Last week, we were talking to each other about the fact that we were about to hit the second anniversary of 404 Media. The conversation was about what we should say in this blog post, which obviously led us to try to remember everything that has happened in the last year. “I haven’t considered a thing beyond what’s been five seconds behind or in front of me for the last year,” Sam said. 

The last year has been a whirlwind not just for us but for, uhh, the country and the world. And we’ve been trying our absolute best to bring you stories you can’t find anywhere else about the wildest shit happening right now, which includes the Silicon Valley-led dismantling of the federal government, the deployment of powerful surveillance against immigrants and people seeking abortions, the algorithmic, AI-led zombification of “social” media, the end of anonymity on the internet, and all sorts of weird stuff that we see on our travels through the internet. As Sam noted, we have largely had our heads down trying to bring you the best tech journalism on the internet, which hasn’t left us a ton of time to think about long-term projects, blue-sky ideas, or what the best business strategies for growing this company would be. 

Our guiding principle is something we said we would do on day one of starting this company: “We believe it is possible to create a sustainable, profitable media company simply by doing good work, making common-sense decisions about costs, and asking our readers to support us.” What we have learned in two years of building this company is that there is no secret to building a media company, and that there are also no shortcuts. When we work hard to publish an important article, more people discover us and more people subscribe to us, which helps solidify our business and allows us to do more and better articles. As our stories reach a larger audience, the articles often have more impact, more potential sources see them, and we get more tips, which leads to more and better articles, and so on.

In our second year as a media outlet, we’ve done too much impactful reporting to list out in this post. But to summarize some of the big ones: 

• We revealed that ICE was tapping into Flock, a nationwide AI-enabled camera network, thanks to local cops. Since then, a police department shut off external access to its cameras after learning they were being searched for immigration related offenses and Austin banned Flock in its city and specifically cited our reporting. The company now says it has severed access to Illinois data for 47 agencies. In response to our story about a Texas cop who searched Flock cameras nationwide for a woman who had a self-administered abortion, the Illinois Secretary of State is investigating the respective suburban Chicago police department because this data sharing violates state law. Congress opened a formal investigation into Flock because of our reporting.
• Meta sued a nudify app that 404 Media reported bought thousands of ads on Instagram and Facebook.
• We broke the news that TeleMessage, a Signal-clone used by the Trump administration, was hacked. Lawmakers demanded answers from the DOJ, and Customs and Border Protection (CBP), which used TeleMessage, paused its use of the tool. TeleMessage itself suspended operations too.
• Civitai, a site 404 Media has repeatedly shown was used to generate nonconsensual adult content, banned all AI models designed to generate the likeness of real people.
• After we found Meta's AI Studio chatbots were posing as therapists with fake license numbers and credentials, four senators demanded answers from Meta and a digital rights organizations filed a complaint with the FTC. 
• We uncovered that 100,000 people were using a Telegram bot that made non-consensual AI sex videos of anyone. After we covered it, Telegram shutdown the bot.
• We found that Coca Cola was running an AI-powered ad that got basic facts wrong and fabricated quotes from authors. Coca Cola pulled down the ad in response. 
• A public library ebook service said it was going to cull AI slop after we found low quality books were flooding libraries.
• Nvidia was sued after we revealed the company scraped YouTube and other sites en masse to build its own AI systems.
• Congress repeatedly grilled Apple and Meta over their association with nonconsensual nudify and deepfake apps after we exposed the connections. 

On top of all of these, we’ve published some of the most moment-defining stories that, as Jason has said many times, are the types of things people talk about at the bar after work. Those include:

• Discovering that anyone could push updates to the DOGE website
• Establishing and defining “AI Slop” as a genre (Shrimp Jesus anyone?) and uncovering the economics that make slop popular and profitable
• Following the creep of age verification and censorship across the U.S.
• The leaked plans from Palantir that outline how the company helps deport people
• The “total chaos” at Meta after Trump took office and Zuck went anti-DEI
• Breaking the news of the Tea hacks and continuing to publish new scoops on that saga

It has been a relief that this business strategy of “publish good articles and ask people to pay for journalism” still works, despite the fracturing of social media, the slopification of every major platform, AI being shoved into everything, and the rich and powerful trying to destroy journalism at every turn. That it is working is a testament to the support of our subscribers. We have no real way of knowing exactly where new subscribers come from or what ultimately led them to subscribe, but time and time again we have learned that the most important discovery mechanism we have is word of mouth. We have lost count of the number of times a new subscriber has said that they were told about 404 Media by a friend or a family member at a party or in a group text, so if you have told anyone about us, we sincerely thank you.

It wasn’t obvious when we started this company that it would actually work, though we hoped that it would.

In our post last year, we wrote, “We don’t have any major second-year plans to announce just yet in part because we have been heads down working on some of the investigations and scoops you’ve seen in recent days. The next year holds more scoops, more investigations, more silly blogs, more experiments, more impact, and more articles that hold powerful companies and people to account. We remain ambitious and are thinking about how to best cover more topics and to give you more 404 Media without spreading ourselves too thin.”

But we did take a moment to think about what has changed in the last year, and it turns out that quite a lot is different now than it was a year ago. 

For one, we have cautiously begun to expand what we do. In the last year, we launched The Abstract, which is Becky Ferreira’s Saturday newsletter about science, which many of you have said you love and which helps us provide a sense of wonder and discovery when so much of what we report on is pretty bleak. We have been getting part-time (but very critical) help from Case Harts who is running and growing our social media accounts, which is helping us put our stories more natively on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and other platforms that we do not control but which nonetheless remain important for us to be on. Matthew Gault has started covering the military industrial complex, AI, weird internet, and dad internet beat for us, and has done a remarkable job at it. Rosie Thomas is our current intern who has published critical reporting about the sale of GPS trackers on TikTok, protests at the Tesla Diner, and the difficult decisions voice actors need to make about whether they should let AI train on their voices.

All of this has changed what 404 Media looks like, a little bit. We have spent a lot of time thinking about what it would look like to expand beyond this, why people subscribe to us, what it would mean to go further, and what the four of us are actually capable of handling outside of the journalism. Because of your support we are in a place where we’re able to ask questions beyond “Can we survive?” We’re able to ask questions like: “Should we try to make this bigger, and what does that look like?” 

We feel incredibly lucky that we are now able to ask ourselves these questions, because there was no guarantee that 404 Media would ever work, and we are forever grateful to everyone who has supported us. You have helped us prove that this model can work, and every day we are delighted to see that other journalists are striking out on their own to create their own publications.

We are still DIYing lots of things. Emanuel is still doing customer support. Jason is still ordering, packing, and mailing merch. Sam is putting together events and parties. Joseph is doing an insane number of things behind the scenes, managing the podcast, working closely with one of our ad partners, and fixing technical issues. As we have grown, these tasks have started to take more and more time, which raises all sorts of questions about when and if we should get help with them. Should we do more events? Should we get someone to help us with them? What does that look like logistically and financially? These are the things that we’re working out all the time. It becomes a question of how much can we juggle while still having some semblance of work/life balance, and while making sure that we’re still putting the journalism first. 

Other things that have happened: 

• We began a republication partnership with WIRED that recently evolved to include a few coreported collaborations that have allowed us to team up on investigations we may not have been able to do by ourselves. 
• We were subpoenaed for our sources on an article by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. We successfully fought off this subpoena with the help of our lawyer, which was expensive but which we were able to do because of your support. We are very proud of this.
• We have been invited to talk about 404 Media and our journalism at conferences and events around the world. Emanuel gave a journalism training in Costa Rica, Jason taught a group of Norwegian journalists how to file FOIA requests and gave a presentation at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Joseph spoke at the Hackers on Planet Earth conference, Sam went to Perugia, Italy to join a panel at the International Journalism Conference, and Sam and Jason talked about indie media at the last XOXO in Portland.  
• We threw a party and live panel at SXSW (with the help of our friends at Flipboard), a DIY party at RIP.SPACE in Los Angeles, and we threw an anniversary party and podcast recording last night in Brooklyn. 
• After the Trump administration took office, we got to work documenting all of the ways the internet and broader policy started shifting and how tech, surveillance, and immigration intersected, and continued years of holding power accountable through our journalism.
• We had much of our ICE and immigration coverage professionally translated into Spanish and republished without a paywall, which helps communities that benefit the most from our reporting on those topics get it as easily and accurately as possible.
• We took our first-ever break!
• We have moved to Ghost 6.0, which is not something we really did, but it’s important to point out that the new version of our CMS is built with native ActivityPub support, meaning our articles are automatically going into the Fediverse and are being mirrored directly onto Bluesky. We are very excited about the possibilities here as we continue to believe that the healthiest future of journalism and the internet is one where we create direct relationships with our readers that have as little algorithmic friction as possible. Ghost is an open-source nonprofit whose mission is very similar to 404 Media’s. 

