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

2025-10-0412:23153131www.theverge.com

Red Dot has been removed from the iPhone’s App Store, too.

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The iPhone and Android app stores have targeted apps made to share sightings of ICE agents for removal.

The iPhone and Android app stores have targeted apps made to share sightings of ICE agents for removal.

by Emma Roth

Just one day after Apple took down the iOS App Store listing for ICEBlock, Google has confirmed to 404 Media that it has removed a similar app, Red Dot, from the Google Play Store. The company also reportedly said it “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.”

On Thursday, Apple removed ICEBlock and similar apps, including Red Dot, after facing pressure from the Department of Justice. Attorney General Pam Bondi said to Fox News on Thursday that “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.” In response to the move, ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron said in a statement to 404 Media that the app is “protected speech,” adding that Apple is “capitulating to an authoritarian regime.”

Both ICEBlock and Red Dot allow users to anonymously report sightings of ICE agents and view nearby reports. Red Dot’s website says the app combines user reporting with “verified reports from multiple trusted sources” to monitor ICE activity.

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” and has a requirement for content moderation apps with user-generated content.“ICEBlock was never available on Google Play, but we removed similar apps for violations of our policies,” Google told 404 Media. The Verge reached out to Google with a request for comment but didn’t immediately hear back.

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Comments

  • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0413:383 reply

    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?

    • By GoblinSlayer 2025-10-0413:501 reply

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

      • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0413:513 reply

        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?

        • By Y_Y 2025-10-0414:041 reply

          > sideloading books

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

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

          • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0417:22

            I understand why some people have a negative reaction to the word "sideloading", but to me it just means acquiring media from a place other than the manufacturer's official channels.

            On Debian, compiling software from source or installing a deb you downloaded via a web browser would be "sideloading".

        • By savolai 2025-10-0414:001 reply

          ”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

        • By craftkiller 2025-10-0414:044 reply

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

          • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0414:091 reply

            I don't know how I would live my life without access to mainstream mobile 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.

            Freedom of speech 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.

            • By craftkiller 2025-10-0414:222 reply

              > laundry

              Keep an old android phone in a drawer somewhere. Take it out when you do laundry.

              > mark student attendance

              If your workplace requires you to use an app then your workplace can issue you a phone that you keep at work. I don't use my personal devices for anything work-related and you shouldn't either.

              • By atmavatar 2025-10-0415:211 reply

                Reminder: the moment you start using your phone for work-related material, your workplace has the right to access and remove data from your phone.

                Never, ever use your personal phone for work stuff.

                • By craftkiller 2025-10-0416:17

                  On top of that, someone brings a lawsuit against your company? Well your personal phone that you used for work is now being impounded as evidence. Both inconvenient and invasive.

              • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0414:362 reply

                I can't practically carry around two different phones all day at work, especially given how big they are now. (It's not like I work at a desk, I'm constantly running between different classrooms and other spaces.) The "work" phone would end up being the one I had on my person most of the time.

                ...but frankly, I am such a geek that it doesn't really matter for me. I have a tiny 11-inch laptop that I usually keep somewhere nearby, or I can VNC into my home desktop computer from my phone.

                The thing is that normal people shouldn't have to do this! I say this as someone who does believe that everyone should become more tech-literate and capable with computers. One of the subjects I teach is 5th grade computer science. I don't expect all or even most of my kids to become professional software engineers, but I want them to know enough that they'll be able to make computers work for them instead of the other way around. This is one of the reasons I became a teacher.

                I don't expect all of my students to buy and carry around multiple phones in order to protect democracy.

                • By craftkiller 2025-10-0415:19

                  > how big they are now

                  Request that your work phone be this: https://www.unihertz.com/products/jelly-star

                  If all it is doing is taking attendance then you don't need a large phone.

                  > normal people shouldn't have to do this!

                  I agree, but this is what's happening. Google and Apple are taking away the freedom, it's time to put up or shut up.

