Google removes ICE-spotting app following Apple's ICEBlock crackdown

https://www.theverge.com/news/791533/google-apple-ice-tracking-app-store-red-dot-iceblock

87•funkyfourier•1h ago

Comments

antfarm•1h ago

I already lost all remaining respect for Tim Cook when he kissed the ring in the oval office. I wonder how Steve Jobs would have handled the current political challenges.

cs_throwaway•1h ago

Exactly the same.

argsnd•52m ago

Americans elected a mob boss to their highest office and he also appointed many of the judges in the legal system. As a corporation your choices are to give in or to get crushed.

stefan_•45m ago

Yes, they all conveniently gave in the moment after. Google just paid another $25M. Is this the lawful order defence?

davidw•42m ago

Giving your lunch money to a bully all but guarantees they'll be back for more.

nerdponx•26m ago

This is literally how extortion by organized crime works. It's the same mechanism. Of course they'll be back for more, but if you don't give them your money, they will beat the shit out of you and then come back for more anyway. You know what's expected of you, and the alternatives are generally much worse.

Incidentally it's also a textbook presentation of the Manufacturing Consent Propaganda model, except it's not only propaganda, it's an outright authoritarian coup.

thrance•5m ago

Except Apple and Google are incredibly powerful, and the Trump administration has shown they mostly fail to follow on their threats (yet, at least). If some entities are able to stand up against the nascent fascist regime, it's them. But as we all know, corporations and fascism are like peanut butter and jelly.

watwut•36m ago

Nah. They are the most powerful members of a society. It is ridiculous how they get treated with less expectations then anyone else.

They have choices and they are consciously choosing this.

jordanb•26m ago

Corporations and especially Silicon Valley were pushing hard for Trump because they were furious about Lena Khan.

Don't let them pretend that they are innocent in all of this. They're all polishing their jackboots right now.

argsnd•17m ago

Oh I have no sympathy for them. I understand their behaviour but to me it's just a reason to avoid patronising American companies.

I also think there's a little bit of quid pro quo happening here - in exchange for giving into Trump's whims and kissing the ring they've had antitrust investigations watered down and patent disputes solved.

mdhb•20m ago

I think the world’s richest company could have at least attempted to push back. They aren’t some helpless victim here.

b00ty4breakfast•46m ago

He'd probably be up to his eyeballs in magic crystals and antivax nonsense by now

chvid•37m ago

Lol - exactly - why do people expect the politics or broader principles of Steve Jobs to be any good?

Workaccount2•19m ago

The dude literally tried to cure his cancer with fruit. There would probably be an RFK edition iPhone.

alexandre_m•20m ago

Honestly, I think Steve Jobs would be completely baffled by some of the stuff being pushed over the past decade, especially all the identity politics and the open-border policies and mass illegal immigration madness.

buyucu•9m ago

Steve Jobs was the kind of person who would do anything for more money. He would have kissed the ring even harder.

Waterluvian•1h ago

Is it illegal for Americans to track their authorities or are the corporations all doing this quite voluntarily?

nsxwolf•56m ago

It’s perfectly legal, but also perfectly legal for a corporation to choose not to sell or distribute a particular software application.

codedokode•53m ago

In a free market the consumer always has a choice between companies doing censorship and companies doing censorship.

nsxwolf•49m ago

How many times are we going to re-litigate this? Until there’s a law requiring side loading options, you have the web.

Everyone here was totally fine with the “gay cure” apps being pulled.

Amezarak•41m ago

Most people also seemed to celebrate Parler and Gab being pulled/denied. It was perfectly obvious that the same logic could be used to do things like this, but many people seem to be totally surprised or oblivious.

noir_lord•42m ago

Yep and one day maybe we'll get one on mobile devices.

Today isn't that day alas.

Waterluvian•34m ago

Not sure you intended the double positive but I think it’s funny and apt.

Hizonner•40m ago

It is not legal for the government to induce a corporation to do that with threats of unrelated, bogus litigation, enforcement fishing expeditions, interference with the legally required government contracting process, or the like. Since the Trump administration has a consistent, well-established pattern of doing all those things, we can all assume that's what's going on.

ranger_danger•55m ago

IANAL but I research this stuff quite a bit.

Doxxing of federal employees' personal information in certain circumstances is technically illegal (but many people think it isn't): https://www.robertreeveslaw.com/blog/doxing-arrested/

But publishing location information of where authorities happen to be in public at a certain time... I don't think is actually illegal. The Apple app author also believes he is 100% legal and is seeking to go to court over this.

https://www.kpbs.org/news/science-technology/2025/10/03/lega...

arnath•54m ago

Not illegal, not exactly voluntary either. Companies are caving to threats from the Trump administration

davidw•39m ago

It's the equivalent of posting on social media that you just saw some ice agents at such and such an address. Completely protected speech... At least it is unless the Roberts court shadow dockets it.

nsxwolf•58m ago

I don’t understand what anyone was expecting.

K0balt•39m ago

Some people are still under the impression that they live in a democratic republic under a constitutional doctrine of permissive freedom and the rule of law.

fulafel•30m ago

> Google told 404 Media that it didn’t receive any warning from the DOJ, but that it “bans apps with a high risk of abuse”

Seems to be something else in this case.

nsxwolf•17m ago

A nuisance app that generated zero revenue for these app stores was used in a murder. It’s a PR no-brainer to simply remove it just as they constantly remove other apps for all sorts of reasons.

StopDisinfo910•8m ago

A perfectly legal application was arbitrarily removed from distribution without any due process because it displeases those in power.

Funny how perspective on things can change depending of the amount of boot licking people enjoy.

GoblinSlayer•15m ago

It's just a monopoly.

jmclnx•51m ago

Couldn't someone port that to a WEB interface ? Then you access it via Firefox.

Maybe a PITA to use compared to a app, but at least it could not be banned.

tdeck•8m ago

Despite how shitty Google and Apple are being, this is probably the best way to accomplish the project's goal in a reasonable timeframe.

kread•50m ago

Happened in 2019 in Hongkong: https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/10/20907596/apple-hong-kong...

In 2025 in USA?

ants_everywhere•35m ago

I've wondered for a while if the experience with protesters organizing on apps was what made China prioritize TikTok more.

TikTok's initial rise predates the protests by about a year. But it explodes and overtakes other social media apps starting in 2019 and into 202.

netfortius•49m ago

GitHub (while it still works)???

captainkrtek•41m ago

Hmm how different is this fundamentally from the ability to report police locations (speedtraps) in Google Maps?

nerdponx•25m ago

You know why...

K0balt•41m ago

I’d say this is a perfect candidate for a web app / PWA.

howieburger•4m ago

Government will just hijack the domain as they have with torrents and other things they don't like

Am working on a mobile app that requires in person keygen/sharing via Bluetooth, syncs selected data between devices once keys exchanged and new local IP is shared (over something like Signal; discovery is hard/expensive so I am going with a low tech manual option to notify peers how to reconnect)

Flood the field with alternatives to keep The Man on his toes and distracted.

The main problem with hyper normalized and streamlined society is it just makes it easier for The Man to spot and squash dissent. What is dissent when the people are peacefully not following orders by making passive surveillance difficult.

ath3nd•39m ago

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power"

Is a quote often wrongly attributed to Mr. Fascism Benito Mussolini himself, but whoever said it had made a damn good point. Be aware that what you are seeing now fits the exact and precise definition of fascism.

It's amusing seeing the US descend so quickly in pure unadulterated fascism and the amount of denial and attempts to sugar coat it or window dress in places like HN. Then forums like this will go dark, and next thing you know, the brownshirts from the modern Gestapo/Stasi/ICE would be knocking on your door.

Make no mistake about Google and Apple: moderating anti fascist apps or content is abetting fascism (that applies to HN mods as well).

tdeck•9m ago

The more it's fascism, the less you're allowed to call it that.