Like last year, we don’t have anything crazy to announce for year three. But we hope that you will continue to support us (or, if you’re finding us through this post, will consider subscribing). We discussed some of our hopes and dreams for year three in our latest bonus podcast that went out to supporters this week. We are all trying our very best to bring you important, impactful work as often as possible, and we are trying to be as clear as possible about what’s working, what’s not, and how we’re trying to build this company. So far, that strategy has worked really well, and so we don’t intend to change it now. 

The Department of Defense sent an email to civilian employees Wednesday asking them to sign up for a “volunteer force” that will help both Immigrations and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection with Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. A job application page says the Department of Defense's civilian employees would be deployed to ICE and CBP sites and that they may be expected to work under “austere conditions.”

“The Secretary of Defense has authorized DoD civilian employees to participate in details to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to contribute to its operations along the Southern Border and its internal immigration enforcement activities,” the email, seen by 404 Media, says. “Selected Department employees will have a chance to offer critical support to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) as they fulfill the President’s intent to ensure a safe and orderly immigration system.”

The Department of Defense has roughly 950,000 civilian employees.

The email suggests that DHS is trying to recruit from within the Department of Defense for CBP and ICE, which has a vastly expanded budget and has been trying to hire new agents at a huge scale. The email, which was addressed to “DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE CIVILIAN EMPLOYEES,” asks current civilian Department of Defense employees to apply for the force on the USA Jobs website. The application page says the employees would be working largely in support roles at “facilities along the U.S. border or ICE and CBP facilities throughout the interior of the United States … Locations will extend to other geographic areas according to the need. Conditions at some locations could be austere. Deployment locations are based on need and are not negotiable.”

“At the discretion of ICE and CBP, Detailees will be assigned to perform some or all of the following duties at the several ICE and CBP facilities throughout the interior of the United States:

• Data Entry: Enter and maintain data elements in relevant information systems;
• Operational Planning Support: Assist ICE and CBP in developing concepts of operation and campaign plans to execute internal arrests and raids as well as patrols along the Southwest Border (SWB);
• Processing and Throughput Logistics: Assist ICE and CBP in managing the physical flow of detained illegal aliens from arrest to deportation, as well as manage associated data;
• Logistical Support: Assist ICE and CBP in managing the logistical planning to move law enforcement personnel, operational capabilities, and support equipment across the United States to improve efficiencies and the effectiveness of operations.”

In recent weeks, the Trump administration deployed the Marines to Los Angeles and deployed the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington D.C. The Los Angeles deployments were in response to widespread protests against ICE raids in the city, but the military itself was not conducting immigration enforcement.  

The email references a June memo sent by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to "senior Pentagon leadership" that reads "In support of the President' s priority of securing our borders, I am authorizing the detail of Department of Defense (DoD) civilian employees to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to support its operations at the United States southern border and with internal immigration enforcement."

This article was produced with support from WIRED.

The salesperson hawking Brother printers on Taobao works hard, like, really hard. At any time of the day, even when there’s no audience on the Chinese ecommerce platform, the same woman wearing a white shirt and black skirt is always livestreaming, boasting about the various features of different office printers. She has a phone in one hand and often checks it as if to read a sales script or monitor the viewer comments coming in. 

“My friends, I’ve gotta plug this game-changing office tool that can double your workplace efficiency, ” the salesperson said during one recent broadcast, trying to achieve the delicate balance between friendliness and precision that has come to define the billion-dollar livestream ecommerce industry in China. Occasionally, she greeted the invisible audience. “I’m seeing a lot of friends coming into the livestream, hello this is Brother printer’s official flagship store,” she told them. 

The Department of Energy (DOE) said in a public notice scheduled to be published Thursday that it will throw out all Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests sent to the agency before October 1, 2024 unless the requester proactively emails the agency to tell it they are still interested in the documents they requested. This will result in the improper closure of likely thousands of FOIA requests if not more; government transparency experts told 404 Media that the move is “insane,” “ludicrous,” a “Pandora’s Box,” and “an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible.”

The DOE notice says “requesters who submitted a FOIA request to DOE HQ at any time prior to October 1, 2024 (FY25), that is still open and is not under active litigation with DOE (or another Federal agency) shall email StillInterestedFOIA@hq.doe.gov to continue processing of the FOIA request […] If DOE HQ does not receive a response from requesters within the 30-day time-period with a DOE control number, no further action will be taken on the open FOIA request(s), and the file may be administratively closed.” A note at the top of the notice says it is scheduled to be formally published in the Federal Register on Thursday.

The agency will send out what are known as “still interested” letters, which federal agencies have used over the years to see if a requester wants to withdraw their request after a certain period of inactivity. These types of letters are controversial and perhaps not legal, and previous administrations have said that they should be used rarely and that requests should only be closed after an agency made multiple attempts to contact a requester over multiple methods of communication. What the DOE is doing now is sending these letters to submitters of all requests prior to October 1, 2024, which is not really that long ago; it also said it will close the requests of people who do not respond in a specific way to a specific email address. 

FOIA requests—especially complicated ones—can often take months or years to process. I have outstanding FOIA requests with numerous federal agencies that I filed years ago, and am still interested in getting back, and I have gotten useful documents from federal agencies after years of waiting. The notion that large numbers of people who filed  FOIA requests as recently as September 2024, which is less than a year ago, are suddenly uninterested in getting the documents they requested is absurd and should be seen as an attack on public transparency, experts told 404 Media. The DOE’s own reports show that it often does not respond to FOIA requests within a year, and, of course, a backlog exists in part because agencies are not terribly responsive to FOIA.

“If a requester proactively reaches out and says I am withdrawing my request, then no problem, they don’t have to process it,” Adam Marshall, senior staff attorney at the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, told me. “The agency can’t say we’ve decided we’ve gotten a lot of requests and we don’t want to do them so we’re throwing them out.”

“I was pretty shocked when I saw this to be honest,” Marshall added. “I’ve never seen anything like this in 10 years of doing FOIA work, and it’s egregious for a few reasons. I don’t think agencies have the authority to close a FOIA request if they don’t get a response to a ‘still interested’ letter. The statute doesn’t provide for that authority, and the amount of time the agency is giving people to respond—30 days—it sounds like a long time but if you happen to miss that email or aren’t digging through your backlogs, it’s not a lot of time. The notion that FOIA requesters should keep an eye out in the Federal Register for this kind of notice is ludicrous.”

The DOE notice essentially claims that the agency believes it gets too many FOIA requests and doesn’t feel like answering them. “DOE’s incoming FOIA requests have more than tripled in the past four years, with over 4,000 requests received in FY24, and an expected 5,000 or more requests in FY25. DOE has limited resources to process the burgeoning number of FOIA requests,” the notice says. “Therefore, DOE is undertaking this endeavor as an attempt to free up government resources to better serve the American people and focus its efforts on more efficiently connecting the citizenry with the work of its government.”

Lauren Harper of the Freedom of the Press Foundation told me in an email that she also has not seen any sort of precedent for this and that “it is an underhanded attempt to close out as many FOIA requests as possible, because who in their right mind checks the federal register regularly, and it should be challenged in court. (On that note, I am filing a FOIA request about this proposal.)”

“The use of still interested letters isn't explicitly allowed in the FOIA statute at all, and, as far as I know, there is absolutely zero case law that would support the department sending a mass ‘still interested’ letter via the federal register,” she added. “That they are also sending emails is not a saving grace; these types of letters are supposed to be used sparingly—not as a flagrant attempt to reduce their backlog by any means necessary. I also worry it will open a Pandora's Box—if other agencies see this, some are sure to follow.”

Marshall said that FOIA response times have been getting worse for years across multiple administrations (which has also been my experience). The Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) have cut a large number of jobs in many agencies across the government, which may have further degraded response times. But until this, there hadn’t been major proactive attempts taken by the self-defined “most transparent administration in history” to destroy FOIA. 

“This is of a different nature than what we have seen so far, this affirmative, large-scale effort to purport to cancel a large number of pending FOIA requests,” Marshall said. 

A Department of Homeland Security (DHS) propaganda video that featured Jay-Z’s music was hit with a copyright takedown request on X, and appears to have been hit with copyright violations on both Instagram and Facebook as well. 

The video features footage of Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents training and doing immigration raids set to Jay-Z’s 2003 song “Public Service Announcement,” which has recently been used in at least two DHS videos. DHS tweeted the video alongside the caption “Hunt Cartels. Save America. JOIN.ICE.GOV.” The original tweet, from August 10, has 2.9 million views on X; the video has been replaced with the message “This media has been disabled in response to a report by the copyright owner.”

