LexisNexis To Provide Giant Database of Personal Information To ICE (theintercept.com) 64
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: The popular legal research and data brokerage firm LexisNexis signed a $16.8 million contract to sell information to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to documents shared with The Intercept. The deal is already drawing fire from critics and comes less than two years after the company downplayed its ties to ICE, claiming it was "not working with them to build data infrastructure to assist their efforts." Though LexisNexis is perhaps best known for its role as a powerful scholarly and legal research tool, the company also caters to the immensely lucrative "risk" industry, providing, it says, 10,000 different data points on hundreds of millions of people to companies like financial institutions and insurance companies who want to, say, flag individuals with a history of fraud. LexisNexis Risk Solutions is also marketed to law enforcement agencies, offering "advanced analytics to generate quality investigative leads, produce actionable intelligence and drive informed decisions" -- in other words, to find and arrest people.
The LexisNexis ICE deal appears to be providing a replacement for CLEAR, a risk industry service operated by Thomson Reuters that has been crucial to ICE's deportation efforts. In February, the Washington Post noted that the CLEAR contract was expiring and that it was "unclear whether the Biden administration will renew the deal or award a new contract." LexisNexis's February 25 ICE contract was shared with The Intercept by Mijente, a Latinx advocacy organization that has criticized links between ICE and tech companies it says are profiting from human rights abuses, including LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. The contract shows LexisNexis will provide Homeland Security investigators access to billions of different records containing personal data aggregated from a wide array of public and private sources, including credit history, bankruptcy records, license plate images, and cellular subscriber information. The company will also provide analytical tools that can help police connect these vast stores of data to the right person. In a statement to The Intercept, a LexisNexis Risk Solutions spokesperson said: "Our tool contains data primarily from public government records. The principal non-public data is authorized by Congress for such uses in the Drivers Privacy Protection Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act statutes." They declined to say exactly what categories of data the company would provide ICE under the new contract, or what policies, if any, will govern how agency agency uses it.
The LexisNexis ICE deal appears to be providing a replacement for CLEAR, a risk industry service operated by Thomson Reuters that has been crucial to ICE's deportation efforts. In February, the Washington Post noted that the CLEAR contract was expiring and that it was "unclear whether the Biden administration will renew the deal or award a new contract." LexisNexis's February 25 ICE contract was shared with The Intercept by Mijente, a Latinx advocacy organization that has criticized links between ICE and tech companies it says are profiting from human rights abuses, including LexisNexis and Thomson Reuters. The contract shows LexisNexis will provide Homeland Security investigators access to billions of different records containing personal data aggregated from a wide array of public and private sources, including credit history, bankruptcy records, license plate images, and cellular subscriber information. The company will also provide analytical tools that can help police connect these vast stores of data to the right person. In a statement to The Intercept, a LexisNexis Risk Solutions spokesperson said: "Our tool contains data primarily from public government records. The principal non-public data is authorized by Congress for such uses in the Drivers Privacy Protection Act and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act statutes." They declined to say exactly what categories of data the company would provide ICE under the new contract, or what policies, if any, will govern how agency agency uses it.
Using cluster analysis they know everything! (Score:3)
I wish there is a law that set hard limits on privacy.
When is enough is enough?
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You don't lose your rights just because you're under investigation.
The civil liberties that are inconvenient for police are probably the ones that are most important.
Re: Using cluster analysis they know everything! (Score:1)
You have no right to anonymity in many contexts explicitly visible to law enforcement.
You may not transfer more than $10k through a US bank without being identified.
You may not board an airplane without identifying yourself. To a literal uniformed government agent.
You must identify yourself and provide credentials when operating a motor vehicle and pulled over by police.
You must identify yourself to federal law enforcement when purchasing a firearm.
You must identify yourself (with or without providing crede
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You'd be wrong... Australia, for example. In countries that do require ID, most governments furnish that ID to their eligible citizens.
Only in America do we make it difficult for some groups to get an ID and then make it a requirement for voting.
See, voter fraud isn't actually a real problem. Republicans investigate the hell out it every year looking for a reason to implement more draconian voter suppression laws. Though even with all their effort, they never find anything!
