remember when these guys couldn't breathe while wearing a mask during lockdown?
edit: "e"
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2025
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Breath - rhymes with 'death', and is what comes out of your mouth
Breathe - the action of breathing
Try to remember it this way: when you add the 'e' on the end, you're really breeeething.
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Without open source, it could be a honey pot.
I did check to see what permissions and data it wants access to. None. That seems like a good sign.
A nefarious app might also want permissions to see all your contacts.
Edit to clarify: The app install page says only "Data Not Collected". I would presume they would list IP and/or location if that were amongst the data collected as I have seen other apps do, but I am certainly no expert. The dev is All U Chart, Inc.
Don’t apps self-report this stuff? You presumably need to make a DB query from their backend to see any reportings in a 5mi radius, so at minimum they have your GPS coordinates and IP address (which when combined would uniquely identify you)
Iirc, permissions for iOS are required for devs to be able to use the functions/methods under those permissions.
So if the app doesn't use them, they won't show up as needing them.
That may be true for things like contacts, but here they have your location, and they use the network. Thus they could hoover that up and store it, even mapping everywhere you go over time in their DB.
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TechCrunch did a traffic analysis: https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/01/iceblock-an-app-for-anonymously-reporting-ice-sightings-goes-viral-overnight-after-bondi-criticism/
the fact that i cannot use the app at all if i deny location permissions is a red flag. there’s no reason not to have a read only mode.
there may be no trackers as the other commenter mentioned about the TechCrunch analysis, but who is this random company that owns it: ALL U Chart, Inc. They’re likely pinging back their own servers with your coords
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Good stuff, but IOS only at the moment.
Edit to include link: https://www.iceblock.app/
Only for iOS... Oof.
At this point my understanding from other sources is that they can't distribute via the android App Store in a way that uses location tracking and notifications but is still anonymous where they can with iOS because location services is device side only.
Android Location manager can get the location without Google Services and there are alternative notification services like ntfy.
EDIT: The location manager is part of the official API and ntfy is available on the play store, so apps using them will also be allowed. Besides, it's android, you can install alternative app stores or install apps directly. Maybe it's a good time to teach vulnerable communities how to do it safely, because using Big Tech services is not safe for them.
Fused Location Provider data sent to Google is anonymized with a temporary device id anyway. They also can't tell if you needed location for this, maps, or Pokémon Go. But they do sometimes collect GPS, WiFi, and cell data. Not using it is more private but I don't think it's worth worrying about.
Nice masks. Must feel like they're doing something wrong.
I love how, even when they're using them to hide their face, half of them still don't know how to use a mask and put it under their nose
Yeah way to advertise that you're a mouth-breather, right?
I thought they were talking about banning masks?
If a person is armed and masked and does not identify itself, it is most likely a terrorist and a threat to the public.
I'm surprised how non of them were gunned down on self defense,
I think they have been. But they're not reporting it to avoid copycats.
There was a large number of police shootings in my state when one guy opened fire on a state trooper. Then we were hearing stories every week.
So I'm supposed to believe groups of people with masks running up to folks and grabbing them haven't been getting retaliation back?
Saw some video clip from "ice" getting beat tf up in a Haitian community. No guns on the civ side, but they were charging and tackling " ice" and not letting any of their people get kidnapped. love to see it.
It probably helps that they are targeting decent, normal working immigrants, who are unlikely to be armed.
If they were actually going after armed gang members, they probably would be getting shot. But as we can tell by the fact they are hiding their faces, they are chicken shit losers cosplaying as tough guys targeting defenseless people because it's easier.
Crime statistics plainly show that the immigrant community is objectively one of the least likely groups to commit any crime, let alone violent crimes.