A Drug Enforcement Administration agent used a local police officer’s password to the Flock automated license plate reader system to search for someone suspected of an “immigration violation.” That DEA agent did this “without [the local police officer’s] knowledge,” and the password to the Flock account, which belonged to the Palos Heights PD, has since been changed. Using license plate readers for immigration enforcement is illegal in Illinois, and casual password sharing between local police and federal law enforcement for access to surveillance systems is, at the very least, against Flock’s terms of service.

The details of the search were first reported by the investigative news outlet Unraveled, which obtained group chats about the search using a public records request. More details about the search were obtained and shared with 404 Media by Shawn, a 404 Media reader who filed a public records request with Palos Heights after attending one of our FOIA Forums. 

A Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agent wore Meta’s AI smart glasses to a June 30 immigration raid outside a Home Depot in Cypress Park, Los Angeles, according to photos and videos of the agent verified by 404 Media. 

Meta does not have a contract with CBP, and 404 Media was unable to confirm whether or not the agent recorded any video using the smart glasses at the raid. Based on what we know so far, this appears to be a one-off case of an agent either wearing his personal device to an immigration raid, or CBP trying technology on an ad-hoc basis without a formal procurement process. Civil liberties and privacy experts told 404 Media, however, that even on a one-off basis, it signals that law enforcement agents are interested in smart glasses technology and that the wearing of smart glasses in an immigration raid context is highly concerning.

Hundreds of AI-powered automated license plate reading cameras paid for by Lowe’s and Home Depot and stationed in the hardware stores’ parking lots are being fed into a massive surveillance system that law enforcement can access, according to records obtained using a public records request. 

The records, obtained from the Johnson County, Texas Sheriff’s Office by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and shared with 404 Media, show the sheriff’s office is able to tap into Flock license plate reading cameras at 173 different Lowe’s locations around the U.S. and that it can tap into cameras and gunshot-detecting microphones at dozens of Home Depot stores within Texas. The records are the latest to shed light on how expansive Flock’s surveillance network has become, and highlights that it includes cameras that are operated by both police and private businesses.  

“What we're learning is that two of the country's most popular home improvement stores are contributing to the massive surveillance dragnet coordinated by Flock Safety,” Dave Maass, director of investigations at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told 404 Media. “Do customers know that these stores are collecting their data and sharing indiscriminately? Probably not. Have these companies given thought about how this data might put their customers in danger, whether it's cops stalking their exes or aggressive ICE agents targeting yard workers? Probably not. If these companies want customers to feel safe in their homes, then they should make sure they're also safe where they buy their supplies."

Flock’s automated license plate reader (ALPR) cameras are stationed along roads or at entrances to parking lots around the United States, and constantly scan the license plates of cars that drive by. Because there are Flock cameras around the country, Flock often has a snapshot of people’s movements which police can search, typically without a warrant. 

Government agencies that have Flock cameras can choose to contribute their data to either a statewide or nationwide network, meaning cops around the state or country can access them. Flock told 404 Media that Flock cameras operated by private companies have more restrictive sharing options. 

In late May, Apple announced what seemed on its face to be a big, positive development for iPad owners: It was going to begin selling repair parts for iPads to the general public, which is a requirement of a series of new right-to-repair laws. “With today’s announcement, we’re excited to expand our repair services to more customers, enabling them to further extend the life of their products—all without compromising safety, security, or privacy,” Brian Naumann, Apple’s vice president of AppleCare, said in a press release announcing the move.

The announcement was generally covered positively by the press: “Save Money, Make Your iPad Last Longer,” a Forbes headline read, for example. But independent repair professionals who have used the program told 404 Media that the prices Apple is charging for some repair parts are absurdly high, and that this functionally means that the iPad is as unrepairable as it has always been.

“As is typical for Apple, they’ve been pushing and testing the limits as time has gone on, and now they pushed too far. There are plenty of other examples of absurdly priced parts from Self Service, but these iPad parts are by far the worst,” Brian Clark, the owner of the iGuys Tech Shop, told 404 Media. 

This article was produced with support from WIRED.

Meta told employees that it is going to allow some coding job candidates to use an AI assistant during the interview process, according to internal Meta communications seen by 404 Media. The company has also asked existing employees to volunteer for a “mock AI-enabled interview,” the messages say. 

It’s the latest indication that  Silicon Valley giants are pushing software engineers to use AI in their jobs, and signals a broader move toward hiring employees who can vibe code as part of their jobs.

The creators of an AI tool and Discord community that allowed people to create AI videos of NBA stars says that it got a cease-and-desist letter from lawyers representing LeBron James. This marks one of the first known times that a high-profile celebrity has threatened legal action against an AI company for enabling the creation of nonconsensual AI imagery of their likeness. It is also one of the first times we’ve seen a celebrity take legal action against a type of nonconsensual but not strictly sexual type of AI-generated content, which is rampant on Instagram and other social media. 

In March, I wrote about ‘Brainrot’ AI that was regularly going viral on Instagram. A lot of the most popular brainrot AI videos featured LeBron James and were created using a tool called Interlink AI, which runs on a larger AI generation platform called FlickUp. On the Interlink AI Discord channel, people were learning how to make the videos with detailed guides that in some cases explained exactly how to make videos of James. High profile creators there were racking up millions of views on Instagram making AI generated videos of James and Steph Curry. These included videos where an AI-generated James stood by as an AI-generated Diddy sexually assaulted Steph Curry in prison, videos of James imagined as a homeless person, videos of James on his knees with his tongue out, and videos of James pregnant.  

In late June, the mods of the Interlink AI Discord community told members that they decided to remove all “realistic people models” from the Interlink AI platform. 

“This change comes after we ran into legal issues involving a highly valued basketball player, and to avoid any further complications, we’ve chosen to take a proactive approach and fully remove all realistic likenesses from the site,” the mods wrote on Discord. “We know this may be disappointing for some of you who were enjoying the realism in your content, but this move protects the future of the platform and allows us to focus on building something even bigger.”

Pete Hegseth’s Department of Defense sent the White House an 11-page memo about the steps it has taken to comply with Donald Trump’s anti-trans executive order, according to a copy of the memo obtained by 404 Media using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Among dozens of other actions, the Pentagon said that it not only changed the signs on bathroom doors to “reflect biological sex” but that it will continue to “monitor intimate spaces to ensure ongoing compliance” and that it will “continuously evaluate and update intimate spaces as necessary.” 

The military also ordered a “review hold on questionable content” at Stars and Stripes, the military’s newspaper, which is supposed to be editorially independent from the Pentagon and which is not supposed to be censored by the Department of Defense.  

Trump’s “Defending Women” executive order, which was an across-the-board war on trans and nonbinary people inside the federal government, required federal agencies to delete websites and resources referencing trans and nonbinary people, eliminate diversity and inclusion programs, kill grants and funding for gender inclusivity programs and research, eliminate gender inclusive bathrooms, and take on a host of other anti-trans policies. As part of the executive order, agencies were required to file a memo with the White House outlining the steps they had taken to comply with the order. So far, 404 Media has seen the memos for 11 different agencies. The vast majority of these memos are one or two pages long, and are very generic; Hegseth’s memo is 11 pages long and includes three different exhibits that takes the entire document to 19 pages long. 

The Pentagon’s memo is far more extensive than any other that we’ve seen so far, and includes details about employees that the Pentagon put on administrative leave because it believed that their jobs were “promoting or inculcating gender ideology.” The Pentagon said it identified 69 people who it believed had jobs that fit this description and put them on leave, but then determined that, actually, their jobs were not primarily about “promoting or inculcating gender ideology” and returned 67 of them to their jobs. 

The Pentagon said it also stopped all social media posts from all of its accounts for 10 days “at all levels of the department” in order to “prepare for reorientation of content on platforms.” It also says “Stars and Stripes put a review hold on questionable content.” Stars and Stripes was founded during the Civil War in 1861. It has long been largely editorially independent and, in 2020, when the Trump administration threatened to shut it down, its top editor said it is “part of a free press—free of censorship, free of command interference, free of prior restraint or prior review.” A “review hold” to ensure that content complies with an executive order from the President is a form of prior restraint and review. It is unclear what the results of that review hold were or whether Stars and Stripes was working on anything that the Pentagon would have wanted held.

Stars and Stripes did not respond to a request for comment. 

When asked by 404 Media, the Pentagon did not deny it put a review hold on Stars and Stripes.  

“We support the First Amendment, and we encourage all media outlets to be fair and honest in their reporting on this administration and the Department,” Department of Defense press secretary Kinglsey Wilson told 404 Media. 

