California's vulnerable immigrant communities have a unique opportunity to file opt-outs to the data brokers that directly feed the deportation machine. We seek support to get this information out broadly and quickly.
The United States immigration system is in a shambles. Powered by xenophobic rhetoric, the agencies charged with administering immigration controls (ICE and Border Patrol), assisted by amoral tech companies, have been implementing a data driven human rights catastrophe around spying, surveillance, detention and deportation. US civil society has a moral responsibility to help the targeted communities in the US to protect themselves. This is a legal and safe way to reduce the terror.
New privacy laws passed in the State of California, home of one of the largest immigrant populations in the country, allow people to opt out of having their personal information, including addresses, driving patterns, and phone metadata and geolocation, sold to data brokers without their consent. Many of these data brokers, like Canadian multinational Thomson Reuters, have contracts to sell the personal information they buy to ICE. Stopping companies from selling it impedes ICE operations.
The desired outcome of the project is to degrade the value of the personal information sales on California residents made by third party brokers to federal immigration enforcement agencies who are guilty of significant human rights violations including lengthy detention, false imprisonment, denial of medical care and harassment. At scale, a significant number of data privacy opt-outs will have an impact on federal immigration activities within California, and possibly the nation.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
