First US Law Librarians mumbled something under their breath about the LN ICE enabling data that has meant some very unpleasant outcomes for undocumented individuals in the US.
They soon gave up after they realized that annual junkets, sponsorship and general pleasantries from LN would dry up if they stuck to the topic. It’s all been swept under the carpet and we presume the ALLG would like the subject to stay there.
Next, it was law students late 2021 who noticed that the research product they were using was not as squeaky clean, morally, as they’d thought. A few protests and lots of huffing and puffing later that little campaign petered out with a minimum of fuss.
Now the tech and general media has picked up on the story..Here’s what The Crime Report are saying (below)
Sadly the latest semi-outrage series of articles will make not a jot of difference and LN will retain a very profitable govt contract and make many people’s lives in the now and the future very unpleasant in their pursuit of profit.
We could speak about the spirit of the law or the difference between right and wrong but really in legal publishing (tech) of 2022 profit is the primary concern and will remain so.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) searched a massive database of personal information provided by LexisNexis over 1.2 million times in just a seven-month period in 2021, casting doubt on earlier assurances from LexisNexis that its sprawling database would be used only narrowly to target people with “serious criminal backgrounds” and raising concerns that their databases are facilitating dragnet surveillance and deportations, reports The Intercept.
LexisNexis usage logs between March and September 2021 totaled 1,211,643 searches and 302,431 “reports,” information packages that provide a rundown of an individual’s location, work history, family relationships, and many other data points. Logs show that over 260,000 searches and reports were conducted by ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations, a branch explicitly tasked with finding and deporting immigrants, often for minor infractions or no offense at all. Most of the queries were conducted through Accurint, a powerful LexisNexis tool that promises “cutting-edge analytics and data linking,” and touts its ability to provide a firehose of “investigative intelligence” to police on a national scale. Experts say they remain concerned by Accurint’s use and potential to snare people who’ve committed no crime beyond fleeing their home country.
ICE SEARCHED LEXISNEXIS DATABASE OVER 1 MILLION TIMES IN JUST SEVEN MONTHS
LexisNexis usage logs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement for seven months totaled 1,211,643 searches and 302,431 “reports.”
https://theintercept.com/2022/06/09/ice-lexisnexis-mass-surveillances/
