:13 AM

It's an excuse generator, nothing more. They could use Hotdog / Not Hotdog and get the same result.

by jshier

2/13/2026 at 3:25:05 AM

That's the point of the article.

by AlotOfReading

2/13/2026 at 5:21:11 AM

That is concerning, if this kind of technology is going to be used, there needs to be clear policies about it's use, and they must be followed.

by WatchDog

2/12/2026 at 10:27:37 PM

I wonder when it will sink in for the average (especially non-white) American citizen that you are one false positive in an algorithm away from being arrested and detained / deported. If you’re lucky there will be a public outcry large enough that you’re released (like 5 year old Liam Ramos). Given expectations built into the constitution, this is should be disturbing. As a white, upper middle class, multigenerational citizen of the US, I find ICE’s actions disturbing at a fundamental level. Probably because I can extrapolate to the logical conclusion of this. Other people are extrapolating as well and it wouldn’t surprise me if continued ICE actions spur a public rebellion against surveillance of all forms, after seeing how it can be combined with a lawless federal government to subvert basic rights. I also think it will result in a backlash against private prisons in general as people then extrapolate from the ICE situation to the daily reality faced by primarily black men when interacting with the police. With a simple head nod, the cops can plant evidence and present a narrative to a judge and jury that puts you away for 20 years over nothing more than a dirty look at a cop.

If you think carrying a form of ID or passport will save you from ICE, I just want you to imagine a scenario where you are alone with several federal agents who, when provided with your proof of citizenship, light it on fire with a match and throw you in a van. Papers are just physical objects and unless ICE is wearing 24/7 streaming body cams, the above scenario could happen to literally anyone.

by therobots927

2/13/2026 at 10:13:04 AM

I am a naturalized citizen, and my nightmare scenario is getting arrested and deported to my country of birth, because I'm very likely to end up like Ksenia Karelina in that case.

by int_19h

2/13/2026 at 2:03:54 PM

Sorry you have to deal with this :(

by therobots927

2/13/2026 at 8:42:23 PM

Do you have any actual evidence to support that non-whites are specifically more targeted at any level other than the ratio of illegal entries or over-stays in the US? I've seen plenty of instances of white visa overstays also being deported.

Given than upwards of 20 million people walked across the southern border in the last administration that a disproportionate amount of those people are non-white... but that doesn't mean that deportations in and of themselves are driven by race at all.

Beyond any of that, you seem to have a level of bias that is well out of touch with reality and your paranoia seems to be highly unfounded by the reality of the levels of deportation of the current administration even compared to the administrations since the turn of the century, especially offset to the number of illegal entries released into the interior of the US over that same time period.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 12:47:11 AM

Papers are not just physical objects. The issuing agency records your details and the date of issuance. This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.

by Noumenon72

2/13/2026 at 1:31:13 AM

> This is why cops don't boost their citation numbers by shredding your driver's license.

The cops are issuing a citation, which you can contest in a court with a reference to that agency record. ICE has a habit of snatching people off the streets and stashing them in not-quite-black sites in Texas or Florida until they can book them on a private airplane to Guatemala.

by roughly

2/13/2026 at 4:57:09 AM

I have had a hard time getting copies of my documents when I am -not- incarcerated in a concentration camp... good luck with that.

by scarecrowbob

2/12/2026 at 10:45:15 PM

I was told in a Know Your Rights training to carry copies of documents, so they can't steal / burn the originals.

Readers, whatever you're doing right now is what you would be doing during the rise of Nazi Germany... Be kind, be a good neighbor, don't talk to cops.

by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF

2/13/2026 at 3:42:02 PM

"Readers, whatever you're doing right now is what you would be doing during the rise of Nazi Germany..."

That is true.

If you're in the US and you're not in the signal chats or whatever that would alert you when ICE is working then you're not doing all the things that you could do to prevent this pronounced move towards fascism that will impact you personally and deeply.

This is not activism as charity- people need to understand that we are still in a spot where we may be able to push back, and that should be understood as simple self-interest.

Even if you're not in a place "under siege" they are working where you are living.

Consider that if you're in some rural place or even a place where they feel "at home" your work is going to be more impactful by definition:

- find your local immigrant's rights group that is watching out for ICE - get trained by them how to be a "responder" - slot in and help where you can.

by scarecrowbob

2/13/2026 at 3:25:05 AM

Photocopies or officially certified copies?

by BobbyTables2

2/12/2026 at 10:49:28 PM

If things get worse we’ll need to wear body cams live-streaming to the cloud at all times to ensure our rights are upheld. Now that I think about it - not a bad product idea!

by therobots927

2/12/2026 at 11:02:30 PM

Anecdotally I've seen a significant uptick in folks installing dash cams in their cars.

There was a local incident where ICE drove erratically to make it look as though a legal observer initiated a crash. They then called and lied to the local police department. The activist was then released when he provided dash cam footage proving that they lied about the incident. https://lataco.com/oxnard-dash-cam-ice-crash

by cdrnsf

2/12/2026 at 10:38:53 PM

[flagged]

by pizzafeelsright

2/12/2026 at 10:47:38 PM

> I think the better path forward is more open, peaceful, extended discussion.

There is a good format for two people to have a discussion in good faith: https://yesnodebate.org/

I'll start - Do you think it is good that federal agents are ignoring due process?

by 01HNNWZ0MV43FF

2/12/2026 at 11:30:34 PM

No. (for the sake of the game/time) Do I think it is happening? Probably. If so, Punish them? Yes.

My turn? A hypothetical group of men with a swords are intent on doing something you disagree with. Would it be wise to attempt to stop them while unarmed and outnumbered?

by pizzafeelsright

2/13/2026 at 12:52:30 PM

Depends on the thing they intend to do.

Is it chop down a tree that shouldn't be chopped down? I probably would need more people and equipment to effectively stop them because I'm probably not going to convince them with pretty words if they are already doing something that shouldn't be done.

Is it try to kill a member of my family? Yeah I'd probably try to intervene sans weapons in order to prevent the loss of life of another family member.

Context matters.

by btreecat

2/13/2026 at 12:40:48 AM

What’s with the sword talk? We don’t live in mediaeval England.

by therobots927

2/13/2026 at 3:02:43 AM

It's a metaphor for the power of death in the hands of others.

by pizzafeelsright

2/13/2026 at 3:47:35 AM

OK Jordan Peterson

by therobots927

2/12/2026 at 10:47:27 PM

No, your favored extremists taking control of the government, attacking American cities, and executing Americans who protest is not "squashing a rebellion". These are straight up violations of individual liberty and rejection of limited government, as laid out by the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights.

The framing of your injustices is specious - while I'd normally be right with you about the synergy of corporate power forming a de-facto government, that these became mainstream political issues really just demonstrates how far your bubble has been warped by propagandists. Do you know how you can look at the blue tribe media and easily pick out the inflammatory extremist wackos? Your tribe has that also. If you are unable to see it, this means you are saturated in it.

by mindslight

2/12/2026 at 11:17:15 PM

Are you sure you are aware what tribe I belong to, if any? I was speaking from a position of "anyone" with the power of the sword.

by pizzafeelsright

2/13/2026 at 12:53:17 AM

The tribe currently wielding the sword is the red tribe. Framing their actions as "squashing a rebellion" rather than seditious conspiracy to undermine our Constitutionally-limited government is a form of empathizing with their particular violence.

The framing of corporate vaccine mandates is from the same vein - both the implication that it's at the same level of coercion as de jure government action, and also the normalization of what would normally be a fringe viewpoint as a mainstream political rallying cry (a direct result of tribal propaganda). If you want to talk about needless escalation, sane leadership would have unequivocally told everyone they should get vaccinated, and then the number of people defecting would have been small enough to just cope with.

Furthermore addressing your original appeal for "open, peaceful, extended discussion", this doesn't particularly work when the red tribe is still fully cheering on their spite-candidate looting and burning our country's institutions to "own the libs". From what I've seen there are many Democrats still asking "how can we compromise" (even if half are tone deaf about the reasons), while the red tribe continues to reject any criticism of what they're told is "winning".

by mindslight

2/13/2026 at 3:18:36 AM

I'm not on either side. I'm certainly not a fan of a company or government, both with the ability to negativity affect my life in considerable ways if I am unwilling to bow to the current whim of leadership.

Corporate life under a tyrant who demands prayers or pronouns were unthinkable not long ago. Today if enough leverage is used to press the buttons the demands on us workers may be unpleasant at best or deny us our livelihood.

by pizzafeelsright

2/13/2026 at 12:55:39 PM

>Corporate life under a tyrant who demands prayers or pronouns were unthinkable not long ago.

See you give the game away with shallow complaints of forced pronouns. It's a fantasy that allows you to sit fence while only really casting strong blame in one direction, while excusing it when the wind blows a new way.

by btreecat

2/13/2026 at 6:29:54 PM

I myself was both sidesing up until June of 2020. But doing it at this point just seems like a type of denial.

Appealing to "prayers or pronouns" is specious. There have always been things that are politically incorrect to say, and which saying will alienate you from a chunk of people. Hence the heuristic of "no politics or religion" - a decent first-pass at avoiding putting your foot in your mouth. And in the workplace, there have always been vectoralist politickers with whom you just have to smile, nod, and validate their world view / ego. Whether you're smiling and nodding about the virtues of "DEI" or the virtues of playing golf, does it really matter? Plus ça change...

For more context of where I'm coming from, when Obama projected the rainbow flag on the White House, my immediate reaction was "the backlash from this is going to be terrible". I got how that alienated a large number of people, who in my opinion just kind of needed to be left alone until they and their prejudices pass, rather than being gloated at. But groupthink gonna groupthink...

If Trumpism were merely the opposing flavor of that, I wouldn't care! Project a cross on the White House and send every kid a copy of the ten commandments - ridiculous and inflammatory, but eminently ignoreable and recoverable. But Trumpism is not merely some traditionalist mirror of progressive virtue-signalling - as illustrated by the government-enabled terrorist gangs physically attacking American cities and whatnot. Rather, Trumpism is the wholesale vivisection and looting of the Constitutionally-limited US government, in favor of some autocratic big tech surveillance dystopia.

That's what flipped for me in June 2020 - the hard objective realization that Trump was never going to come around to accepting Covid as a pan-political problem that needed to be addressed to lead us through. If he had done this, he would have had a shoe-in second term, from the "war president" effect. But rather, the only thing he and his "base" know is division. It's why all of the policies currently being championed are merely some combination of destructive and ineffectual - constructively fixing the issue is never the goal, rather its merely letting the problem fester while preaching to an increasingly-committed choir of true believers.

If you're earnestly championing "open, peaceful, extended discussion", then you should at least be willing to recognize that Trumpism is a severely-escalated destruction of that ideal.

by mindslight

2/12/2026 at 9:21:05 PM

DHS, ICE, CBP - seems like a lot of redundancy.

by givemeethekeys

2/12/2026 at 9:51:54 PM

DHS -> Department of Homeland Security, parent agency of both others created after 9/11

CBP -> Customs and Border Protection, descended from U.S. Customs Service, which traces back to the end of the 18th century, but added to DHS at the beginning of the 21st

ICE -> Immigration and Customs Enforcement, created in 2003 from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies

They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred. As a result, you're seeing ICE doing crowd control, BORTAC (basically CBP's tactical / SWAT unit) doing run-of-the-mill immigration enforcement, and all kinds of other wackiness. The DHS does much much more than just CBP/ICE stuff too.

by aftbit

2/12/2026 at 10:05:55 PM

ICE was not “created from the criminal investigation arm of CBP and related agencies”, it was created at the same time, by the same law, as CBP and DHS, from some of the investigation and enforcement arms of INS and the Customs Service, with much of the rest of those agencies (including the Border Patrol, which had been one of the enforcement arm of INS) becoming CBP, and the routine "happy path" immigration functions of INS moving to USCIS under the Department of State.

> They are related but not the same. Under the current US regime, all the stops are being pulled out and all the lines blurred.

A large part of that is that notional function of the “immigration crackdown” falls logically in ICE's domain, and this was the justification for massively increasing ICE funding, but CBP (and particularly the Border Patrol) having much more of the no-rules culture that was sought for the operation, leading to CBP and Border Patrol personnel taking key roles in the operation (which is why, until he became something of a political scapegoat for the Administration policy, a Border Patrol area commander got redesignated a "commander at large" and then given operational command not just of Border Patrol involvement but the notionally ICE-led operation.)

by dragonwriter

2/13/2026 at 10:03:23 PM

Thanks for the correction. I meant to say from the customs service indeed but I got the acronyms twisted myself.

by aftbit

2/12/2026 at 10:14:51 PM

That trend of blurred lines has been going on for quite a while. Iirc a big callout of the 9/11 commission report was lack of communication between the FBI and the CIA. Even on the local side increasingly it seems every major crime gets a mixture of various federal, state and local law enforcement response.

A notable case was the Uvalde school massacre, which only ended when a border patrol tactical team (believe from the BORTAC group you mentioned) took over from dithering local forces. This was a major example, but interagency collaboration has also become routine in far less dire circumstances.

The militarization and blurred lines have thus become a feature not a bug. And it won't be reformed simply by having the current administration fade into the rearview mirror. It would be beneficial I think though if current excesses led to a more holistic introspection and reform, but we'll see.

by pear01

2/13/2026 at 1:04:24 AM

The CIA and FBI had been deliberately separated, after the Church Commission found many, many abuses.

The Patriot Act removed and lowered many of the barriers. And now we're back to what the Church Commission found.

by jfengel

2/13/2026 at 8:45:21 PM

They kind of have to when local police don't do the crowd patrolling and handling they're supposed to be doing.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 1:06:49 AM

In my own country the border guard is part of the military- its a special form of military police. They also protect embassies for some reason.

Trust me the US does not have a patent on bureaucracy... Over the centuries things just develop. One can only assume it made sense once.

by PearlRiver

2/13/2026 at 8:07:20 AM

Friendly reminder that DHS exists because of the war on terror, and the state of emergency the US has been under since 9/11 (yes, still under the same emergency).

Why are nazis kidnapping Americans in broad daylight? Osama Bin Laden. The most successful terror attack in history.

by notepad0x90

2/13/2026 at 2:04:19 PM

I do not think that it is correct to call that as "the most successful", when the only people in the entire world who have benefited from the attack have been Bush Junior and all his political or businessmen friends, and they have benefited tremendously, by gaining huge amounts of money from the wars and from internal US "security" activities and by ensuring the reelection.

If we assume that the purpose of the terror attack was the official one, it has not been successful for its initiators, but for those controlling USA.

If "successful" is intended to refer to the fact that 3 out of 4 airplanes have reached their target, I remember how I watched live the events and I was stupefied that the 2nd and the 3rd airplanes have hit their targets. For the 1st airplane, it was normal to be successful, as nobody expected that action. But for the following 2, I was familiar with air defenses from places that are supposed to be much less advanced than USA and there was plenty of time to find the airplanes and shoot them down. I could never understand why this did not happen and even more I could never understand why there has never been any credible US official explanation for why it did not happen (I mean the explanation that they could not find the airplanes because they have turned off their transponders is not credible).

by adrian_b

2/13/2026 at 2:17:17 PM

what do you mean? The purpose of the terror attack was to destroy America. Bin Laden/AQ weren't trying to get rich (he was already from a rich family).

He probably didn't anticipate how successful he'd be. he attacked WTC because it's a symbol of finance and economy; pentagon, military. he had targets like that. If you recall, it wasn't the US alone that invaded Afghanistan, it was NATO. Now, using the very same reactionary forces of his 9/11 attack, that very force that retaliated after 9/11 is being destroyed.

by notepad0x90

2/13/2026 at 2:26:29 PM

If the purpose of the attack was to destroy America, it certainly was a failure.

The attack has killed a great number of innocent American citizens, but while this was a tragedy for their families, friends and relatives, this provided an opportunity for the US government and Republican Party of obtaining greatly increased powers and greatly increased spending and they have secured reelection and the ability to initiate a couple of wars from which some well-connected companies gained a lot.

There is nothing that Bush Junior could have done to gain so much as he did, other than USA being the victim of such an attack. Assuming that the US government had nothing to do with the attack, it was nonetheless the luckiest event that could have ever happened to them. Bin Laden and his followers have gained absolutely nothing, except cheering like fools for a few days that they have hurt their supposed enemies.

by adrian_b

2/13/2026 at 5:39:39 PM

Americans have lost their freedoms, and so much of what made America great. NATO is basically gone now. America can't catch up with it's competition in the east when it comes to tech and infrastructure. It'd be a miracle if the US avoids a proper civil war in the next few years. I don't know what else you can count as success short of that, an asteroid destroying the continent? The US isn't focused on invading the middle east, and it cost the US $20T in afghanistan and iraq. If a few wealthy americans got richer, bin laden wouldn't have minded. He wanted the influence of america to end. and he succeeded. America used it's influence in the 80's and 90's to interfere with islamic nations, and spread its culture. Now america is a pariah, even europeans consider america more hostile than russia right now. People either laugh at or pity america these days at what it's become. In the 90's people either hated america or loved it. That's all bin laden wanted. In his view, muslims were being oppressed by the west, and america was the west's leader. That has changed. and the catalyst to that change was his attack.

by notepad0x90

2/13/2026 at 2:48:03 PM

You seem to measure success with quite a short term view. You are wrong, the comment you are replying to is quite right.

A few days? That one day led America to prosecute two wars for over a decade - both of which failed. Both of which seeded the ground for the current moment, as the prevailing political establishment has lost all credibility.

This century was supposed to belong to America. Go back and see how optimistic people where about the new millennium. Where is that now? It's gone.

Because the American government responded to one of the darkest days in history by:

1. Invading Afghanistan only to lose it two decades later to the very people they had tried to dislodge in the most painful way possible - literally running away on the tarmac while those that had risked their lives to support them were begging not to be abandoned.

2. Invading Iraq when there were no WMDs and Saddam Hussein has never had anything to do with the faction that was in Afghanistan. Thousands died for what? And we are still there even though that war was supposed to end long ago.

Both of these entities had previously been supplied weapons by the United States btw, in Afghanistan against the Soviets and in Iraq against Iran. No one was held accountable for that. Oops.

Why do you think people are voting for the system to be torn apart? You are correct the attack itself would not destroy America, as everyone knew. The question is what would America do after.

On that count, the failures were numerous and again, no one in power was ever held accountable. This is its own form of lawlessness that has encouraged the present circumstances.

Now a security apparatus that has failed to impose its will on the streets of the likes of Baghdad is manifesting in a new form in Minneapolis. Afghanistan was known as the graveyard of empires. The goal was to draw us there so it could once again live up to its name. In such a circumstance, success is not measured in a manner of days, but in years. Thus I very sadly find much to agree with in the comment you so eagerly dismissed.

by pear01

2/13/2026 at 8:48:01 PM

The Obama family seems to be doing quite well also... Obama turned everything that GWB was doing up to 11, and it would do most well to be aware of that. Obama had way more deportations than Trump has had and with less pressure to do so. The main thing today is a concerted campaign to literally destroy the country in favor of maoist reform.

by tracker1

2/13/2026 at 1:05:11 AM

Technology wise, I’m more interested to have a platform or site that tracks the people who build these technologies and apps, rather than the runner boy in the streets. Those people have no morals or ethics, I want to know them and know their names/company names if contractors, so I never work with them or hire them or share any sort of collaboration with them.

by tamimio

2/13/2026 at 2:23:56 AM

And you'll work with moral/ethical companies that slowly become the thing you're trying to avoid

by yowayb

2/12/2026 at 9:46:40 PM

What in the Schutzstaffel is going on in this administration.

by josefritzishere

2/12/2026 at 10:00:29 PM

You answered your own question.

by BugsJustFindMe

2/12/2026 at 10:18:29 PM

Your Gestapo is as good as mine

by cycrutchfield

2/12/2026 at 10:33:10 PM

[flagged]

by CGMthrowaway

2/12/2026 at 11:02:04 PM

The Wired article is higher quality, agreed, but "race-baiting", really? It seems quite relevant that a specific ethnic group is much more likely to suffer consequences due to this flawed mass facial recognition given how the enforcement is targeted.

Particularly given the example from the article:

  In Oregon testimony last year, an agent said two photos of a woman in custody taken with his face-recognition app produced different identities. The woman was handcuffed and looking downward, the agent said, prompting him to physically reposition her to obtain the first image. The movement, he testified, caused her to yelp in pain. The app returned a name and photo of a woman named Maria; a match that the agent rated “a maybe.”