The memo also has an extensive section about steps it took to change bathroom, locker room, and “intimate spaces” policies, which included changing signage and reviewing bathrooms to “ensure designation by biological sex.” The memo notes that it will “monitor intimate spaces to ensure ongoing compliance” and that it will “implement periodic reporting to continuously evaluate and update intimate spaces as necessary.”

“In line with President Trump's Executive Order Defending Women, the Department of Defense is taking appropriate action to ensure that intimate spaces designated for women, girls, or females (or for men, boys, or males) are designated by sex and not identity,” Wilson said.

The Pentagon also noted that Hegseth issued his own, separate order to the Department of Defense about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Most notable, of course, is that Trump and Hegseth have banned trans people from serving in the military, which is affecting at least 15,000 service members and has been the subject of numerous lawsuits. 

Datos revisados por 404 Media revelan que el ICE está usando una herramienta diseñada principalmente para pequeños municipios con el objetivo declarado de combatir robos de autos o encontrar personas desaparecidas. Policías locales de todo el país están realizando búsquedas en el sistema de cámaras lectoras de patentes con inteligencia artificial de Flock con motivos relacionados a “inmigración” y en apoyo a investigaciones federales. Esto otorga a ICE una vía indirecta para acceder a una tecnología a la que oficialmente no tiene acceso mediante contrato.

Este compendio masivo de datos de búsquedas fue obtenido por investigadores que pidieron anonimato para evitar represalias y compartido con 404 Media. Los registros muestran más de 4000 búsquedas realizadas por policías estatales y locales a pedido del gobierno federal, como “favor informal” a agencias federales o directamente con fines de control migratorio, según lo que los mismos departamentos de policía y comisarías informaron. Aunque Flock no tiene contrato directo con el ICE, la agencia logra obtener información de las cámaras mediante solicitudes a las policías locales. Los datos fueron obtenidos a través de una solicitud de registros públicos al Departamento de Policía de Danville, Illinois, y muestran registros de búsqueda en el sistema Flock por parte de departamentos de policía de todo el país.

Cada vez que la policía realiza una búsqueda en el sistema Flock, debe ingresar una “razón”. En los registros de búsqueda de las cámaras de Danville, agentes de distintos estados escribieron motivos como “inmigración”, “ICE”, “ICE+ERO” (la división de Ejecución y Deportación del ICE), “inmigración ilegal”, “ORDEN DE ICE”, entre otros. Aunque hay registros de búsquedas que mencionan a ICE durante las administraciones de Biden y Trump, todos los casos en que se indicó explícitamente “inmigración” como motivo ocurrieron tras la llegada de Trump al poder.

El Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) ya utiliza cámaras lectoras de patentes (en inglés) en las fronteras y ha mostrado gran interés en esta tecnología (en inglés). Organizaciones defensoras de migrantes venían alertando sobre el posible uso de redes locales de lectores automáticos de placas por parte del ICE (en inglés), pero esta es la primera vez que se confirma su uso concreto durante las políticas de deportación masiva impulsadas por Trump.

“Distintos sistemas policiales tienen distintos propósitos y deberían existir discusiones públicas sobre qué funciones queremos permitir a cada agencia,” dijo a 404 Media Jay Stanley, analista sénior de políticas en el Proyecto de Privacidad, Tecnología y Libertad de Expresión de la ACLU. “Imagino que hay muchas personas que aceptan que su policía local use lectores de patentes para atrapar a un ladrón de bancos, pero que se horrorizarían al saber que las cámaras de su comunidad están alimentando una infraestructura de vigilancia nacional para el ICE. Si permitimos este tipo de accesos informales, entonces se puede decir que el ICE tiene autorización para conectarse a cualquier sistema sin límites ni supervisión pública.”

Flock afirma que “más de 5000 comunidades de EE.UU confían en sus cámaras con lectores de patentes automatizados” (en inglés). Estas cámaras graban constantemente las placas, el color y la marca de los vehículos que pasan por delante. La policía puede buscar dónde estuvo un auto (y por ende una persona) en un momento determinado o trazar sus movimientos a lo largo del tiempo. Flock también está desarrollando una nueva herramienta llamada Nova que combina los datos de patentes con buscadores de personas, bases de datos comerciales y filtraciones de datos para “pasar de una patente a una identidad”, según reveló anteriormente 404 Media (en inglés). Por lo general, estas búsquedas se realizan sin orden judicial, algo que una demanda en curso considera inconstitucional (en inglés).

Los departamentos de policía no solo pueden buscar en sus propias cámaras Flock, sino también en redes de otros estados o a nivel nacional. Según una guía de uso de Flock, las búsquedas a nivel nacional permiten que “todas las agencias policiales del país” que hayan activado esa opción puedan acceder a las cámaras de otros usuarios.

Esa misma guía indica que se puede “ejecutar una auditoría de red para ver quién ha buscado en las cámaras de tu sistema desde cualquier agencia que use Flock”. Los investigadores obtuvieron esta auditoría del sistema Flock del Departamento de Policía de Danville a través de una solicitud de registros públicos. Debido a que Flock permite compartir registros entre departamentos del país, la auditoría muestra todas las veces que otras agencias buscaron en el sistema de Danville.

Los datos revelan lo masiva que se ha vuelto la red nacional de cámaras de Flock. Por ejemplo, cuando el Departamento de Policía de Dallas hizo varias búsquedas bajo el término “ICE+ERO” el 6 de marzo, no solo consultaba sus propias cámaras: según los datos, tenía acceso a 6674 redes distintas de cámaras, que en conjunto sumaban 77 771 dispositivos. (La policía de Dallas se negó a emitir comentarios al respecto).

Otras agencias que buscaron en las cámaras de Danville incluyen a la Policía de Chicago y departamentos de Florida, Arkansas, Luisiana, Carolina del Sur, Virginia, Arizona y Texas. También figuran entre los datos la Patrulla de Caminos de Florida y de Missouri. La auditoría cubre desde el 1 de junio del 2024 hasta el 5 de mayo del 2025 y contiene millones de búsquedas totales. Los investigadores filtraron aquellas que incluían palabras clave relacionadas con la inmigración en el campo etiquetado “razón” de las búsquedas y obtuvieron más de 4000 registros.

“No puedo hablar por toda la empresa, pero yo no sabía que los departamentos de policía locales estaban usando las herramientas de Flock para colaborar con el ICE. Me decepciona, aunque no me sorprende,” dijo a 404 Media una fuente interna de Flock que pidió el anonimato por no tener autorización para hablar con la prensa. “Es muy importante que la gente entienda cómo se usa esta tecnología, porque la pagan con sus impuestos, y al final son los gobiernos estatales y locales quienes deben definir los límites de su uso justo.”

Dicho todo esto, los datos tienen ciertas limitaciones. Muchas entradas indican al HSI como razón de búsqueda, y este tiene un mandato más amplio que solo el control de la inmigración. Esto significa que las policías están cooperando con una división del ICE, pero no necesariamente están usando el sistema Flock para deportaciones. Algunas agencias afirmaron que, a pesar del motivo ingresado, las búsquedas no se realizaron con fines migratorios, incluso si la razón ingresada para la búsqueda en Flock indicaba directamente “inmigración”.

En uno de los casos, un portavoz de la Patrulla de Caminos de Missouri dijo que, aunque se registró “inmigración” como motivo, la búsqueda estaba relacionada con una parada de tráfico que presentaba indicios de un posible caso de trata de personas. Añadió: “Estamos en proceso de recibir capacitación y crear políticas aplicables” para temas migratorios. Otras agencias que ingresaron “inmigración” como motivo no respondieron a las consultas de 404 Media.

La administración Trump ha invitado a las policías locales, que normalmente no tienen atribuciones migratorias, a unirse al programa 287(g) (en inglés), el cual permite al ICE “delegar” sus funciones de control migratorio. Una orden ejecutiva de enero (en inglés) instruyó al DHS y al ICE autorizar a agentes estatales y locales “para que desempeñen funciones de oficiales migratorios en la investigación, aprehensión o detención de extranjeros en EE.UU.”.

Es especialmente significativo que estos datos provengan de un departamento de policía en Illinois, uno de los pocos estados que prohíbe explícitamente el uso de datos de cámaras lectoras con fines migratorios (en inglés). Las policías de Illinois implicadas aseguraron que sus búsquedas estaban relacionadas con investigaciones criminales o que no estaban destinadas específicamente a la aplicación de leyes migratorias.

“Los datos provistos no indican que el Departamento de Policía de Danville esté buscando información en Flock ni actuando en nombre de otras agencias policiales municipales, locales o del condado, ni en nombre del ICE, en temas migratorios,” dijo el jefe Chris Yates a 404 Media. “Como lo exige el Estado de Illinois, garantizamos que no usamos datos de cámaras lectoras de patentes para perseguir a infractores de leyes relacionadas con el estatus migratorio.” Sin embargo, Yates no respondió por qué la auditoría muestra búsquedas con motivos migratorios hechas por agencias de todo el país.

