Apple removes ICEBlock app from App Store

Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty ImagesApple has removed the immigration enforcement tracking app ICEBlock from the App Store.The app allows users to monitor and track the location of immigration enforcement agents.In a statement to Business Insider, Apple said the app was removed due to "safety risks."Apple has removed ICEBlock, an app that allowed users to monitor and report the location of immigration enforcement officers, from the App Store."We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps," Apple said in a statement to Business Insider. "Based on information we've received from law enforcement about the safety risks associated with ICEBlock, we have removed it and similar apps from the App Store."The app developer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.Apple has previously removed apps from the App Store at government insistence, including an app used by protesters in Hong Kong to track the location of law enforcement.Fox News reported that Attorney General Pam Bondi requested that Apple remove ICEBlock."We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store — and Apple did so," Fox News reported Bondi said. "ICEBlock is designed to put ICE agents at risk just for doing their jobs, and violence against law enforcement is an intolerable red line that cannot be crossed. This Department of Justice will continue making every effort to protect our brave federal law enforcement officers, who risk their lives every day to keep Americans safe."The Department of Justice did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.President Donald Trump's administration has taken a firm stance against law enforcement tracking apps such as ICEBlock. Politico reported in July that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem had suggested prosecuting CNN for publishing a report about the app.Controversy surrounding similar apps has increased in recent weeks following a deadly shooting on September 24 at a Dallas ICE facility that left two men — detainees at the facility — dead, and a third injured.A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said a sniper on a nearby rooftop fired indiscriminately at the ICE building, including at a van where the victims were shot.Pressure from the Trump administrationAlejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law School's Cyberlaw Clinic, told Business Insider that since Apple is a private company, it has its own prerogative over what apps can be made available on its App Store, but the fact that the company appeared to be responding to government pressure has "worrisome implications.""There could be extreme levels of jawboning of Apple to remove apps that the Trump administration doesn't want available," Caraballo said. "They could threaten to implement massive tariffs against Apple if they don't remove certain apps from the App Store, or pressure them in other ways."Caraballo cited Elon Musk's recent criticisms of BlueSky — a prominent left-wing social media app — as evidence that people close to the Trump administration could pressure Apple to remove apps that contain content the government finds objectionable.Musk, on September 14, replied "True," to a post on X that said the right-wing social media app Parler had been removed from Apple's App store "for about 0.1% of the extremist vitriol which now pervades BlueSky and Reddit.""So this is not a hypothetical," Caraballo said. "I think the worrisome aspect here is that one of the things that the administration has been really good at is targeting institutions that themselves won't push back or fight, and then the people who are actually directly affected are kind of boxed out of a direct legal challenge."Caraballo said that the creator of the ICEBlock app would have a hard time filing a First Amendment lawsuit against the government for pressuring Apple to remove the app, because Apple did so voluntarily."If they sued the federal government over it, the federal government could just say, 'Well, we didn't take it down — that was Apple — and we didn't actually require them to take it down, we just told them to,'" Caraballo said. "And so that becomes almost like the Spider-Man pointing meme, where no one is really responsible or the decision falls onto Apple, and Apple is considered a private actor."Read the original article on Business Insider

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