Organized and technological: ICE resistance groups posing growing danger, warns former top NSA, DHS official
EXCLUSIVE: A former high-ranking National Security Agency and Department of Homeland Security official is warning that coordinated, technology-driven anti-ICE resistance is endangering operations through digital sabotage in cities across the United States.
In an interview with Fox News Digital, Stewart Baker, a cybersecurity and national security expert, said that the use of new and emerging technology by agitators "has changed the atmosphere in which ICE is operating."
"It's already a game changer," said Baker.
Following reports that anti-ICE agitators are using the encrypted messaging app known as Signal to track and impede agents, Baker said, "We're going to see more of that, and it's not easy to stop. Much of what's being done there is perfectly lawful speech, but it is on the edge of causing serious harm."
Baker served as NSA general counsel under Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton, and DHS assistant secretary for policy under President George W. Bush.
Beyond Signal, there is chatter among activists about the use of sophisticated but cheap technology that serves as counter-surveillance measures.
Some of these methods are detailed in a thought piece titled "How Hackers Are Fighting Back Against ICE" by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a nonprofit digital civil liberties organization. Among the methods identified by EFF are a piece of hardware called "OUI-SPY" and a database called "DeFlock" that can be used by activists to detect and log the presence of law enforcement cameras and other technology that would otherwise be hidden.
EFF also describes an open-source app called WiGLE, which it says has the ability to alert the user when specific Wi-Fi or Bluetooth signals from federal law enforcement are detected.
The group notes that it is not affiliated with these projects and does not endorse them or make any statements about the legality of using them.
Cindy Cohn, EFF executive director, told Fox News Digital that the group, which she said "has been defending digital civil liberties and pushing back on overbroad surveillance since 1990, defends people’s indisputable constitutional right to observe and record law enforcement activities that occur in public places, so long as that recording does not interfere with those activities."
Cohn said, "We also defend people’s legal and constitutional right to share that information with others. The Constitution and Supreme Court case law are crystal clear on these rights" and "we also support and defend people’s rights to detect, map, and share information about surveillance technology deployed in their communities, as a matter of transparency and accountability."
She added that "the predominant danger today to both federal officers and protestors, bystanders, immigrants and U.S. citizens derives from the violent tactics being used by federal forces in U.S. cities, rather than from the tools observers are using to document this behavior."
Baker told Fox News Digital that though he is "pretty skeptical of most of the technology that these groups are thinking they can use," it does show that "they are remarkably organized."
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He said that for the last 30 years technology has been "moving to a place where anonymity is just impossible," even in a law enforcement context.
"You can identify [people] from the signals that their tires send to the dashboard to say you're flat. You can identify them by their Bluetooth signals, by their Wi-Fi signals … there are so many signals that we put off that increasingly trying to keep them all from being read by the rest of the world is just going to fail," he explained. "And that means for law enforcement, they're much more trackable at a very individual level."
The result is that law enforcement operations are much more hazardous for not only agents, but also protesters, bystanders and even the illegal immigrants being targeted. The fatal shootings of activists Alex Pretti and Renee Good at the start of the year are evidence of this, Baker said.
"The people who are protesting ICE have set up a network for getting hostile people at the scene of ICE operations and [U.S. Customs and Border Protection] operations as quickly as possible and in as large numbers as possible," Baker went on. "That is setting up more confrontations that are also going to end badly for the people who go there."
Fox News Digital reported that the anti-ICE mobilization that unfolded around the killing of Pretti in Minneapolis mirrored the methods used to overthrow governments and spark bloody revolutions around the globe.
Encrypted Signal chats, command-and-control centers, rapid-response propaganda and orchestrated tear-gas clashes with law enforcement have served to mobilize forces and shape public opinion in the ongoing conflict. Close analysis of guidelines distributed online by anti-ICE groups and the minute-by-minute events surrounding Pretti's death reveal tactics and strategies well known to military and intelligence analysts as elements of global insurgencies.
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What does this all boil down to? Baker believes that this means that "everybody is going to be doxed."
"We're all going to be living in a world where we are doxed by people who don't like us. And ICE agents are there first, but plenty of other people are going to end up there and tracked."
"There are people who are willing to use violence against agents, and that fear of violence is going to drive hair-trigger responses by the agents. It's a very dangerous situation," said Baker. "It's dangerous for everybody. And I understand why people are enthusiastic about having discovered this technology … but it carries with it risks for the people who are running those networks."