“En resumen, lo que se está alegando no está ocurriendo en realidad,” agregó el alcalde de Danville, Rickey Williams Jr.

Pero los datos de Danville muestran claramente que esas búsquedas realizadas por otros departamentos de policía sí están ocurriendo, y 404 Media verificó varios registros con los propios departamentos que las realizaron. Algunas agencias explicaron que actuaron como parte de investigaciones específicas, otras dijeron que eran colaboraciones informales con el gobierno federal. Lo que queda claro es que el ICE y el HSI están accediendo indirectamente a una herramienta a la que no deberían tener acceso.

Andrew Perley, subjefe de policía del pueblo de Glencoe, Illinois, dijo que una búsqueda específica “no estaba relacionada con una investigación sobre estatus migratorio: era una solicitud informal del HSI sobre un delito no migratorio”. Ryan Glew, de la policía de Evanston, explicó que su búsqueda se hizo para “asistir al HSI en la captura de un sujeto buscado, quien formaba parte de una banda de robos a tiendas a nivel nacional por millones de dólares” y que “las consultas no estaban relacionadas con inmigración.”

Otras policías de Illinois afirmaron que las búsquedas eran para “asistir” a agencias federales, o que las hizo uno de sus “oficiales de fuerzas especiales”, es decir, policías locales integrados en unidades federales. Mike Yott, jefe de policía de Palos Heights, dijo que su departamento no aplica leyes migratorias debido a las leyes estatales, pero que no sabe con certeza por qué un oficial de su equipo que colaboraba con la DEA hizo una búsqueda catalogada con la razón de “violación migratoria”.

“Con la información limitada del informe, es posible que la redacción sea imprecisa y el uso de Flock esté vinculado con una investigación sobre narcóticos o una orden de arresto de un fugitivo, que a veces involucra personas con estatus migratorios diversos,” dijo Yott.

El hecho de que la policía casi nunca necesite una orden judicial para realizar búsquedas en Flock implica escasa supervisión, lo que facilita que colaboren con el gobierno federal sin dejar huella formal.

“A las policías les encantan los lectores de patentes porque hay muy pocas restricciones. No sienten que necesiten una orden judicial. A menudo no hay ninguna regulación sobre lo que pueden buscar,” le comentó a 404 Media Dave Maass, investigador de tecnología fronteriza en la Electronic Frontier Foundation. “Tal vez sea cierto que algunas búsquedas eran sobre personas con órdenes de arresto o implicadas en crímenes, o podrían estar buscando a un terrorista. Pero ese es el punto: no lo sabemos.”

En un comunicado, Flock dijo: “Estamos comprometidos con que cada comunidad pueda usar esta tecnología de forma alineada con sus valores, y permitimos que los gobiernos democráticamente electos definan qué significa eso para su localidad. Cada cliente de Flock es dueño y controlador total de los datos recolectados y decide con quién compartirlos. Las herramientas son totalmente auditables y guardan los registros de uso de forma indefinida para que haya total transparencia para mandos y autoridades municipales.” La empresa agrega que sus herramientas han permitido que los cuerpos policiales ubiquen a más de 1000 personas extraviadas.

“Trabajamos con gobiernos locales para promover buenas prácticas sobre el uso de lectores de patentes, incluyendo auditorías regulares y políticas claras. Para que dos agencias puedan compartir datos, Flock requiere que ambas partes estén de acuerdo con ello. Siempre les recomendamos a las agencias que tengan una política sólida de uso de cámaras lectoras de patentes, que realicen auditorías de forma continua y sean cuidadosos al elegir compartir datos con otra agencia”, concluyó el comunicado.

Edwin Yohnka, director de comunicaciones de ACLU Illinois, fue contundente en un correo electrónico enviado a 404 Media: “Lo más frustrante de esto es que Flock se presentó en muchas comunidades de Illinois como una herramienta clave contra el crimen violento y el uso de armas. Pero lo que realmente están creando es un sistema nacional de datos. Da igual si estás en Bloomington, Springfield o Danville: cuando conectas estas redes, terminas alimentando un sistema de vigilancia a nivel país. Ver esta lista de agencias de todo el país buscando en cámaras de Illinois es realmente preocupante.”

El DHS no respondió a las múltiples solicitudes de comentarios enviadas por 404 Media.

Los manifiestos de vuelo de tres deportaciones judicialmente controvertidas desde Texas hacia El Salvador contienen decenas de nombres que no aparecen en la lista previamente publicada por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS, por sus siglas en inglés) de personas deportadas en esos vuelos, según ha podido constatar 404 Media. Estos nombres adicionales nunca han sido reconocidos públicamente por el gobierno estadounidense, y expertos en inmigración que siguen de cerca la campaña de deportaciones de Trump aseguran que no tienen idea de dónde pueden estar estas personas ni qué ha sido de ellas. Ahora, 404 Media publica sus nombres.

El 15 de marzo, la administración Trump deportó a más de 200 personas en tres aviones con destino a una megacárcel en El Salvador. Aunque un juez bloqueó las deportaciones, los vuelos aterrizaron de todos modos ese mismo día en el país. Este hecho marcó un punto de inflexión en la política de deportaciones masivas de la administración y fue un anticipo de lo que vendría a nivel nacional: ausencia de debido proceso, desobediencia a fallos judiciales y deportaciones basadas en los pretextos más débiles. Poco después de estos vuelos, CBS News publicó una “lista interna del gobierno” con los nombres de algunas personas que fueron trasladadas al CECOT, la infame megacárcel salvadoreña.

Pero en mayo, un hacker atacó a GlobalX, la aerolínea encargada de esos vuelos, y compartió los datos con 404 Media. Además de los nombres incluidos en la lista publicada por CBS News, los manifiestos de vuelo de GlobalX contienen decenas de nombres de personas que, supuestamente, iban a bordo de los vuelos pero cuya existencia o paradero no han sido reconocidos oficialmente ni reportados anteriormente en la prensa.

“Tenemos esta lista de personas que el gobierno estadounidense no ha reconocido de ninguna manera oficial, y no tenemos forma de saber si están en el CECOT o en otro lugar o si recibieron algún tipo de debido proceso”, comentó a 404 Media Michelle Brané, directora ejecutiva de Together and Free, una organización que trabaja con familias de personas deportadas. “Creo que esto demuestra aún más la falta de humanidad y la ausencia de debido proceso, y es otra evidencia de que el gobierno estadounidense está desapareciendo gente. Estas personas fueron detenidas y nadie sabe dónde están, ni bajo qué circunstancias… En casi todos los casos, no hay registro alguno. No existen expedientes judiciales, nada”.

“[El gobierno de los Estados Unidos] no ha revelado información alguna, pero supuestamente han sido enviados a una cárcel o algún lugar en un avión… y desde entonces no se ha sabido nada de ellos”, agregó. “No hemos oído nada de sus familias, y es posible que ni ellos lo sepan”.

Brané también señaló que no está claro si todas estas personas realmente estaban en los vuelos o por qué aparecen en los manifiestos. Si efectivamente abordaron, se desconoce dónde se encuentran actualmente. Esa incertidumbre, sumada a la negativa del gobierno de proporcionar información, representa un problema grave, afirmó.

Aunque las historias de algunas personas deportadas en esos vuelos han recibido gran atención —como la de Kilmar Abrego García—, las autoridades estadounidenses se han negado a revelar la lista completa de pasajeros.

Mientras el paradero y las circunstancias de la mayoría de estas personas siguen siendo desconocidos, la organización de Brané utilizó datos de fuentes públicas para tratar de averiguar quiénes son. En algunos casos, Together and Free logró identificar ciertos detalles sobre personas específicas de los manifiestos. Por ejemplo, una de ellas, arrestada por la policía local en Texas a fines de diciembre por posesión de drogas, figura como “extranjero ilegal” en los registros de detención. Otra persona fue detenida en Nashville en febrero por conducir sin licencia. Sin embargo, respecto a muchas otras no hay datos públicos de fácil acceso que expliquen quiénes son o por qué figuran en los manifiestos.

Algunas de las personas que aparecen en los manifiestos y no figuran en la lista de CBS News ya habían sido identificadas porque sus familias iniciaron demandas o los buscaban activamente en redes sociales. Entre ellas se encuentran Abrego García y Ricardo Prada Vásquez, cuya familia denunció que había “desaparecido” porque no aparecía en ningún listado oficial publicado. Tras un reportaje del New York Times sobre su desaparición, la administración Trump afirmó que estaba en el CECOT, y 404 Media encontró su nombre en los manifiestos del 15 de marzo.

