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What operating system and app store do you use to browser Lemmy
I'm going to run this as a poll by creating some responses you can upvote. If you wouldn't mind upvoting a an existing comment so we get get a really nice count. See the comments I'm Leaving to get an idea of how the poll works. Try to follow my comment structure, but add your own options if you really feel I'm missing something.
I really hope this works how I'm envisioning. I really want to get an idea of operating system and platform preference skew for Lemmy.
How to vote:
- Upvote the operating system you use
- Upvote how your download the app of choice
If you use a browser
- Find the "Browser" comment and upvote
- Upvote the browser you use
If you use multiple, feel free to upvote multiple
For anything that isn't a vote, please search for the "bump comment" and reply to that. I know this isn't exactly open ended, but I really wanted to pose this question to a community that didn't skew towards a specific topic. I hope that's ok with this community and the mods. I would love to discuss the results of this poll at some point. My goal is to collect those results in a way that informs that discussion so we're not all guessing how people use Lemmy.
Edit: because there is a troll downvoting comments randomly, you should look at just the upvotes, not the score, to get the correct poll results.
xAI Data Center Emits Plumes of Pollution, New Video Shows
A massive data center at xAIâs controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to footage recorded by an environmental watchdog group.
xAI Data Center Emits Plumes of Pollution, New Video Shows - DeSmog
A massive data center at xAIâs controversial site in Memphis, Tennessee is emitting huge plumes of pollution, according to an environmental watchdog group.Nick Cunningham (DeSmog)
Is Google about to destroy the web?
Google says a new AI tool on its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: the current chapter of online history is careening towards its end. Welcome to the "machine web".The web is built on a simple bargain â websites let search engines like Google slurp up their content, free of charge, and Google Search sends people to websites in exchange, where they buy things and look at adverts. That's how most sites make money.
An estimated 68% of internet activity starts on search engines and about 90% of searches happen on Google. If the internet is a garden, Google is the Sun that lets the flowers grow.
This arrangement held strong for decades, but a seemingly minor change has some convinced that the system is crumbling. You'll soon see a new AI tool on Google Search. You may find it very useful. But if critics' predictions come true, it will also have seismic consequences for the internet. They paint a picture where quality information could grow scarcer online and large numbers of people might lose their jobs. Optimists say instead this could improve the web's business model and expand opportunities to find great content. But, for better or worse, your digital experiences may never be the same again.
On 20 May 2025, Google's chief executive Sundar Pichai walked on stage at the company's annual developer conference. It's been a year since the launch of AI Overviews, the AI-generated responses you've probably seen at the top of Google Search results. Now, Pichai said, Google is going further. "For those who want an end-to-end AI Search experience, we are introducing an all-new AI Mode," he said. "It's a total reimagining of Search."
You might be sceptical after years of AI hype, but this, for once, is the real deal.
Is Google about to destroy the web?
Google says adding more AI to its search engine will rejuvenate the internet. Others predict an apocalypse for websites. One thing is clear: this era of online history is closing.Thomas Germain (BBC)
"about to destroy the web" ???
Where have you been these last 10 years? It's been getting worse for a long time, even before AI. It's just getting worse quicker now.
toomanypancakes likes this.
What extensions would you absolutely recommend to someone who use Firefox?
To support independent Wikis
- Indie Wiki Buddy
For those who are multilingual that are annoyed at websites autotranslating via a shitty ai
- Reddit Untranslate
- Youtube Anti Translate
To make Youtube better
- SponsorBlock
- YouTube Row Fixer
- Hide Youtube-Shorts
phantomwise likes this.
YouTube No Translation â Get this Extension for đŠ Firefox (en-US)
Download YouTube No Translation for Firefox. Keeps titles, descriptions and audio tracks in their original language on YouTube.addons.mozilla.org
What is your most useful Linux app which others might not know about (please don't just give the name but a link and why it is good for you) ?
Why software do you use in your day-to-day computing which might not be well-known?
For me, there are ~~two~~ three things for personal information management:
- for shopping receipts, notes and such, I write them down using vim on a small Gemini PDA with a keyboard. I transfer them via scp to a Raspberry Pi home server on from there to my main PC. Because it runs on SailFish OS, it also runs calendar (via CalDav) and mail nicely - and without any FAANG server.