Wowfunhappy•37m ago

From: https://onefoottsunami.com/2025/10/03/iceblock-blocked/

> Gosh, it’s almost like Apple serving as the exclusive gatekeeper for what software can be installed on the iPhone (and iPad, and Apple TV, and Apple Watch, and Vision Pro) is a bad thing that creates a single point of failure which can be abused by increasingly authoritarian governments.

Apple should not be able to decide which apps their customers are allowed to use. It's one thing to make decisions about which products are allowed in your store, and quite another to unilaterally ban software from what is many people's primary computer.

There should have always been a side-loading switch. It doesn't have to be easy to find, it just needs to be available in the event of an emergency. Any possible security arguments to the contrary pale in comparison to the importance of maintaining a free society.

We live in a digital age, and software is a form of free expression. We would not (I hope) find this situation acceptable for eBooks, and we should not find it acceptable for software.

I am horrified that Google has decided to move in the same direction on Android, and I urge them to reconsider before it's too late. Right now, these apps can still be sideloaded on Android phones, so to be honest I don't care that much what Google does with the Play Store. But what happens next year?

GoblinSlayer•25m ago

If phoneposters cared about that, they would buy a general computer. And yes, situation with ebooks is the same.

Wowfunhappy•24m ago

Please direct me to the general computer in a phone form factor that isn't some fiddly Linux gadget.

What e-reader doesn't allow side-loading books?

savolai•15m ago

”The 15.18.5 update is also having an adverse reaction to sideloaded books. If you deliver a book using Send by Email or copy it to your computer via USB, a critical issue may arise, where a pop-up appears with an ‘Invalid ASIN‘ number. The new DRM system is attempting to locate the book in the Amazon store to decrypt it, but since it can’t find it, it reports that the book is invalid. Amazon claims they are working on the issue, ... ”https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45393505

Y_Y•11m ago

> sideloading books

This madness is straight out of Right to Read [0].

[0] https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html

craftkiller•11m ago

Ah the old "I want freedom but I refuse to accept any inconvenience to get it"

Wowfunhappy•6m ago

I don't know how I would live my life without access to mainstream Android apps. I have to use an app to pay for the laundry machine in my apartment building. At school—I'm a teacher nowadays—we use an app to mark student attendance during fire drills.

Free expression should not require living in the woods secluded from society. It is the responsibility of all of us—especially major institutions—to work to preserve that. I can't do it on my own.

Spivak•5m ago

If you expect people to take real-life inconvenience over an abstract perceived freedom you will be disappointed until the day you die.

bootsmann•12m ago

Once again we are back to deriving the DSA/DMA from first principles.

Wowfunhappy•10m ago

I love the DMA, but as implemented it doesn't fix this problem, because they're letting Apple enforce their stupid notarization scheme for alternate app stores. Apple can just pull notarization from a politically inconvenient app.

I also haven't heard anything about Europe being excluded from the upcoming Android crackdown.

qwerty_clicks•27m ago

Could a web app be as secure and useful?

Blackthorn•22m ago

Cowards.

rkomorn•21m ago

"Cowards" implies they're doing this against their will.

EdiX•18m ago

Hopefully this will give people pause the next time they think about linking to https://xkcd.com/1357/.

raffael_de•16m ago

Neither ICEBlock nor Red Dot are OSS. Seems a little hypocritical. Why not provide the code on GitHub? Why not offer alternative download sources?

tdeck•14m ago

> “removed apps that share the location of what it describes as a vulnerable group after a recent violent act against them connected to this sort of app"

Apparently armed, masked thugs covered in body armor dragging people off the street for the federal government count as a "vulnerable group" now?

0xy•10m ago

A terrorist did attack an ICE facility last month, so yeah.

1970-01-01•12m ago

"vulnerable group"

Google, name your non-vulnerable groups. Could those being taken away be considered a "vulnerable group" or a non-vulnerable group?

This is pure hypocrisy in the wild.

buyucu•10m ago

If you needed a reminder for how awful Google's new sideloading restrictions will be, then this is it.

These restictions will give governments total control over what apps you can run on your phone.

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