The vast majority of immigrants fear any interaction with police that could jeopardize their path to citizenship, even before trump took office and made everything way worse. These people just want to work and go home to their families. They’re unfortunately a perfect target for fascists like Trump because they are under represented, decent people who aren’t likely to fight back at first. Remember that fascism requires a nebulous “enemy” to rally people towards. You need a group that is simultaneously “evil” and capable of great harm to the government and people, but also easily handled by “security” measures. This allows the dictator to convince the public that all these sweeping powers that are being demanded are for their own safety. And unfortunately the vast majority of people just believe the first thing they hear, and we end up in this situation.
I'm just waiting for a trial where a jury has to decide if shooting at a gang of masked unidentified men in unmarked vehicles kidnapping you or your loves ones counts as self defense.
and regardless of the verdict the supreme court will uphold the right of the state to let unidentified gangs kidnap people off the streets.
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Why can't it just be a website? Why does everything have to be a fucking "app"?
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What a good country we live in when this app is the #1 app in the Social Networking category.
Would it be possible to create a webapp version of this? With ICE and CBP freely able to search phones now, I am worried about retaliation if they find this app on the phone.
Yes, it’s not hard for a full stack developer to make. Probably a thousand people already in the fediverse can, including me.
But it cannot be hosted on USA controlled servers, and the developers need to find a way to be anonymous to USA offices
Edit: also some other issues. Cannot put it as an onion service because most people in the USA do not use tor. This means regular domain.
- register domain where cannot be seized
- server must be load balanced or using something like kubernetes
- heavy traffic costs money , how to pay bills without crossing USA banking system? And cannot expose payers or contributors
- where to host?
many people can build it, but most of us have no clue to the obstacles
This is actually a spot where I think a public blockchain could work and it's censorship resistant properties will be crucial one day.
The server is the blockchain, so it's not hosted anywhere specific and can't be taken down. It's also a smart contract which ended up working in favor of the devs of TornadoCash (A coin mixing service that provides privacy) where a judge overturned the sanctions on it since it was just immutable public code, not owned by anyone.
Now that Tornado Cash isn't sanctioned, you could mix your coins through it to then pay the sub cent fee to post the sighting on one of the layer 2s like Arbitrium (the fee which will also help combat spam)
The app could then be open source (web/android/iphone) and monitor the blockchain for the sightings in your area.
The problem still becomes push notifications if it's all being done locally... It would need to be your device itself monitoring. Apple is also bad about background processing, but it's a better on Android, and especially easier if you don't deploy to the store and can bypass some of the requirements.
This way incurs no hosting costs for the developer, no load balancing, nothing to be seized etc.
It's also harder to set up than what you listed, so even fewer people could do it.
It does require adoption of something like Ethereum though.
Edit: Some clarity, but also to post that transactions fees for example on Arbitrium today are $0.00087 for a 15 second confirmation. Add on a very tiny similar cost to post some GPS coordinates and a small description.
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Regarding the Android version:
https://www.iceblock.app/android
TL,DR: "It's difficult, so we'll hide behind privacy excuses rather than helping the largest number of at-risk people."
Seriously, if VPN companies and every other company that handles sensitive data anonymously can do it, so can these developers. When 70% of the worldwide smartphone user base uses Android, an iOS-only app is just not good enough anymore.
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Why not just release it as a self install not connected to an appstore?
Not disagreeing. The issues that come with it:
1 - Not many people will install it because you have to disable default security features. Android gives a huge "Your device is insecure" scary message.
2 - Then you'll get the people who will use this for malicious reasons. Even the app store gets copycats that do nothing but steal information.
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"If it's a legitimate disappearing, the public has ways to try to shut that whole thing down."
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Super skeptical that this is a Honeypot, or they'd just make it a web app.
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even if it meant publishing on F-Droid instead of Google Play.
Sadly this means it’s not accessible to like 95% of people, even if driven to install it.
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I just got a spare vest from the security department, I could totally costume change into an ICE agent if I wanted...
Anyone can cosplay as an ICE agent; all you've gotta do is remove your license plate and wear a facemask+hat.
Yeah that doesn't make sense to me. They could easily release it on fdroid and through a website where you can download the apk.
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