- for things like manuals and stuff that is needed every few months ("what was just the number of our gas meter?" "what is the process to clean the dishwasher?") , I have a Gollum Wikirunning on Laptop and home server. This is a very simple web wiki which supports several markup languages (like Markdown, MediaWiki, reStructuredText, and Creole), and stores them via git. For me, it is perfect to organize personal information around the home.
- for work, I use Zim wiki. It is very nice for collecting and organizing snippets of information.
- oh, and I love Inkscape(a powerful vector drawing program), Xournal (a program you can write with a tablet on and annotate PDFs), and Shotwell (a simple photo manager). The great thing about Shotwell is that it supports nicely to filter your photos by quality - and doing that persistently makes you a better photographer.
Aside from ones listed here:
System Tools
- WinApps - Run Windows applications seamlessly integrated into your Linux desktop environment, like native including Adobe products.
- Waydroid - Run Android applications in a container on Linux with full hardware access.
- Topgrade - Upgrade all your system packages and dependencies in one command.
- AM (AppImage Manager) - Easy AppImage management for installing, updating, and organizing portable applications.
- Starship - Fast, customizable cross-platform shell prompt with Git integration and status indicators.
- InShellisense - IDE-style IntelliSense autocomplete and suggestions for your terminal.
- Tabby - Modern terminal emulator with tabs, split panes, and extensive customization options.
- Zeit - Qt GUI frontend for scheduling tasks using at and crontab utilities.
- KWin Minimize2Tray - KDE extension that allows minimizing windows to the system tray instead of taskbar.
- Flameshot - Feature-rich screenshot tool with built-in annotation and editing capabilities.
- CopyQ - Advanced clipboard manager with searchable history and custom scripting support.
- Safing Portmaster - Free open-source application firewall with per-app network control, DNS-over-TLS, and system-wide ad/tracker blocking.
Productivity Tools
- DSNote - Offline speech-to-text, text-to-speech and translation app for note-taking.
- NAPS2 - User-friendly document scanning application with OCR and PDF creation capabilities.
- Morphosis - Simple document converter supporting PDF, Markdown, HTML, DOCX and more formats.
- Obsidian - Powerful knowledge management app with bidirectional linking and graph visualization.
- BeeRef - Minimalist reference image viewer designed for artists and designers.
Media & Entertainment
- Popcorn Time - Stream movies and TV shows via torrent with built-in media player.
- Nicotine+ - Modern Soulseek P2P client for sharing and discovering music files.
- XnView - Versatile image viewer, organizer, and converter supporting hundreds of formats.
Happy to list out the self hosted stuff too if there is interest.
Ed Along with rlwrap it gives me a very fast and powerful workflow.
Rlwrap It wraps around a program and gives it the ability to make use ofthe readline lib.
Screen I use it when I boot without X. Gives a very fast workflow, being able to switch between programs.
Mpv Multimedia powerhouse. Even works (pretty) well without X, with a framebuffer.
Ecasound Cli daw. Have several scripts to make a recording on the fly or to be able to jam.
GitHub - hanslub42/rlwrap: A readline wrapper
A readline wrapper. Contribute to hanslub42/rlwrap development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
How big is my penis?
Sensitive content
over_clox likes this.
Cyclocross gravel, or road?
Have you ever thought about a tiger eating spaghetti in Tokyo?
over_clox likes this.
No, but I have thought about a sloth smoking THC laced pasta in the Oval Office.
Sloth for president!
over_clox likes this.
If you consider yourself a Christian and act in self-defence, you donât truly believe
Mac is actually nice to use though... My wife has one and it was my first exposure to them.
As a lifelong Windows user, I recall vividly asking myself "why am I not being abused by random pop ups and an overly complicated process to achieve basic things right now?" over and over while working on her machine.
Plus their graphical interface is a pleasure to work with once you get past some of its quirks. If I wasn't already happily on Linux I would definitely move to Mac.
109 children rescued, 244 arrested in Operation Soteria Shield, exposing widespread child exploitation in North Texas
Authorities call it a successful round up of child sex offenders, but it also shows how widespread the crime is in North Texas.
