ICE Blocked from Access to Certain Utility Records

Yesterday, as WaPo reports, “A nationwide group of utility companies that provided sensitive data from millions of Americans’ cable, phone and power bills to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other government agencies has agreed to end the practice in response to concerns the information was being misused.”

This is BIG NEWS Y’ALL. I feel like I’ve been screaming into a void a bit when I talk about ICE utilizing big data from companies like Westlaw ever since I met Sarah Lamdan (CUNY) in 2019 and she opened my eyes to the practice. (See prior related posts here, here, here, here.)

BREAKING: ICE no longer has access to 171 million people’s utility information following pressure from our #NoTechForICE campaign ‼️

We’ve cut the data off from the source.

This thread explains what this means, and what needs to happen next.

More: https://t.co/VYG4f7wrJC

— Mijente (@ConMijente) December 8, 2021

As WaPo notes, this is “a rare victory in the effort to rein in the use of private databases by government agencies seeking to gather personal information they would not be allowed to collect without a court order.”

-KitJ