Get real, dude. It's all about
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If you've ever had an eBay or Paypal account, Lexisnexis has your info.
If you've ever had a credit card or debit card in the US. Lexisnexis has your info.
Pretty much, if you have ever had a legitimate job in the US, Lexisnexis has your info.
And if this worries you, stop committing crimes. In all seriousness, Lexisnexis is entirely marketed towards legal (lawyers) information for building cases and evidence. This can work against you as much as it can help you when you're on the receiving end of a lawsuit.
At
Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:1, Insightful)
There is no natural right to close your eyes, spin a globe, and claim residency in whatever country your finger lands on.
Countries not only have a right, but also a duty to their citizens, to enforce the geographical boundaries and borders that delineate the area where that country's laws apply from where it does not, and part of that enforcement entails the deportations of people from outside of those borders who are apprehended inside those borders in violation of those laws.
This is pedantic, but it seems
Re:Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:5, Insightful)
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If there isn't a tariff, there's no need for a customs house to collect it.
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On the other side of the argument from you is a Constitutional law professor, Ilya Somin of George Mason University.
I quote:
"The detailed enumeration of congressional powers in Article I of the Constitution does not include any power to restrict migration as such, even though it does include the power to make laws concerning the âoenaturalizationâ of foreigners and âoeregulate Commerce with foreign Nations.â The Naturalization Clause does not create a power to prevent foreigners from ent
Re:Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay, so if the federal government doesn't have the ability to prevent people from coming over the border (which, by the way, exactly one "constitutional lawyer" believes) that means the states have that power. This is your "out of the frying pan into the fire" moment, as I guarantee none of the border states want an endless stream of illegal aliens coming in, either. It'll be restricted either way.
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:2)
Somehow I doubt this guy or the people who cite him are quite the small-government strict constructionists this line of argumentation would imply. If my hunch is correct, that would make this argument dishonest, since the principle cited to support it is not one he actually believes is a valid one in constitutional law.
I could be proven wrong, of course. One way to know would be to hear his views on the meaning of and the incorporation of the 2nd Amendment.
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Isn't that the one that stops the government from disarming anyone? Seems no one is in favour of enforcing that.
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We don't need ICE to have secure borders. They've only been around since 2003, if you'll recall. If anything, they've only things worse. It's exactly what you'd expect from an organization with virtually no accountability. Even the abuse and corruption was entirely predictable.
I don't think reform is possible. ICE needs to be abolished and replaced.
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If the border agents could and would just simply take EVERYONE they capture, and drop them back immediately across the border every time....we'd have much les
Re:Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree absolutely with one exception. The declaration of a ''border zone'' to include 100 miles in the interior where ''routine searches are "reasonable" there, and therefore do not violate the Fourth Amendment's proscription against "unreasonable searches and seizures".'' is absolutely ridiculous. Seeing as how 2 out of 3 people in the country live in that zone, it's basically an end run around the 4th amendment. It leads to jack booted type of enforcement. Quite honestly I don't care if that zone allows them more versititly to execute the laws of this country, but when it slows down free movement of people not under investigation, it's unacceptable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:1)
You know how to fix that, right?
Take away the excuse that there could be illegal aliens everywhere by building a fucking wall and guarding it instead of making bullshit excuses for how "the terrain" will keep the illegals out and how "it's not smart" to concentrate border agents...ya know...at the border.
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You should read up on the history of the great wall of China if you think a wall will keep people out.
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:1)
My house has walls. I find it exceedingly difficult to go through them. It's much much easier to use the doors.
Walls work dude. Walls are not magic forcefields*, but they are better than dry riverbeds, cattle fences, and just plain nothing.
*Debunk the crazy version (walls are a cureall) and claim you've debunked the sane version (walls are more effective than no wall). Typical dem. Or typical "virtual fence" equipment vendor. Whichever
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Throughout all of recorded human history, border walls have been proven to be nothing but expensive failures. What on earth would make you think things will be different this time?
You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, right?
