Apple Pulls ICE-Tracking Apps on Justice Department’s Urging (1)

Apple Inc.’s App Store removed ICEBlock and other applications used to report and track sightings of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents after the government raised concerns.

“We created the App Store to be a safe and trusted place to discover apps,” the company said Thursday in a statement. “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.”

Before it was taken down, the tracking tool allowed users to anonymously report the location of officials who were carrying out immigration raids. Crowdsourced data was provided by ICEBlock users across the US as a means of warning neighbors about the agency’s presence.

The Department of Justice urged the iPhone maker to remove the software earlier on Thursday, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. “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,” she said.

ICEBlock rose up the App Store charts in July after Trump administration officials criticized the tracking tool and said ICE agents were facing an uptick in assaults. The app’s developer, Joshua Aaron, has maintained that it’s no different from other software that relies on crowdsourced data.

(Updates with statement from attorney general in fourth paragraph.)

To contact the reporters on this story:
Chris Welch in New York at cwelch78@bloomberg.net;
Chris Strohm in Washington at cstrohm1@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story:
Nick Turner at nturner7@bloomberg.net

Vlad Savov

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