The Dallas FBI office and some of the 70 law enforcement agencies that participated announced the results of Operation Soteria Shield on Tuesday.
These are the faces of the 244 men and women charged with exploiting children for the purpose of sex trafficking or pornography.
It's the end of a month-long investigation by federal and local enforcement of a crime that authorities say is a year-round problem.
"The number of offenders arrested and the children rescued in this operation are stunning," said Jay Combs, the U.S. Attorney Eastern District of Texas. "It's stunning to hear them repeated here."
Operation Soteria Shield, which began in April, led to the rescue of 109 children.
"During this operation, many of the children recognized or rescued were previously unidentified," said Plano Police Department Assistant Chief Dan Curtis. "They'd never been reported missing. They had never had their abuse known to authorities."
over_clox likes this.
LandedGentry doesn't like this.
[SOLVED] Recover deleted partition table - Guys, i need help!
My disk was dos labelled (MBR). So I 'fdisk'-ed my disk and entered 'o' to convert it to GPT and wrote it to the disk. Now all the partitions are gone. I want those back. I care about the data rather than the partitions
Edit 0:
Solution:
- install testdisk
- run testdisk
- choose "Create" log
- choose target disk. Eg: /dev/sda
- Choose appropriate partition type. Mine was MBR and I chose "Intel" and select "analyze"
- Now you'll see deleted partitions. Giveem appropriate flags like "*" for boot (efi partition) and "P" any other using space or arrow keys and press enter
- choose "write" and press y on the prompt to write those found partitions to the disk.
Thanks guys for the help
'We're done with Teams': German state hits uninstall on Microsoft
'We're done with Teams': German state hits uninstall on Microsoft
At a time of growing concern over the power of the world's mighty tech companies, one German state is turning its back on US giant Microsoft.France 24 (FRANCE 24)
like this
This article is terrible.
In less than three months' time, almost no civil servant, police officer or judge in Schleswig-Holstein will be using any of Microsoft's ubiquitous programs at work.Instead, the northern state will turn to [an unnamed, gaping information hole] open-source software to "take back control" over data storage and ensure "digital sovereignty", its digitalisation minister, Dirk Schroedter, told AFP.
"We're done with Teams!" he said, referring to Microsoft's messaging and collaboration tool and speaking on a video call -- via an [unnamed, gaping information hole] open-source German program, of course.
What will they use instead? Who the fuck knows! The article omits this crucial piece of information.
And don't say it's TBD; they're not going to say they're "done with Teams" without knowing what they're switching to. Or, even if they haven't put the final nail in the decision, they have a short list.
If someone where to use the term "Adult Playground", what would you think it describes?
I would imagine something similar to a regular playground but with adult sized equipment.
Near to where I live there's a park with light exercise stuff for old people, like pedals in front of benches or wheels to turn using a crank or handle.
Ever want to hate fuck someone?
Levitt and Noem on this list for sure.
"So what you had was that the world's two major propaganda agencies, for their own quite different reasons were claiming that this destruction of socialism is socialism. And it's very hard to break out of the control of the world's two major propaganda agencies when they agree, and they agreed for different reasons, but they agreed, and then that becomes doctrine and dogma."
- Noam Chomsky on why US and Russia both equated Leninism with Socialism
- Flawed Democracy & Flawed Socialism
Noam Chomsky - The Soviet Union vs. Socialism
"The Soviet Union vs Socialism" (article):http://www.chomsky.info/articles/1986----.htmYouTube
They are officially known as string trimmers. Where are you geographically and what do you call them?
When were you wrong about something?
I think itâs a healthy thing to do to admit when your wrong as it places importance on truth rather than self image.
Some examples:
I thought pay-per-view was paper-view because you had to fill out a form to watch it.
This morning I insisted there was a noise outside to my partner and it was in fact the refrigerant in the fridge gurgling.
I thought the cat wanted to be petâ it did not.
Will you allow your girlfriend/wife to post content on onlyfans?
Sensitive content
Anal sex or oral sex with your partner?
Sensitive content
Why is Lemmy so toxic?
A few days ago I made an account and posted a few joke/meme comments that got a lot of engagement. Unfortunately, the replies seemed to be mostly personal attacks on me disguised as jokes, when all I was doing was trying to be funny in a harmless way. I deleted that account and this one will be temporary. You people complain about this site lacking content compared to Reddit, about communities with only one person posting regularly and there not being enough niches, but how do you expect any growth to occur if the first thing someone experiences when posting on a new account is getting dogpiled on? It wasn't my first account either, it was my latest attempt to reenter the fray after feeling like I was becoming the butt of the joke on an account before that, just engaging with the community in the way that I like to. It almost felt like on both accounts my comments were being deliberately mass upvoted just as a setup to be humiliated. Some people have horrific lives IRL that would make any reasonable person want to kill themselves, and are stuck in those soul crushing situations for years and years with no way out. It would be nice to find a place to joke around and feel even just the simulated warmth of human connection without the same kind of nastiness I encounter in everyday life, so I'll keep looking. You say Reddit is toxic? I deleted my account there a long time ago, but my experience was that Reddit is like a big metropolis and Lemmy is more like a small town. Yes Reddit has jerks, but they don't tag you with their third party app and follow you around, giving you the illusion of being accepted with (probably fake) upvotes while subtly mocking everything you say and passing it off as a joke. You can blend with the crowd there and not become a target. I really, really don't want to give Reddit and OpenAI my data, but if I want a real social media experience that isn't being gatekept by assholes who enjoy bullying on the internet because they're too scared to do it IRL I may have to. I hope Lemmy can fix itself, but my experience with small towns in real life is that those "big" (small) fish in their small, stagnant pond don't want anything to ever change because the status quo suits their mediocrity and reinforces their egos. Which would be an ironic fate for the supposed "future" of social media. Almost none of the content, all of the toxicity. Why is it so hard for people to be respectful of others?
Mandatory img:
In my experience, Lemmy isn't particularly toxic, though sometimes you might run across people with a bad attitude or just might have simply had a bad day. Block those sort of people if you need to, or report them, depending on context.
Also, life pro tip, people aren't too keen on reading walls of text, especially if it's mostly complaining..
I almost quit my job today but I didn't have the courage to walk into my boss' office. (Vent)
I feel so awful. I have multiple panic attacks. I want to cry. My body feels like it is not mine. I want to quit but my legs are like noodles. I can't even get up.
I know it is all in my head (perhaps) but I really think people don't trust me anymore. I don't trust myself too.
Please don't send me any self harm alert. I am not thinking about that. I just want to vent.
over_clox likes this.
If you really feel the need to quit your job, you might consider making a resignation letter, expressing why you're quitting, and proofread that at least 3 times.
Edit: Try to be polite and professional about it. And keep a copy for your own records, in case your boss might try talking lies and bullshit about you.
Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion looks like a boomer shooter for the Newgrounds generation, and it's out next month
Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion looks like a boomer shooter for the Newgrounds generation, and it's out next month
The developer behind Subway Midnight is back with Shooty Shooty Robot Invasion, a game where you shoot robots and have terrible conversations.Oisin Kuhnke (Rock Paper Shotgun)
US Senator Alex Padilla forcibly removed from Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem's press conference in LA.
Sen. Alex Padilla forcibly removed from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem's news conference in Los Angeles
Noem was in L.A. to address the ongoing demonstrations against President Donald Trump's immigration policies.Rebecca Shabad (NBC News)
toomanypancakes likes this.
Danish Ministry Replaces Windows and Microsoft Office with Linux and LibreOffice
Full text due to weird cookies banner
The Danish Ministry of Digitization is to completely abandon Microsoft in the coming months and use Linux instead of Windows and switch from Office 365 to LibreOffice. Minister Caroline Stage (Moderaterne) announced this in an interview with the daily newspaper Politiken. It comes just a few days after the country's two largest municipalities initiated similar steps. This summer, half of the ministry's employees will be equipped with Linux and LibreOffice. If everything goes as expected, the entire ministry will be free of Microsoft by the fall, Politiken summarizes.
The Ministry of Digitalization's move away from Microsoft is therefore taking place against the backdrop of a new digitalization strategy in which the Kingdom's "digital sovereignty " is given priority. According to newspaper reports, the opposition is also calling for a reduction in dependence on US tech companies. Just a few days ago, the administration of the capital Copenhagen announced its intention to review the use of Microsoft software. The second-largest municipality, Aarhus, has already started to replace Microsoft services. Stage has now told Politiken that they should cooperate and that it is not a race. All municipalities should work together and strengthen open source.
When asked how her ministry would react if the changeover was not so easy, Stage replied that they would then simply return to the old system for a transitional period and seek other options: "We won't get any closer to the goal if we don't start." So far, she has only heard from employees who welcome the move. But in her ministry, which is mainly concerned with digitalization, she expects a lot of interest anyway. She also assured them that the initiative is not about Microsoft alone, as they are generally far too dependent on a few providers.
As background to the move, the article also refers to the events at the International Criminal Court, where an email account operated by Microsoft was disconnected. This caused an uproar across Europe. In Denmark, there is also the fact that the new US President Donald Trump has been announcing for weeks that his country wants to take over Greenland. The island in the North Atlantic is a self-governing part of Denmark, and the outrage at Trump's proposal is huge. The desire to reduce dependence on US companies is therefore evidently even greater there than in the rest of Europe.
Microsoft: Kein Mail-Block fĂŒr IStGH, startet europĂ€isches Sicherheitsprogramm
Microsoft dementiert, Dienste fĂŒr den Internationalen Strafgerichtshof eingestellt zu haben. Das Unternehmen startet ein europĂ€isches Sicherheitsprogramm.Stefan Krempl (heise online)
Republican South Carolina House member charged with distributing child sexual abuse material
A Republican South Carolina House member who prosecutors say used the screen name âjoebidennnn69â has been arrested and charged with 10 counts of distributing sexual abuse material involving children.
RJ May was arrested Wednesday at his Lexington County home after a lengthy investigation and is scheduled to appear in federal court on Thursday.
An indictment says the three-term Republican used several online names including âjoebidennnn69â to exchange files on the Kik social media network.
ChunkMcHorkle likes this.
Does it turn into a zoetrope after he dies?
Nelson needs answers now!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoetrope
Spin that flesh up, let's see...
Thank you for caring. If you need to or just feel it's best, there are all sorts of safe live animal traps out there, if you need it or any more coons relocated..
youtube.com/watch?v=xCZprBPFDVâŠ
How to Catch a Rabbit with a Live Animal Trap
http://bit.ly/2qKSWhW CLICK HERE for our rabbit live trapping guide and to get your professional-grade products!Watch how to humanely capture rabbits with li...YouTube
New Apple study challenges whether AI models truly âreasonâ through problems
If Hannibal Lecter clinches his sphincter and fetches a pail of skin cream..
Fuck, I forget how this rhyme goes...
YouTube Music Downloader
Hey guys i have been using Navidrome to stream my music from my server and its been amazing. I primarily use YT Music because of discoverability so I have all of my "primary" playlists (about 8 of them really, but supporting a somewhat arbitrary limit would be nice) in YouTube.
Im looking for an automated way to download the music and keep my navidrome instance updated with a couple playlists. I started working on some Python script to handle it, but its just not working super well so i would prefer to use someone elses solution haha.
Anyone have any good recommendations? I tried this one but I couldn't actually find the music and it seems to only support one playlist at a time. It would also be nice to download the album art and set some ID3 tags too
GitHub - LvInSaNevL/music_archives: A tool to keep a private copy of my library
A tool to keep a private copy of my library. Contribute to LvInSaNevL/music_archives development by creating an account on GitHub.GitHub
Yeah I am using yt-dlp to download the music, and I can set that on a cronjob no problem.
I am specifically asking for better downloading (I don't want just the raw YouTube title most of the time), album art, and ID3 tagging. But that beets.io thing looks super cool! I might integrate that into my existing python scripting instead of trying to build it all out myself
Just to throw out an easy option: if the music is well-labeled on Youtube, you can get pretty close to that full suite with just yt-dlp by using --embed-thumbnail
as a stand-in for album art, dumping your files with an âArtist - track - albumâ naming structure using the --output-template
flag â then using an awk or python script as a second pass to add the artist/track/album names to each file as tags.
E: and in case it isnât self-evident, you donât have to give yt-dlp a URL for each track; itâll work fine with a playlist URL.
Your username is your prompt, what does it look like?
Rerunning an idea, I'm curious how image generators have improved/changed.
Feel free to break up the words in your username, and let us know if you added anything like "a logo for..." Or "an avatar for..."
Let's run it through as many different generators as you have access to, and see what happens. You might just find your new avatar picture!
over_clox likes this.
considers
Fair enough; I can do one for you. I have a local ComfyUI setup, so prompt data won't go anywhere. Heck, even if I were generating it on a service, it'd be useless for letting said service gain information about you, as I don't know who or where you are.
For "over_clox", using stoiqNewrealityFLUXSD35_f1DAlphaTwo:
Strangely, I kinda like it!
I'll pass though, I make my own avatars (which apparently I still haven't applied to Lemmy..)
GNOME introducing stronger dependencies on systemd
Introducing stronger dependencies on systemd
PSA for systemd-free distros about work they'll need to do to continue running GNOMEAdrian (Adrian's blog)
what made me flee to KDE was realizing that its devs somehow think they know their users better than their users know themselves
Who are you talking about, GNOME or KDE?
How level is "level" to the naked human eye?
Yeah- Square and level are two different things. I can get a cube and rotate it any way, opposite faces will still be square to each other (technically parallel) despite not being level.
Interestingly, two perfectly vertical walls cannot be square to each other.
Does the share button on pixeled do nothing?
like this
like this
like this
How to screen record regions while showing the region boundary?
Ghostty in review: how's the new terminal emulator?
A few months ago, a new terminal emulator was released. It's called ghostty, and it has been a highly anticipated terminal emulator for a while, especially due to the coverage that it received from ThePrimeagen, who had been using for a while, while it was in private beta.
Airlines Don't Want You to Know They Sold Your Flight Data to DHS
Full text to bypass paywall:
A data broker owned by the countryâs major airlines, including Delta, American Airlines, and United, collected U.S. travellersâ domestic flight records, sold access to them to Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and then as part of the contract told CBP to not reveal where the data came from, according to internal CBP documents obtained by 404 Media. The data includes passenger names, their full flight itineraries, and financial details.
CBP, a part of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), says it needs this data to support state and local police to track people of interestâs air travel across the country, in a purchase that has alarmed civil liberties experts.
The documents reveal for the first time in detail why at least one part of DHS purchased such information, and comes after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detailed its own purchase of the data. The documents also show for the first time that the data broker, called the Airlines Reporting Corporation (ARC), tells government agencies not to mention where it sourced the flight data from.
âThe big airlinesâthrough a shady data broker that they own called ARCâare selling the government bulk access to Americans' sensitive information, revealing where they fly and the credit card they used,â Senator Ron Wyden said in a statement.
ARC is owned and operated by at least eight major U.S. airlines, other publicly released documents show. The companyâs board of directors include representatives from Delta, Southwest, United, American Airlines, Alaska Airlines, JetBlue, and European airlines Lufthansa and Air France, and Canadaâs Air Canada. More than 240 airlines depend on ARC for ticket settlement services.
****Do you work at ARC or an agency that uses ARC data? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.****
ARCâs other lines of business include being the conduit between airlines and travel agencies, finding travel trends in data with other firms like Expedia, and fraud prevention, according to material on ARCâs YouTube channel and website. The sale of U.S. flyersâ travel information to the government is part of ARCâs Travel Intelligence Program (TIP).
A Statement of Work included in the newly obtained documents, which describes why an agency is buying a particular tool or capability, says CBP needs access to ARCâs TIP product âto support federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies to identify persons of interestâs U.S. domestic air travel ticketing information.â 404 Media obtained the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
The new documents obtained by 404 Media also show ARC asking CBP to ânot publicly identify vendor, or its employees, individually or collectively, as the source of the Reports unless the Customer is compelled to do so by a valid court order or subpoena and gives ARC immediate notice of same.â
The Statement of Work says that TIP can show a personâs paid intent to travel and tickets purchased through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories. The data from the Travel Intelligence Program (TIP) will provide âvisibility on a subjectâs or person of interestâs domestic air travel ticketing information as well as tickets acquired through travel agencies in the U.S. and its territories,â the documents say. They add this data will be âcrucialâ in both administrative and criminal cases.