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:2)
If walls are so ineffective, why are all sorts of places protected by fences? Car impound lots, military bases, gated communities, certain private residences...
Oh that's right. Walls and fences do work. There's just a very strong incentive to lie and say they don't so that the flow of cheap labor and future democrat voters doesn't stop.
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They're fundamentally different things. Can't you tell the difference?
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If walls are so ineffective, why are all sorts of places protected by fences?
Walls are effective for plenty of needs. Gated communities use walls to inform trespassers they shouldn't continue. While there may be exceptions, I have never seen gated community walls which could actually keep someone out who wanted to cross. They are there to make sure after someone is caught they cannot claim they didn't know they were trespassing. That is not the reason for a US border wall.
A car impound lot's walls are effective at keeping cars in, not trespassers out. You could probably break into a
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:2)
Except in the most modern of history in a country with modern technology. Times have changed, it works for Israel.
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:2)
You don't need a ceiling. You need immigration checks at international airports and an air force that shoots down unidentified and unauthorized flights entering American airspace. Oh wait...we have those. The wall's the only missing bit.
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Doesn't America have a Constitution? Doesn't that Constitution say in Article VI, "and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land" and hasn't America signed the Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, or at least the 1967 Protocol, and ratified it in 1969 and made it the Supreme law of the Land?
Basically you're country has as supreme law that refugees are allowed to enter the land. I know you're a right wing nut job, so d
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I don't see the connection.
The term "refugee" is clearly defined. People fleeing their country because the US offers better prospects, are not refugees. A refugee is someone fleeing their country when their government threatens them due to their belief, or because they may actually be prosecuted for their race or religion.
It also excludes anyone who has already been accepted into another country as a refugee. For example, Mexico accepting someone from Brazil will exclude that person from declaring themselve
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The connection was the right wing nutjob saying that no non-American has a right to enter the country. Meanwhile there are people who do have the right through treaties of various kinds, with refugees being a big one. There's others, my wife and son, by treaty, can walk across the border anytime they want, at least if America honoured their treaties. (Jay treaty, reaffirmed in the Treaty of Ghent)
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Just so you know, these debates are referring to migrants coming up through the Mexican border. The term refugee is defined in the treaty itself that was quoted, and those individuals don't apply. The term refugee is a special immigration status. Just because you are in immigrant, does not mean that you are a refugee. That's going by lawful definitions. The left likes to redefine definitions to fit whatever they are trying too push. It's a common tactic for them.
As for natural-born natives in Canada and the
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There seems to be other groups having problems, such as Haitians, as well as the whole thing seeming to be anti-immigrant if not white people, at least judging by the people who kept going north to escape the negative climate down there, exemplified by people like rightwingnutjob.
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My house has walls. I find it exceedingly difficult to go through them. It's much much easier to use the doors. Walls work dude.
Even ignoring the fact your walls are mostly only effective because you also have a roof, your walls are only effective because people are not motivated enough to bypass them.
[Walls] are better than dry riverbeds, cattle fences, and just plain nothing.
That may be true, but it is a very poor argument for building walls. I don't care if one solution is better than another if neither are effective. My bike may be more effective than walking to get to my job 32 miles away, but who cares? I've taken an 11 hour commute and made it a 4 hour commute instead. Still not effective, and not wor
Re: Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:2)
They didn't have electronics. Tunnelling is defacto impossible with correctly applied technology and there's no more need for human guards.
The wall just has to delay people a bit and make trespassers easily electronically detectable, for everything else there's attack helicopters and gunboats. Also imposing, for psychological deterrence.
