The Surveillance Interstate
Slate Technology
Slate
4.6 • 636 Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2025
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Tracking a license plate across the country has never been easier, which is good news if your car has been stolen, but in an era of ICE and Border Patrol raids, these warrantless searches feel increasingly invasive—and unconstitutional.
Guest: Joseph Cox, co-founder of 404 Media and host of the 404 Media podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Recently, immigration and customs enforcement invited its staff to try out a new app. |
| 0:10.4 | So this app is called Mobile Companion. It's made by Motorola, but it can team up with data from Thompson Reuters. |
| 0:22.1 | That's Joseph Cox, a co-founder of 404 Media. |
| 0:25.9 | People may not actually be aware of this, |
| 0:28.2 | but Thompson Reuters doesn't just run the Reuters new service. |
| 0:31.4 | It also sells a bunch of personal data to government and private clients as well, names, addresses, all of this other |
| 0:40.0 | sort of personal information. |
| 0:43.1 | The kind of information that ICE really values in its mass deportation campaign. |
| 0:49.3 | So the agency reached out to all staffers working on enforcement and removal. |
| 0:54.9 | And told all of those personnel, hey, come out, come and check out this app. It's pretty |
| 1:00.0 | cool. I'm paraphrasing, obviously. But here are the capabilities that you can use if you wish to do |
| 1:05.2 | so in the field. How does the app work exactly? |
| 1:13.0 | So an ICE officer will take the app installed on their phone. |
| 1:17.2 | They will then point it at anybody's license plate, take a photo, and that will be added to |
| 1:23.7 | this database of billions of other scans. |
| 1:27.9 | Scans that are collected from cameras across the US, including from police dash cams. |
| 1:33.5 | So with this app in ICE officer's hands, they can add to that database. |
| 1:39.1 | They can get push alerts for when a vehicle they're interested in is spotted, |
| 1:43.2 | and then they're basically able to track |
| 1:45.4 | vehicles and by extension people in near real time. But that is not the only thing that ICE |
| 1:52.8 | officers can get. The data from Thompson Reuters gives them access to even more information. |
| 1:59.2 | Stuff like ownership of the vehicle. |
... |
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