B (2:01)

Please.

C (2:01)

No, no, no. I don't want to be rude.

B (2:03)

Jason Kebler.

D (2:03)

Hey. Hey. Good to be here. Emmanuel wishes he could be here. He is not. I think before we start, thank you all so much for coming. This is the first time that we've done anything in la. I live here, so it's very good. Thank you. Thank you to everyone at RIP Space for amazing, amazing space. Thank you for having us. Thank you to Dexter Thomas, who will be up here in a minute. Thank you to Raul, who is running all of our tech. Could not do it without him. Thank you to Rosie, our intern. Rosie, I don't know where you are. Bought the balloons. Amazing, amazing help and thank you to all of you for being here. This is. I don't know. Didn't think that anyone would come. And you all did.

C (2:53)

Nope.

B (2:55)

If people in the back want to come in, there's space in the middle. And also you could come sit in the floor in the front. Please come in. I know you're, like, in the hallway. I mean, no pressure. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I'm sorry this is the.

C (3:06)

Situation, but just on that, I've constantly been asking Sam and Jason, like, so how many people signed up? And it's like the number going up, and I didn't think anybody would come. It's very nice.

B (3:17)

I would be surprised. I'm always surprised when people come in real life because I'm a homebody and I stay home always. So when people come out, I'm excited.

D (3:24)

Yeah. We've done two parties before, and they were both a lot of work. One was in New York and I had Covid, so I did not attend. And the other was at south by Southwest, where we sort of piggybacked on someone else's party. And both of those parties were, like, somewhat easy to put on this. We brought all these cameras. You know, John with ripstates made it very easy for us. But this is truly like a DIY thing. So I'm very, very happy that we haven't all exploded and that there is sound coming out of the speakers. We will probably keep this to, like, I don't know, like, 30ish minutes and then do some, like, Q and A at the end. But we're going to talk a little bit about our reporting about ICE and the technology that they use. Sam?

B (4:11)

Yes. Yeah. So this is. We're going to talk first. We're going to kind of walk you through the last few months of coverage that we've done about ice. So this is from. That's the story. Oh, no, that's a different story. Slide, please.

C (4:25)

It doesn't matter.

E (4:26)

I can't see the story.

D (4:28)

We were using the photo, which is a little peek behind the mirror of indie media.

B (4:33)

Yeah. So the first story we're going to talk about is inside a powerful database ICE uses to identify and deport people. So do we want to walk through what the database is, what we saw? I believe we all got to look at the database behind the scenes, but, yeah. Can we just describe what it was in as much detail as we can? Because I remember seeing it and I was thinking, okay, this is, you think inside a database, and you're thinking something very sleek and sexy and Techy. And it was pretty boring. Content management file system that looked very, like, archaic and the stuff inside was, like, pretty insidious and you would never know it.

D (5:16)

So, yeah, I think this was one of the first stories we did after Trump took office, and Sam and I worked on this together. It's a system called the Investigative Case Management System, which was set up during the Obama administration, I believe. Bump her up. Which number are you again?

B (5:36)

Four.

E (5:37)

Four.

D (5:38)

Okay. It's called the Investigative Case Management System. We have to keep it low. If it's low for YouTube, that's too bad, unfortunately.

C (5:47)

Sorry. YouTube.

D (5:49)

It's called the Investigative Case Management System and it was set up during the Obama administration. And it's a DHS database that I know you cannot see up here because the screen is very cool, but it's not made for displaying black text or white text on a black screen.

C (6:06)

But the one thing it can't display.

D (6:08)

Yeah, but it's a very good vibe. It's a very good vibe. So basically, this database allows filtering according to your visa status and a bunch of other things like when you enter a port of entry. So it has things for, quote, refugee border crossing card, non immigrant alien refused admission, so anyone turned away at the border, temporary protected status, alien, non immigrant alien transiting without a visa, et cetera, et cetera. And then it also has things for, quote, scars, marks, tattoos, criminal affiliation, location data, license plate reader data. Spoiler alert. That will be important later. Country of origin, hair and eye color, race, Social Security number, birthplace, place of employment, driver's license, status, et cetera, et cetera. And basically what we learned was this was a huge database that DHS was creating. And when it was first enacted by the Obama administration, there were guardrails on when ICE could use this and which parts of DHS could use this. And surprise, surprise, they had to do something called a privacy impact assessment when it was first unveiled. And they said, well, a future administration could take all these guardrails off, but we're going to launch it anyway. And, well, maybe that gets to our second story, which came very soon after this.

E (7:30)

So that was a preview of our live event in Los Angeles in July where we spoke all about the tech that ICE was and is using from Flock to Palantir, facial recognition stuff, spyware now as well. If you want to hear the rest of the of that conversation, please become a paying 404 Media subscriber. You can do that at 404 Media co. You should see a subscribe button somewhere on the website. Maybe in the top right corner. Failing that, you can go to 404Media Co membership sign up and then you will get a link to the subscribers premium podcast feed and you'll get access to all of our bonus content, which of course includes this conversation, but our comment episodes as well where we respond to the best comments from our subscribers. Thank you so much.

A (8:31)

Mike and Alyssa are always trying to outdo each other. When Alyssa got a small water bottle, Mike showed up with a four litre jug. When Mike started gardening, Alyssa started beekeeping.

D (8:42)

Oh come on.

A (8:43)

They called a truce for their holiday and used Expedia Trip Planner to collaborate on all the details of the trip. Once there, Mike still did more laps around the pool.

D (8:52)

Whatever.

A (8:54)

You were made to outdo your holidays. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.