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Re:Deportation is not a human rights violation (Score:4, Insightful)
part of that enforcement entails the deportations of people from outside of those borders who are apprehended inside those borders in violation of those laws
I think I have more of an issue that ICE is contracting a 3rd party to provide data. If you buy car insurance, LexisNexis has information on you. If you have a rental history, LexisNexis has information on you. And there's a whole smattering of other hum-drum activities that I'm sure a lot of us do, which is collected by this agency. That raises a 4th Amendment concern because of the 14th Amendment. The 14th Amendment indicates that all people, citizens or not, while on US soil must be ran through due process. I've got no problem with deportation, I have problems with serendipitous deportation. There is a process and when that process isn't followed, that's cause for concern. The 4th Amendment indicates the idea of a warrant for search and the collection of information. And usually this happens in a lot of cases in deportation, post facto. To me, that raises an eyebrow on how exactly a court is asked for such from ICE while still toeing the line setup by the 4th Amendment. Hand waving "probable cause" all the time makes me question it even more. Probable cause is fair justification, I just begin to wonder about the caliber of officers when the majority of their arrests are justified on the basis of probable cause for evidence entered post facto into the court. You arrested someone, and then after arresting them you entered evidence into the record? And that just keeps happening? Interesting, indeed.
And that gets me back to my point. LexisNexis is collecting a lot of information from everyday activities, and what exact process are they using to separate the hum-drum from the criminal? What transparency is being provided to the public? And what kind of oversight is being established? I don't mind deportations, but I do want them to follow process and ICE has, in the best of light, been opaque about their comings and goings in some of the best of times. This is still a nation by the people, for the people. I don't want to stand in ICE's way but I do want to ensure that they clear the bar in how they handle things. Just saying, "we have a right to protect our borders" is a bit carte blanche. No agency should be without question, accountability, and oversight. And ICE hasn't historically been very well known for any of that and that I feel should be concerning for Americans. If we are so alright with some agency having only tenuous accountability for reason XYZ, it's not long that others learn to also adhere to reason XYZ as well. And that's the thing, we shouldn't just say "Oh it's XYZ, they are cool to do whatever they please," or at least I don't think that's an ideal mindset.
Additionally, I get a bit touchy about 3rd parties that collect massive amounts of information anyway and the whole Equifax thing only served to highlight those concerns. So I get it, we do not want people here illegally, but that alone isn't justification for an agency that's been not as forthcoming as I would hope we would all want. Nor do I believe it is justification to hook a database of massive amounts of information on the public that has questionable processes for the exchange of that data, nor accountability, nor oversight, nor security audit. Deport as you see fit, but I do ask that it is done by the book and there's not a lot of methods for ensuring that the book being followed is what is happening.
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I'm not all that bothered by government records being provided to the government.
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The problem with ICE, like the problem with other law enforcement agencies, is not that they are enforcing laws. It's the obscene manner in which they go about it.
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Workers should be able to freely follow capital.
In other news .... (Score:2)
In other news, there are now more people driving without licenses or insurance.
Lexis/Nexis doe smore than legal research.. (Score:2)
I found out a few weeks ago Intuit/Quicken uses them for a back end "threat analysis" for authentication patterns... Use your login "too much" and it locks the desktop app for three hours.
So how does this change things? (Score:1)
Lexis Nexus operates on plausible deniability, for like decades.
The only thing this changes is a forward push on individual right's.
It's simply more transparent, but they have been dirty for 20 years.
If we expect agencies to do their tasks.. (Score:2, Troll)
They will need information to do them.
Those who want open borders should declare they oppose the legal right of nations to border control then vote borders out of existence.
It's hypocritical to complain about enforcement when the real gripe is with the law itself.
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Powerful people (not you or I) decided otherwise. (Score:2)
Social control by tantrum and moral panic is the rage. so LatinX thou art and shall be until the (very White) Leftists who make the rules find a name for you they like better.
Social credit score (Score:1)
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It's pretty much the same. Have you ever tried to dispute what's in your LexisNexis report? You likely don't even know when it's being used to sort you. At least the Chinese are upfront with their people about the existence of their social credit system.
TFA is at least partially lying (Score:2)
From the byline...
Yes, deportation of felons. Homeland Security Investigations, the division he's dog-whistling to his readers about, is the criminal investigation arm of ICE. They don't detain and deport garden variety illegals. They are sent after criminals, traffickers, employers, etc.
Biden didn't just shut down the ERO operations (ERO is the division that does 99% of all deportations), they shut down the HSI deporta
People should cooperate with investigators (Score:2)
That should be perfectly clear to everyone.
Immigration laws do not make criminals into victims.