                • By GoblinSlayer 2025-10-0615:53

                  Put them in a sac? You don't need the phones to be attached straight to your body, they only need to be within 40m from you.

          • By Spivak 2025-10-0414:101 reply

            If you expect people to take real-life inconvenience over an abstract perceived freedom you will be disappointed until the day you die. People buy computing devices to do things. If the device has freedom but can't do the things they want it's a really cool paperweight.

            Streaming services which lock you into DRM won over the slightly inconvenient but free thing.

            Your time will always better be spent getting government to make the convenient thing more free than trying to move a river by gathering people with buckets.

            • By craftkiller 2025-10-0414:251 reply

              Oh, I don't expect people like them to take real-life inconvenience over freedom. I am just tired of them pretending they care about freedom, when all it takes for them to give up is having to use a "fiddly" operating system.

              • By Zak 2025-10-0414:36

                I've been running Linux on the desktop for 20 years. I'm happily running Linux on a tablet (a Microsoft tablet at that). I run a third-party Android build with root on my primary phone. I am the ideal user for a fiddly operating system.

                I put PostmarketOS on a spare phone and spent a good bit of time playing with it. It would be painful to try to daily it at this time, and completely unusable for many of the common smartphone use cases.

          • By subscribed 2025-10-0423:58

            No, not inconvenience, safety and security.

            There are limited choices if you want to keep it in mind.

          • By y0eswddl 2025-10-0414:40

            Ahh the old "I'm going to pretend my utterly ridiculous suggestion is a reasonable and rational and expectation of the average human"

    • By fallinghawks 2025-10-0415:01

      Google has been clamping down over the past year or two on sideloading too. I used to be able to install games restricted to Japan if they were uploaded to apkpure, but every one lately gets stopped either by Play Services or the Play Store under the claim of "safety" and can't be worked around.

    • By bootsmann 2025-10-0414:031 reply

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

      • By Wowfunhappy 2025-10-0414:05

        I love the DMA in theory, but as currently 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, so apparently Google has decided it's DMA compliant. Which makes sense given what Apple is doing.

  • By tdeck 2025-10-0414:011 reply

    > “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?

    • By 0xy 2025-10-0414:054 reply

      [flagged]

      • By axus 2025-10-0414:18

        I think that attack was independent of the app. Everybody is "vulnerable" to bullets, perhaps they should ban the guns instead of the app?

      • By valiant55 2025-10-0414:12

        How many ICE officers were shot?

      • By thrance 2025-10-0414:14

        A mentally ill right-winger 4chan edgelord shooting at immigrants, to be precise. No ICE officers were harmed in this hatecrime, don't you worry.

      • By myko 2025-10-0414:21

        Yes, more extremist rightwing violence that targeted vulnerable people (immigrants ICE were treating as subhuman)

  • By antfarm 2025-10-0412:555 reply

    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.

    • By b00ty4breakfast 2025-10-0413:293 reply

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

      • By chvid 2025-10-0413:383 reply

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

        • By Workaccount2 2025-10-0413:552 reply

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

          • By 93po 2025-10-0417:52

            his reality distortion field became too powerful and backfired on himself

          • By howieburger 2025-10-0414:20

            Given what has been learned through neuroscience, how ossified and normalized for life most become, it feels like a good argument can be made much of the elder cohort is stuck in a pseudo religious and pseudoscience middle ground of thought.

            Most > 50 were born into a more traditional and religion-centric life and only adopted technology. The first generation educated along vaguely scientific lines.

            In the US at least, born after 1980 is roughly when opinions begin to veer into favor of empiricism and less "anything goes" new age woo and post world war extravagant capitalism due to being the only functioning manufacturing economy after the war.

        • By arcatech 2025-10-0414:17

      • By techjamie 2025-10-0419:49

        I will say you have to respect that he would eat his own dog food though. It's one thing to be wrong and contradict it in private, it's another to be wrong and actually live it.

        So many powerful people are the former.

    • By argsnd 2025-10-0413:235 reply

      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.

      • By davidw 2025-10-0413:331 reply

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

        • By nerdponx 2025-10-0413:491 reply

          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.

          • By thrance 2025-10-0414:102 reply

            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.

            • By lovelearning 2025-10-054:451 reply

              There seems to be an implicit assumption here that Apple and Google managements don't like Trump's ICE policies and are doing all this under duress.

              But is this a valid assumption? Or is it mere wishful thinking? If almost half the US population revoted Trump into power, it's logical to assume the same proportions apply to the managements and employees of A and G too.

              I'm against granting any management any benefit of the doubt without solid proof they deserve it.

              • By thrance 2025-10-0510:24

                For sure, that's what I implied in that "corporations and fascism" line. If they wanted to make a stand, I believe they could. But as history tells us, businesses are a fascist's biggest allies, so they won't.

            • By argsnd 2025-10-0414:161 reply

              I think the Trump administration has been rather good at following through on their threats. US import tariffs are insanely high right now and he's been able to successfully fire whoever he wants.

              All Trump has to do to destroy eg. Apple is get rid of the exemption from the tariffs they've been given for electronics manufactured in India.

              • By davidw 2025-10-0414:211 reply

                I mean, Jimmy Kimmel won and Apple is way more powerful with far deeper pockets.

                This admin isn't all powerful, as much as they try and project that image. Apple and I think Google have a pretty big reservoir of good will among the public at large.

                These folks won't be in power forever, but the cowardice of people like Tim Cook will always be remembered.

                • By nerdponx 2025-10-051:061 reply

                  It looks OK on the surface, but it gets worse the more you look into the details.

                  It doesn't really matter that the administration keeps losing in federal court, because the justice department doesn't really care and keeps doing the thing they were told to stop doing anyway, because there's nobody to enforce the ruling.

                  The executive branch is being actively purged of anyone and anything that is not aligned with and loyal to Trump and the vision of Project 2025, and the institutions that might be used to halt or reverse the damage are being specifically targeted and attacked.

                  Not only that, but all the other major industry players have already bent the knee and kissed the ring. You don't want to be the only one who doesn't, otherwise you will get singled out and targeted for extortion or worse. Several very powerful law firms were successfully targeted for political extortion by executive order. Major universities have conceded to demands. Conservative news media is in lock step with the administration and can push any narrative at any time. Threats might've already been made privately to begin antitrust enforcement, for some other form of targeted corporate punishment.

                  Moreover, it's obvious that one of the goals of this administration is to destroy consumer protections and employee protections, creating an environment where powerful corporations can do whatever they want in the name of profit. As the CEO of a large corporation, you might be actively under pressure to cooperate and collaborate. So there is a large downside to resistance, and a large upside to playing along.

                  Tim Cook will be remembered as one of dozens and dozens of cowards, but only in private whispers, because if they say it in public they will be blacklisted or worse.

                  • By davidw 2025-10-0515:211 reply

                    It's all very bad, for sure, but doomerism is capitulation.

                    https://www.liberalcurrents.com/democrats-must-embrace-war-m...

                    > This is the thing: dooming is itself a liberation from the burden of choice. If everything is ruined forever, if your allies have already forsaken you, if the battle is already lost, you aren't responsible for your choices. They can't affect the outcome. You're free. Dooming is another escape from the burden of war mindset. Clausewitz knew this as well: "As a rule, most men would rather believe bad news than good,"

                    • By nerdponx 2025-10-0515:45

                      I never said all is lost so give up. I just said that it's bad and even worse than it might seem. Trying to pretend it's not as bad as it is, is also capitulation.

      • By watwut 2025-10-0413:39

        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.

      • By mdhb 2025-10-0413:55

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

      • By jordanb 2025-10-0413:481 reply

        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.

        • By argsnd 2025-10-0413:58

          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.

      • By stefan_ 2025-10-0413:30

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

    • By cs_throwaway 2025-10-0413:10

      Exactly the same.

    • By buyucu 2025-10-0414:06

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

    • By alexandre_m 2025-10-0413:55

      [flagged]

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