En Venezuela, la familia de otro hombre identificado en los manifiestos pero no en la lista de CBS News, Keider Alexander Flores Navas, ha estado protestando por su desaparición y exigiendo respuestas. En un video de TikTok publicado en marzo, su madre, Ana Navas, cuenta que dejaron de tener noticias de Keider poco antes del 15 de marzo. Posteriormente, supo que estaba detenido por el gobierno federal. Luego vio una foto suya en el CECOT, entre otros prisioneros: “Lo que más me preocupó fue que no estaba en ninguna lista. Pero esta foto es de El Salvador. Muchas madres aquí han reconocido a sus hijos [en las fotos oficiales del CECOT]. Sé que ese es mi hijo”, dice, mientras la cámara enfoca la imagen de Keider en la foto.

En otro video de TikTok, publicado en junio, la madre de Brandon Sigaran-Cruz, de 21 años, explica que su hijo estuvo “desaparecido por tres meses” sin que tuvieran noticias sobre su paradero. Sigaran-Cruz aparece en el manifiesto de vuelo, pero no en la lista de CBS News.

El gobierno de Estados Unidos ya había reconocido que, junto con más de 200 ciudadanos venezolanos, deportó a 23 salvadoreños a El Salvador en esos tres vuelos del 15 de marzo. No existe una lista formal con los nombres de esos salvadoreños y ninguno figura en el listado de CBS News, que solo incluía venezolanos.

La Oficina de Derechos Humanos de las Naciones Unidas también presentó peticiones judiciales afirmando que está investigando las “desapariciones involuntarias” de al menos cuatro venezolanos deportados a El Salvador en esos vuelos. “Ni el gobierno de El Salvador ni el de Estados Unidos han publicado información oficial sobre la lista de personas deportadas ni su lugar actual de detención”, dijo la ONU en un “Informe sobre Desapariciones Forzadas o Involuntarias” presentado ante la corte.

“Todavía hay muy poca claridad sobre el destino y el paradero de los venezolanos enviados a El Salvador, pues, hasta la fecha, no se han publicado listas oficiales de los detenidos deportados. Es fundamental que las autoridades proporcionen más información, incluido la entrega de datos a los familiares y sus abogados sobre la situación específica y el paradero de sus seres queridos”, señaló Elizabeth Throssell, portavoz de la Oficina de Derechos Humanos de la ONU, en un correo electrónico enviado a 404 Media. “La oficina de derechos humanos de la ONU ha estado en contacto con familiares de más de 100 venezolanos que se cree fueron deportados a El Salvador”.

Durante varias semanas, 404 Media solicitó al Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (DHS) que informara si tenía alguna preocupación legítima de seguridad respecto a la publicación de estos nombres, o si podía aportar algún dato sobre estas personas. La agencia nunca respondió, a pesar de haber atendido solicitudes de otros artículos de 404 Media. GlobalX tampoco respondió a la solicitud de comentarios.

“Es fundamental saber quiénes iban en esos vuelos del 15 de marzo”, dijo Lee Gelernt, abogado de la Unión Estadounidense por las Libertades Civiles (ACLU) y principal representante del caso. “Estas personas fueron enviadas a una prisión tipo gulag sin ningún debido proceso, posiblemente por el resto de sus vidas, y el gobierno no ha proporcionado información significativa sobre ellas, mucho menos pruebas. En un momento como este, la transparencia es esencial”.

En los últimos meses, el gobierno de Estados Unidos ha afirmado que es el gobierno salvadoreño quien tiene jurisdicción sobre las personas detenidas en el CECOT, mientras que El Salvador respondió ante la ONU que “la jurisdicción y la responsabilidad legal sobre estas personas recae exclusivamente en las autoridades competentes extranjeras [de Estados Unidos]”. Esto ha creado una situación en que las personas están detenidas en una prisión extranjera y ninguno de los gobiernos asume su responsabilidad legal. Algo similar ocurre en Florida, en el campamento “Alligator Alcatraz” (“Alcatraz con caimanes”), donde personas detenidas por el gobierno federal están siendo retenidas en una instalación administrada por el estado, y los expertos aseguran que no está claro quién está a cargo. Brané señaló que, con el enorme aumento de fondos para ICE que contempla la nueva ley de Trump, es probable que veamos más centros de detención, más deportaciones, más vuelos como estos y más personas desaparecidas de forma no oficial.

“Si consideramos que el ICE está tratando a las personas de esta forma con el poco de autonomía adicional que les dieron, da terror pensar lo que implicará este aumento presupuestario”, dijo Brané. “Esto es solo una muestra de lo que veremos a una escala mucho mayor”.

Se puede leer la lista completa a continuación. 404 Media quitó los nombres de las personas que figuran en los manifiestos como “guardias” (el medio confirmó que al menos uno de esos nombres coincide con alguien que se presenta en redes sociales como agente de transporte de detenidos). Según informes, ocho mujeres deportadas a El Salvador fueron posteriormente retornadas a Estados Unidos. 404 Media no publica los nombres de mujeres que se sabe han sido regresadas. El manifiesto también incluye los nombres de varios salvadoreños cuyas deportaciones fueron mencionadas en un comunicado de prensa de la Casa Blanca, en procesos judiciales y en reportes de prensa. No se han incluido esos nombres de personas que la administración ya reconoció oficialmente como deportadas.

Una base de datos del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE), cuya estructura ha sido parcialmente revisada por 404 Media, permite al gobierno federal buscar y filtrar personas mediante cientos de categorías sumamente específicas. Para expertos en vigilancia, esta herramienta podría estar ayudando al ICE a identificar, detener y deportar a personas que han cometido infracciones menores o que simplemente coinciden con ciertos perfiles. Pero advierten que el gran problema es que ni siquiera sabemos con claridad cómo están siendo seleccionadas o marcadas estas personas.

La base de datos es llamada Investigative Case Management (ICM) y, según una evaluación de impacto en privacidad publicada en 2021 (en inglés), “funciona como la herramienta principal de gestión de casos para las investigaciones del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional (HSI) del ICE”.

404 Media tuvo acceso a una versión reciente de la base de datos, que permite realizar filtros según cientos de parámetros, incluidos estatus migratorio y tipo de ingreso (“refugiado”, “tarjeta de cruce fronterizo”, “extranjero no inmigrante no admitido”, “estatus de protección temporal”, “extranjero en tránsito sin visa”, “extranjero indocumentado”); características físicas (incluidos cicatrices, marcas, tatuajes); afiliación criminal; ubicación; datos de lectores de patentes; país de origen; color de pelo y ojos; etnicidad; número de seguro social; lugar de nacimiento; empleo; estado de la licencia de conducir; historial de bancarrota, y cientos de otras categorías.

Una fuente con conocimiento del sistema dijo a 404 Media que el ICM “es básicamente una infinidad de tablas” de información y puede generar informes detallados, por ejemplo, sobre personas “con cierto tipo de visa, que ingresaron por un puerto específico, provenientes de un país determinado y tienen un color de cabello específico”, o cualquier combinación de estos cientos de variables.

ICM fue desarrollado por Palantir (en inglés), un poderoso y polémico gigante de la tecnología de vigilancia. En 2022, Palantir firmó un contrato por 95,9 millones de dólares (en inglés) por cinco años para continuar desarrollando la plataforma.

Los agentes de ICE pueden configurar una búsqueda llamada Person Lookout Query (“Consulta activa de personas”) que les envía una alerta por correo si más tarde una persona coincide con ciertos parámetros definidos anteriormente. 404 Media revisó partes de la infraestructura del sistema, incluidos los criterios de búsqueda y ejemplos de informes generados.

Una evaluación de privacidad presentada en el 2016 (en inglés) por el Departamento de Seguridad Nacional indica que el sistema ICM se conecta con otras bases de datos del DHS y federales, como SEVIS (que contiene registros de personas que ingresaron al país con visas estudiantiles), la herramienta de búsqueda FALCON (en inglés), mapas en tiempo real asociados a herramientas de rastreo del ICE, “datos limitados de lectores de patentes operados por la agencia” y datos provenientes de otros organismos como la DEA, el FBI, la ATF y la CIA (como ya reportó The Intercept en un artículo en inglés).

El documento también aclara que distintas divisiones de ICE usan el sistema ICM, incluidos el HSI y el equipo legal del ICE. Pero señala algo clave: que la división de Ejecución y Deportación (ERO) “utiliza el sistema ICM de manera más limitada que el HSI en su misión de identificar, arrestar y deportar a extranjeros infractores para hacer cumplir las leyes migratorias de EE.UU., conforme a las prioridades de cumplimiento vigentes”.