A DHS Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) available online says that TIP data is updated daily with the previous dayâs ticket sales, and contains more than one billion records spanning 39 months of past and future travel. The document says TIP can be searched by name, credit card, or airline, but ARC contains data from ARC-accredited travel agencies, such as Expedia, and not flights booked directly with an airline. â[I]f the passenger buys a ticket directly from the airline, then the search done by ICE will not show up in an ARC report,â that PIA says. The PIA notes the data impacts both U.S. and non-U.S. persons, meaning it does include information on U.S. citizens.
âWhile obtaining domestic airline dataâlike many other transaction and purchase recordsâgenerally doesn't require a warrant, there's still supposed to go through a legal process that ensures independent oversight and limits data collection to records that will support an investigation,â Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Center for Democracy & Technology's Security and Surveillance Project, told 404 Media in an email. âAs with many other types of sensitive and revealing data, the government seems intent on using data brokers to buy their way around important guardrails and limits.â
CBPâs contract with ARC started in June 2024 and may extend to 2029, according to the documents. The CBP contract 404 Media obtained documents for was an $11,025 transaction. Last Tuesday, a public procurement database added a $6,847.50 update to that contract, which said it was exercising âOption Year 1,â meaning it was extending the contract. The documents are redacted but briefly mention CBPâs OPR, or Office of Professional Responsibility, which in part investigates corruption by CBP employees.
âCBP is committed to protecting individualsâ privacy during the execution of its mission to protect the American people, safeguard our borders, and enhance the nationâs economic prosperity. CBP follows a robust privacy policy as we protect the homeland through the air, land and maritime environments against illegal entry, illicit activity or other threats to national sovereignty and economic security,â a CBP spokesperson said in a statement. CBP added that the data is only used when an OPR investigation is open and the agency needs to locate someone related to that investigation. The agency said the data can act as a good starting point to identify a relevant flight record before then getting more information through legal processes.
On May 1, ICE published details about its own ARC data purchase. In response, on May 2, 404 Media filed FOIA requests with ICE and a range of other agencies that 404 Media found had bought ARCâs services, including CBP, the Secret Service, SEC, DEA, the Air Force, U.S. Marshals Service, TSA, and ATF. 404 Media found these by searching U.S. procurement databases. Around a week later, The Lever covered the ICE contract.
A screenshot of the Statement of Work. Image: 404 Media.
Airlines contacted by 404 Media declined to comment, didnât respond, or deferred to either ARC or DHS instead. ARC declined to comment. The company previously told The Lever that TIP âwas established after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to provide certain data to law enforcement⊠for the purpose of national security mattersâ and criminal investigations.
âARC has refused to answer oversight questions from Congress, so I have already contacted the major airlines that own ARCâlike Delta, American Airlines and Unitedâto find out why they gave the green light to sell their customers' data to the government,â Wydenâs statement added.
U.S. law enforcement agencies have repeatedly turned to private companies to buy data rather than obtain it through legal processes such as search warrants or subpoenas. That includes location data harvested from smartphones, utility data, and internet backbone data.
âOverall it strikes me as yet another alarming example of how the âBig Data Surveillance Complexâ is becoming the digital age version of the Military-Industrial Complex,â Laperruque says, referring to the purchase of airline data.
âIt's clear the Data Broker Loophole is pushing the government back towards a pernicious âcollect it allâ mentality, gobbling up as much sensitive data as it can about all Americans by default. A decade ago the public rejected that approach, and Congress passed surveillance reform legislation that banned domestic bulk collection. Clearly it's time for Congress to step in again, and stop the Data Broker Loophole from being used to circumvent that ban,â he added.
According to ARCâs website, the company only introduced multifactor authentication on May 15.
Airlines Are Collecting Your Data And Selling It To ICE
An aviation industry clearinghouse is collecting passenger information from billions of past and future flights and selling it to Trumpâs immigration enforcers.The Lever
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