A Message Regarding ICE in Minnesota and the USA from Privacy Guides' Program Director Jonah Aragon
This message was delivered in This Week in Privacy Episode 38.
Transcript
I want to deliver a brief message as the program director at Privacy Guides about the current state of the United States of America.
As a Minnesotan, and resident of the City of Minneapolis myself, this is a very important issue to me.
We are only one month into 2026, and already this year, ICE agents of the federal government of the United States are responsible for the extrajudicial killings of two American citizens, right here in my city, for exercising their Constitutional rights.
This happened as part of a larger ICE campaign to terrorize my neighbors and this country, a campaign I know many Minnesotans protested in force last week, and which I know many American patriots are protesting today.
Our mission has always been to support the right to privacy for all people regardless of political views or the country people live in. It’s also our mission to speak out against government overreach, particularly when it comes to surveillance, and especially when government agencies are being pitted against the very taxpayers and citizens they are meant to protect and serve.
Here in the United States, that’s meant recently speaking out against the Democrats who aim to increase surveillance and censorship through bills like KOSA or the planned repeals of Section 230, and now against Republicans in our government who are weaponizing the state surveillance systems and law enforcement bodies like ICE to target their perceived political enemies and immigrant members of our communities, without respect to their legal residency status or due process.
This weaponization of ICE by the Trump administration is not happening in a vacuum. It is fueled by the very surveillance data and lack of digital boundaries we have been fighting against for years. Laws enacted within my lifetime, like the PATRIOT Act, and loopholes like the continued lack of regulations against commercial data brokers, which allow the government to bypass the 4th Amendment by purchasing our own GPS and social media data from tech companies to map our neighborhoods for raids.
Minneapolis has become the testing ground for invasive and inaccurate facial recognition apps like Mobile Fortify, where AI glitches can lead to unlawful detentions of innocent people, and the sort of state-sponsored violence that took the lives of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti.
In times of overreach, our greatest defense is our community and our refusal to be intimidated into silence. I’ve seen how powerful this can be firsthand.
The reality is that how ICE is operating within our borders is unjustifiable. We recognize the significance of this unprecedented situation, and we stand alongside everyone protesting in support of the protection of our neighbors and for American rights, which is something that all Americans should support.
Privacy Guides is an impartial organization that is focused on building a strong privacy advocacy community and delivering the best digital privacy and consumer technology rights advice on the internet. Its mission is to inform the public about the value of digital privacy, consumer tech rights, and about global government initiatives which aim to monitor your online activity. Privacy Guides resources are free of advertisements and not affiliated with any of the recommended providers.
Privacy Guides (www.privacyguides.org) is built by volunteers and staff members around the world. For information about Privacy Guides or this announcement, contact Jonah Aragon at jonah@privacyguides.org.
Media Contact: press@privacyguides.org
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