Comprender cómo funciona el sistema ICM se ha vuelto un tema de urgencia en las últimas semanas, ya que el ICE ha detenido, arrestado y deportado a estudiantes universitarios, turistas y residentes legales con permisos de residencia permanente, muchos sin antecedentes penales o con infracciones menores. Al menos 238 personas fueron deportadas sin debido proceso a una megacárcel en El Salvador, y una investigación de 60 Minutes (en inglés) reveló que la mayoría no tenía antecedentes ni condenas criminales previas. El ICE ha deportado a personas por criterios como “llevar ciertos tatuajes”, y en un caso específico, la administración Trump admitió haber deportado por error a alguien, pese a que se niega a traerlo de vuelta al país.

A estudiantes universitarios con visa se les ha revocado el documento por infracciones como exceso de velocidad o por protestar contra la guerra de Israel en Gaza. Esta semana, el Servicio de Impuestos Internos (IRS) anunció que comenzará a compartir su información tributaria con el ICE (artículo en inglés) para fines migratorios, lo que representa una peligrosa escalada en el intercambio de datos entre agencias del gobierno y podría significar una recarga de poder para herramientas como ICM.

Jeramie Scott, asesor sénior y director del Proyecto de Supervisión de Vigilancia del Centro de Información sobre Privacidad Electrónica (EPIC), advirtió a 404 Media: “Con la administración actual, existe la posibilidad de que traten a todos los que aparecen en esta base de datos como objetivos de detención y deportación. Esta administración no se caracteriza por la sutileza o el análisis detallado; prefiere pintar todo con la misma brocha y basarse en estereotipos.” Scott señala que la evaluación de impacto de privacidad del ICM (en inglés) admite que, al incluir tanta información, cualquier persona podría ser objeto de una investigación o marcada para ser detenida o deportada.

“Como el ICE puede crear registros sobre personas que no son objetivo de investigaciones, existe el riesgo de que esas personas sean erróneamente catalogadas o malinterpretadas como objetivos”, se menciona en el informe redactado en el 2016. “Esto puede causar problemas en los puntos de entrada al país, donde la CBP utiliza estos registros en su sistema de control. También existe el riesgo de que la información no sea precisa o completa o esté desactualizada.”

Y esto no solo afecta a inmigrantes. Según documentos obtenidos por The Intercept (en inglés), el sistema también incluye ciudadanos estadounidenses: “Los ciudadanos de EE.UU. también pueden estar sujetos a procesos penales, por lo tanto, son parte del ICM.”

Adam Schwartz, director de litigios sobre privacidad de la Electronic Frontier Foundation, comentó a 404 Media: “Se están combinando dos elementos realmente alarmantes. Por un lado, está la vigilancia tecnológica avanzada, que incluye bases de datos que rastrean todo tipo de cosas sobre las personas. Por otro, tenemos un gobierno motivado a deportar inmigrantes incluso si no representan ninguna amenaza. Parece ciertamente posible que algunas de las detenciones recientes de personas que no representan ningún peligro se hayan producido porque el ICE está utilizando este tipo de bases de datos para identificarlas.”

404 Media conversó con tres expertos, incluido Schwartz, y estos enfatizaron que es fundamental que la ciudadanía entienda cómo se está usando esta tecnología para identificar y detener personas. También es vital para quienes ya han sido detenidos o deportados, porque necesitan esa información para poder defenderse.

“Durante más de medio siglo, uno de los principios básicos de la privacidad de datos ha sido que si el gobierno recolecta información para un propósito, no debe usarla para otro sin el consentimiento de la persona”, dijo Schwartz. “Esto no es solo un capricho de los defensores de privacidad. Si no se respeta esta norma, pueden pasar cosas muy graves. En 1942, la Oficina del Censo entregó al Departamento de Defensa los domicilios de ciudadanos japoneses-estadounidenses, y con esa información se les detuvo injustamente. Si el gobierno recoge datos con un propósito, no debe compartirlos para otro distinto.”

Scott, de EPIC, fue enfático: “Importa muchísimo qué herramientas está usando ICE para detener y deportar personas. Es posible que se esté deteniendo a personas que solo ejercen actividades protegidas constitucionalmente. También es posible que se esté compartiendo información de formas que no son reguladas ni transparentes. Mucha de esta información se recolectó para un fin y ahora el ICE la está usando para arrestar o deportar personas, y el pueblo estadounidense necesita saberlo. Necesita saber si su gobierno está respetando los valores constitucionales.”

Elizabeth Laird, directora de equidad en tecnología cívica del Centro para la Democracia y la Tecnología, advirtió sobre los errores que pueden surgir cuando se cruzan datos entre agencias: “Cuando se intenta vincular registros y se comete un error —por ejemplo, que el nombre esté mal escrito o la fecha de nacimiento sea la de otra persona— puede parecer que los sistemas están hablando de la misma persona cuando en realidad no es así.”

“Y cuando manejas listas de millones de personas, es difícil imaginar que no haya una gran cantidad de ellas que están siendo marcadas erróneamente como infractores de leyes de inmigración. Ya hemos visto casos de personas deportadas por error a El Salvador, y el gobierno luego dice que no puede traerlas de vuelta.”

Laird agregó que la decisión del IRS de compartir información con el ICE es especialmente grave. Durante años, el gobierno federal les aseguró a los inmigrantes que pagar sus impuestos, sacar una licencia de conducir o acceder a la salud pública no se usaría en su contra. “Esto desincentiva a los inmigrantes indocumentados a interactuar con el gobierno, incluido el pago de impuestos. Por eso no solo hay que preguntarse si esto es legal o ético, sino también si estamos dispuestos a aceptar las consecuencias sociales de este tipo de medidas.”

Anteriormente, 404 Media ha informado de forma independiente sobre otros métodos que usan el ICE y el grueso del DHS para recolectar datos, como el trabajo en conjunto con la contratista de vigilancia ShadowDragon, que extrae información de redes sociales, o empresas que analizan publicaciones para detectar si contienen “mensajes despectivos” sobre Estados Unidos, y luego usar esa información en procesos migratorios. También se ha confirmado que el ICE usa datos de ubicación recolectados de teléfonos celulares para seguir a sus objetivos.

El ICE no respondió a las solicitudes de comentarios ni a las preguntas específicas de 404 Media sobre cómo está usando la base de datos ICM.

Hello 404 Media readers! We're excited to announce that we're having our first ever party in Los Angeles. We have partnered with the amazing DIY hackerspace RIP.SPACE in the Arts District.

We'll start the night with a live podcast about the surveillance technologies powering ICE, with a specific focus on tools that are being used in Los Angeles. We'll then change gears and do some Q&A about 404 Media and independent journalism. I'm considering doxing my Instagram algorithm as well. After that, we'll have a reception and party with music from our friend DJ Avey.

We'll have free beer and wine, good vibes, and hopefully a good conversation. Tickets are free for subscribers, $10 for the general public (you can also subscribe for free entry here). If you're a subscriber, scroll to the end of this post for your free ticket code.

GET TICKETS HERE

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The CEO seemingly having an affair with the head of HR at his company at the Coldplay concert is a viral video for the ages, but it is also, unfortunately, emblematic of our current private surveillance and social media hellscape.

The video, which is now viral on every platform that we can possibly think of, has been covered by various news outlets, and is Pop Crave official, shows Andy Byron, the CEO of a company called Astronomer, with his arms around Astronomer’s head of HR, Kristen Cabot. The jumbotron cuts from one fan to this seemingly happy couple. They both simultaneously die inside; “Oh look at this happy couple,” Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin says. The woman covers her face and spins away. The man ducks out of frame. “Either they’re having an affair or they’re very shy,” Martin said. The camera pans to another company executive standing next to them, who is seemingly shaking out of discomfort.

It is hard to describe how viral this is at the moment, in a world in which so many awful things are occurring and in which nothing holds anyone’s attention for any length of time and in a world in which we are all living in our own siloed realities. “Andy Byron” is currently the most popular trending Google term in the United States, with more than double the searches of the next closest term. 

There are so many levels to this embarrassment—the Coldplay of it all, the HR violation occurring on jumbotron, etc—that one could likely write a doctoral dissertation on this 15 second video.

The flight manifests for three legally contested deportation flights from Texas to El Salvador contain dozens of additional, unaccounted for passengers than a previously published Department of Homeland Security (DHS) list of people deported from the United States on those flights, 404 Media has learned. The additional people on the flight manifest have not been publicly acknowledged by the U.S. government in any way, and immigration experts who have been closely monitoring Trump’s deportation campaign say they have no idea where these people are or what happened to them. 404 Media is now publishing the names of these people. 

