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baubino 6 days ago

>>> Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.

The headline plus this quote reveals the real intentions — to create a comprehensive dataset that includes biometric data and can be used however the government wishes, regardless of one’s citizenship. I have no doubt that this data will also be sold to other entities.

I remember reading years ago about how facial recognition was particularly bad at correctly identifying people with darker skin and was generally not great as the sole method of identification. The possibility of a mistaken identity being captured by this app would have life-altering implications with essentially no recourse. This is really disturbing.

lysp 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

> to create a comprehensive dataset that includes biometric data and can be used however the government wishes

Not forgetting Elon's mass data scraping from earlier this year.

walletdrainer 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Are there any details available on whether or not anything actually happened there?

griffzhowl 6 days ago | parent [-]

Yes, good grounds for concluding that there was a large exfiltration of govt data by the doge team

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/doge-workers-code-suppor...

mcmcmc 6 days ago | parent [-]

Not just doge, there were pretty clear indicators they left the door open for Russia to grab all they could as well.

griffzhowl 6 days ago | parent [-]

The same whistleblower mentioned newly-created doge credentials being used to attempt login to the NLRB system from an IP address in Primorskiy Krai, the province around Vladivostock in Russias far east. They were blocked because the system doesn't allow non-US access even with proper credentials. There are many possible explanation for that since it's just an IP address.

This is some more detail about the whisteblower's testimony from an earlier Krebs article:

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2025/04/whistleblower-doge-sipho...

Was there anything else about Russia?

leobg 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Are you talking about DOGE? That data already existed in government databases. There was also no scraping involved.

orwin 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think "Scrapping" semantic meaning is slowly switching to "illegally collecting", and for those who mean that, your comment is perceived as pedantic (basically me when people talk about "crypto" and i am still responding "cryptocurrency you mean?")

hrimfaxi 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

Why would scraping have an unlawful connotation? I thought US courts have ruled scraping to be allowed.

verdverm 5 days ago | parent [-]

"scraping" is being used in two ways

1. Scraping a website, by anyone, allowed by courts if it is publicly accessible

2. "Scraping" of data, by the government, from various sources into a centralized database in partnership with Palantir. It's a worse version of the "Patriot" Act

zzrrt 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

FYI, you wrote “scrapping”, but the word under discussion only has one P.

daveguy 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

It was exfiltration -- copying or moving data from an internal system to an external system. They insisted on and bragged about full access because now it would be "efficient". But it was clearly just simple opportunity for theft by a bunch of shady assholes. They also touted the ability to link data across multiple department to mine data on US citizens. The libertarian, "don't make databases of us" folks sat around with their thumbs up their asses because reasons. See also the Krebs link.

Why are you defending this crap? They also destroyed the departments that were actually making digital services more streamlined and easier to use 18F by dissolution and US Digital Services by capture.

doge was a fucking disaster.

tempodox 5 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Disturbing is when I burn my scrambled eggs in the frying pan. This is state terrorism.

Muromec 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

>>>> Photos captured by Mobile Fortify will be stored for 15 years, regardless of immigration or citizenship status, the document says.

That's what happens when you don't have mandatory id system and want to enforce immigration policy -- government just does whatever bullshit sticks and there is no carefully crafted set of safeguards and procedural rules to slap it for doing too much.

> remember reading years ago about how facial recognition was particularly bad at correctly identifying people with darker skin

I would imagine that for current administration it's not a bug, but a feature.

kbrisso 6 days ago | parent [-]

Who needs mandatory id systems? State ID's and passports work just fine. What if I don't want an ID?

cycomanic 5 days ago | parent [-]

I think the answer is in the article, you get a mobile app that acts as a defacto national ID with the officers using the app explicitly being allowed to ignore any other ID documents.