  Agents called out the name, “Maria, Maria,” to gauge her reaction. When she failed to respond, they took another photo. The agent testified the second result was “possible,” but added, “I don’t know.” Asked what supported probable cause, the agent cited the woman speaking Spanish, her presence with others who appeared to be noncitizens, and a “possible match" via facial recognition. The agent testified that the app did not indicate how confident the system was in a match. “It’s just an image, your honor. You have to look at the eyes and the nose and the mouth and the lips.”

by toraway

2/12/2026 at 11:04:30 PM

I'm focused on the initial paragraph more than anything else.

OP's lead sentence is race-baiting, bubble-coded hyperbolic misinformation, and the entire first paragraph is completely unnecessary and uncharacteristic of appropriate HN content. We know how to have better discussions here. Starting with primary source and not editorialized re-posts is one of them.

Also, "non-white" is not really a "specific ethnic group" imo; and the article does not lead with "much more likely to suffer consequences" but rather "DHS want to find non-white people to deport by any means necessary" which is a gross mischaracterization of the stated intention of actual government officials. If you have direct evidence to the contrary lmk

by CGMthrowaway

2/13/2026 at 3:17:07 AM

Your suggestion would have been well taken and helped contribute to an elevated level of discussion characteristic of HN if you had instead simply pointed out the better source.

by toraway

2/12/2026 at 11:15:57 PM

The explicit goal of this administration is to have mass deportations of anyone who isn't white. Stephen Miller wants to deport 100 million Americans. I cannot take any arguments seriously from people who deny these kinds of facts.

by QuercusMax

2/12/2026 at 11:26:29 PM

Can you cite someone in an official capacity saying that? I believe you, just want to verify.

by CGMthrowaway

2/12/2026 at 11:14:14 PM

Here you go. “Supreme Court said ICE can stop you based on race, accent, job and location.”

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/09/10/immi...

Your vocabulary indicates that this information will go right above your head and I anticipate a lot of illogical rationalization in response so this is more for the edification of others reading.

by therobots927

2/12/2026 at 11:30:50 PM

Profiling - which we probably agree is not a good thing - in the course of a stop, is not the same as deporting someone. Cold day in hell (on earth) when Supreme Court says you can be deported based on race, accent, job or location.

by CGMthrowaway

2/13/2026 at 5:41:36 AM

right, and an ICE agent stopping has little correlation to said ICE agent deporting you. you're surely reasonably intelligent, you can connect the dots

by undeveloper

2/13/2026 at 12:25:14 AM

This is just one more thing in a time of all the things. When all this backlash comes to roost at techs door this site I expect will be shocked. How could the average American confuse the rich VCs with the moloch worshiping pedophiles and the fascist government populists?

When the giant finally wakes in America it won't be reasonable or well targeted. I'm reminded that violence in gang neighborhoods is modeled as a contaigen. Have we ever seen a violence "pandemic"?

Which I guess is why Zuck has been building compounds.

by itsanaccount

2/12/2026 at 11:00:55 PM

I can just imagine "not hotdog" tech demo they showed Trump and Hesgeth.

by rcakebread

2/13/2026 at 12:07:20 AM

The only training image is the skin tone chart from Family Guy.

by zzrrt

2/12/2026 at 11:14:26 PM

And we thought the UK jailing people for postage fraud based on a faulty AI was bad...

by caycep

2/12/2026 at 11:42:34 PM

I don't think that's anywhere close to an accurate description of the UK's recent post office scandal?

I haven't seen AI feature in any reporting. Rather, the software had bugs, some people decided the software couldn't be wrong and convinced others to the point of conviction?

by pricechild

2/13/2026 at 12:05:21 AM

Indeed, that scandal vastly predated AI everywhere, and was just vanilla consultant-grade software (i.e. trash) coupled with vast incompetence at every stage.

by jen20

2/13/2026 at 12:39:43 AM

Incompetence is not sufficient to explain that case. Many high level leaders were aware of deficiencies in the software and wanted to prosecute anyway. That is active malice or indifference to human suffering.

by 0cf8612b2e1e