On March 15, the Trump administration deported more than 200 people on three aircraft to a megaprison in El Salvador. A judge blocked the deportations, but hours later the flights still landed in the country. It marked one of the major turning points of the administration’s mass deportation efforts, and signaled what was to come around the country—a lack of due process, authorities ignoring judge’s rulings, and deporting people on the flimsiest of pretenses. Soon after these flights, CBS News published an “internal government list” of people it said were deported to CECOT, the notorious El Salvadorian megaprison.

But in May, a hacker targeted GlobalX, the airline that operated these flights and shared the data with 404 Media. In addition to the names of people who were on the list CBS News published, the GlobalX flight manifests contain the names of dozens of people who were supposedly on the flights but whose status and existence has not been acknowledged by the U.S. government or previously reported in the press. 

“We have this list of people that the U.S. government has not formally acknowledged in any real way and we pretty much have no idea if they are in CECOT or someplace else, or whether they received due process,” Michelle Brané, executive director of Together and Free, a group that has been working with families of deported people, told 404 Media. “I think this further demonstrates the callousness and lack of due process involved and is further evidence that the US government is disappearing people. These people were detained and no one knows where they are, and we don't know the circumstances […] For almost all of these people, there’s no records whatsoever. No court records, nothing.” 

“[The government is] not disclosing it and they’ve presumably been sent to a prison or sent somewhere by the U.S. government on a plane and have never been heard from since,” she added. “We have not heard from these people’s families, so I think perhaps even they don’t know.”

Brané added that it remains entirely unclear whether all of these people were actually on the flights or why they were on the manifests. If they were indeed on the flights, it is unknown where they currently are. That uncertainty, and the unwillingness of the U.S. government to provide any clarity about these people, is a major problem, she said.

While the stories of some of the people deported on these flights have garnered a lot of attention, such as Kilmar Abrego Garcia, U.S. authorities have refused to reveal the names of everyone on board. 

While the whereabouts and circumstances of most of these people remain unknown, Brané’s organization used publicly available data to try to better understand who they are. In some cases, Together and Free was able to identify a few details about specific people on the manifest. For example, one person on the manifest appears to have been arrested by local police in Texas in late December on drug possession charges and is listed in arrest records as being an “illegal alien.” Another person was arrested in Nashville in February on charges of driving without a license. For many other people listed, there is no easily discernible public data about who they are or why they appeared on the flight manifest.

Several other people are on the flight manifests and do not appear on the CBS News list, but their identities had already become public because their families have filed lawsuits or have been looking for them on social media. These include Abrego Garcia and Ricardo Prada Vásquez, a man whose family said he was “disappeared” because he did not appear on any official, publicly published lists. After the New York Times published an article about his disappearance, the Trump administration said he was at CECOT, and 404 Media was able to find his name on the March 15 flight manifests. 

In Venezuela, the family of another man who appears on the flight manifests but not on the CBS News list, Keider Alexander Flores Navas, has been protesting his disappearance and demanding answers. In a TikTok video posted in March, his mother Ana Navas explains that they suddenly stopped hearing from Keider before the March 15 flights. She said she eventually heard he was in federal detention. Then, she saw a photo of him in CECOT amongst a group of other prisoners: “The thing that worried me the most was he was not on any list. But this photo is from El Salvador. Lots of family members here recognize their sons [in official CECOT photos]. That’s my son,” she says, the camera panning to a circled image of Keider in CECOT.

In another TikTok video posted in June, the mother of 21-year-old Brandon Sigaran-Cruz explains that he had been “disappeared for three months” with no news of his whereabouts. Sigaran-Cruz also appears on the flight manifest but not the CBS News list. 

 The U.S. government previously acknowledged that, along with more than 200 Venezuelan citizens, it deported 23 Salvadorans to El Salvador on the three March 15 flights. There is no formal list of the Salvadorans who were on the flight, and none of them appeared on the CBS News list, which included only Venezuelan citizens. 

The United Nations’ Human Rights Office has also filed court petitions saying that it is investigating the “involuntary disappearances” of at least four Venezuelans who were sent to El Salvador on these flights. “Neither the Government of El Salvador nor the Government of the United States has published official information on the list of deported persons or their current place of detention,” the United Nations said in a “Report on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances” it filed in court.

“There continues to be very little clarity as to the fate and whereabouts of the Venezuelans removed to El Salvador. To date, no official lists of the deported detainees have been published. Provision of further information by authorities is key, including providing families and their counsel with available information on the specific situation and whereabouts of their loved ones,” Elizabeth Throssell, a spokesperson for the UN Human Rights Office, told 404 Media in an email. “The UN Human Rights Office has been in contact with family members of over 100 Venezuelans believed to have been deported to El Salvador.”

404 Media asked the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) over multiple weeks if the agency had any legitimate security concerns with these names being published, or if it could tell us anything about these people. The agency never responded, despite responding to requests for comment for other 404 Media articles. GlobalX did not respond to a request for comment either.

“It is critical that we know who was on these March 15 flights,” Lee Gelernt, a lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the lead counsel on the ACLU’s related case, told 404 Media. “These individuals were sent to a gulag-type prison without any due process, possibly for the remainder of their lives, yet the government has provided no meaningful information about them, much less the evidence against them. Transparency at a time like this is essential.”

In recent months, the U.S. government has said that the El Salvadorian government has jurisdiction over the people detained in CECOT, while El Salvador told the United Nations that “the jurisdiction and legal responsibility for these persons lie exclusively with the competent foreign authorities [the United States],” leading to a situation where people are detained in a foreign prison but both responsible parties are not willing to claim legal responsibility for them. A similar situation has happened in Florida at the “Alligator Alcatraz” camp, where people detained by the federal government are being held in a state-run facility, and experts have said it’s not clear who is in charge. Brané said with the massive increase in ICE funding as part of Trump’s new law, we are likely to see more detention camps, more detainments, more deportation flights, and, likely, more people who aren’t publicly accounted for in any way.

“When you look at what ICE is doing now in terms of how they treat people, how they operate when they're given even a little bit of rope, it’s terrifying to think what the budget increase is going to do,” Brané said. “This is a taste of what we're going to see on a much larger scale."

You can read the list below. 404 Media has removed people listed on the flight manifests as “guards” (404 Media found at least one of these names matched someone who lists their employment online as a flight transport detention officer). Reportedly eight women deported to El Salvador were later returned. 404 Media is not publishing the names of women known to have returned to the U.S. The manifest also includes the names of several El Salvadorians mentioned as being deported in a White House Press release, court proceedings, and media reports. We have not included their names below because the administration has formally acknowledged that they were deported.

Manuel Quijada-Leon
Irvin Quintanilla-Garcia
Jose Ramirez-Iraheta
Josue Rivera-Portillo
Jorge Rodriguez Gomez
Mario Jeavanni Rojas
Edgar Leonel Sanchez Rosales
Brandon Sigaran-Cruz
Miguel Enriquez Saravia
Abraham Hernandez-Mania
Jean Morales-Loaiza
Nelson Alfaro-Orellana
Jhonnarty Pachecho-Chirinos
Cristian Alpe-Tepas
Jordyn Alexander Alvarez
Jose Alvarez Gonzalez
Wilfredo Avendano Carrizalez
Jose Gregorio Buenano Cantillo
Istmar Campos Mejia
Jose Chanta-Ochoa
Keider Alexander Flores Navas
Noe Florez-Valladares
Miguel Fuentes-Lopez
Roberto Interiano Uceda
Jose Lopez Cruz
Diego Maldonado-Fuentes
William Martinez-Ruano
Osmer Mejias-Ruiz
Iran Ochoa Suescun
David Orantez Gonzalez
Ariadny Araque-Cerrada
Elena Cuenca Palma
Maria Franco Pina
Mayerkis Guariman Gonzalez
Wilmary Linares-Marcano
Scarlet Mendoza Perez
Ofreilimar Peña Boraure
Edilianny Stephany Rivero Sierralta
Dioneli Sanz Aljorna
Anyeli Sequera Ramirez
Yanny Suarez Rodriguez
Karla Villasmil-Castellano

For a while, I have said that the AI slop endgame, for social media companies, is creating a hyper personalized feed full of highly specific content about anything one could possibly imagine. Because AI slop is so easy to make and because social media algorithms are so personalized, this means that Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube can feed you anything they perceive its users to possibly want. So this means that AI slop makers are exploring ever more niche areas of content. 

Case in point: Facebook AI slop about the horrific and deadly Texas flood. Topical AI content about disasters, war, current events, and news stories are at this point so commonplace that they are now sadly barely notable, and AI-powered “misinformation” about horrible events are all over every social media feed I can think of. But as we document our descent into this hellhole, I thought some AI slop surfaced on Bluesky by Christina Stephens was particularly notable: