Thread by @ConMijente

BREAKING: ICE no longer has access to 171 million people’s utility information following pressure from our #NoTechForICE campaign ‼️

We've cut the data off from the source.

This thread explains what this means, and what needs to happen next.

More: washingtonpost.com/technology/202…

As Jacinta Gonzalez, senior campaign director for Mijente, told @drewharwell, most people did not realize that information would be made available to federal agents and the police.

"The data never should have been used in this way.”

This blocks ICE from using personal info to surveil, arrest, detain & deport our community. It’s just the 1st step. We continue to demand an end to the practice of data broker corps like LexisNexis & Thomson Reuters selling utility data, a practice that endangers us all.

We’re now calling on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) to investigate data brokers for using this utility data, originally shared by consumers to access essential services, for the purpose of arrests and deportations.

This win would not have been possible if it wasn’t for the fierce organizing & activism by immigrant rights organizers, borderlands communities, students, legal scholars, librarians, and justice-minded investors.

#NoTechForICE

Over the past two years, this diverse set of groups have brought the fight to ICE — and the tech companies that sell them our data — to demand an end to the human rights abuses.

Join us: notechforice.com

For years we've sounded the alarm that ICE is setting up infrastructure that uses tech at an unprecedented scale, locally & nationally. As ICE looks to data brokers & other tech cos to get around sanctuary protections, join us in building the path towards real digital sanctuary.

We're incredibly grateful to collaborate with @JustFuturesLaw on this work. We appreciate Senator Wyden's work to push this forward. We salute all the students, librarians, lawyers, and organizers who've been pushing against how ICE uses data brokers for years now.

In October, protests rippled across law school campuses across the country. Law school students organizing with @ECCAbolishICE demanded their schools cut off ties with the databrokers who sell to ICE.

thehill.com/policy/technol…

In the same month the Library at the Lake Washington Institute of Technology became the first library in the country to cancel their contract with LexisNexis because of the corporation’s contracts with ICE.

When we asked the librarian why they made that decision, he pointed to @theintercept's story, based on our research, finding that LexisNexis signed a $16.8m contract with ICE, in order to provide the agency access to billions of public and private data.

theintercept.com/2021/04/02/ice…

We've also been organizing investors to put pressure on these corpns where they feel most comfortable in. This summer, a majority of the ind shareholders w/stock in the Thomson Reuters voted in favor of a proposal to review the company’s contracts w/ICE.

thestar.com/business/2021/…

To learn more about how all of this works, take a look at this report we published with @JustFuturesLaw on "the Data Broker to Deportation Immigration Pipeline: How ThomsonReuters & LexisNexis Share Utility and Commercial Data with ICE".

flipsnack.com/justfutures/co…