ICE-tracking app developer sues Trump admin after Apple spikes the software
Suit argues forcing Apple to remove app, and threatening dev with legal action is a First Amendment violation
Does the first amendment allow citizens to track law enforcement activity? After publishing an iOS app that shows where ICE agents have deployed, ICEBlock developer Joshua Aaron saw the Trump admin pressure Apple into pulling the software and threaten him with prosecution. Now he's fighting back.
Aaron filed a lawsuit in Washington, D.C. district court Monday, accusing Trump administration Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Immigration and Customs Enforcement director Todd Lyons, and others of infringing on his First Amendment right to free speech.
While often misunderstood to apply to the actions of private organizations that people don't agree with (e.g., kicking people off a social media platform for hate speech or telling someone to leave a physical establishment for being disruptive), the Constitution's First Amendment actually prevents the government from retaliating against citizens for engaging in protected speech, which is precisely what Aaron's lawsuit argues.
ICEBlock was an iOS app that Aaron developed in the wake of the Trump administration's mass deportation push that allowed communities to crowd-source reports of ICE officials' presence in their areas. Apple published it through the App Store in April, then removed it in early October, reportedly following pressure from unnamed law enforcement agencies over safety concerns.
According to the lawsuit, Bondi made it clear in public statements to the media following the October 2 removal of ICEBlock from the Apple App Store that she had pressured Apple to take it down.
"We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from their App Store and Apple did so," Bondi told Fox News in October.
"With this admission, Attorney General Bondi made plain that the United States government used its regulatory power to coerce a private platform to suppress First Amendment-protected expression," Aaron's lawyers wrote in the suit.
The lawsuit argues that ICEBlock is protected under the First Amendment, despite administration officials' claims to the contrary, because it deals with publicly available information and was designed to act as a check on the overreach of government authority – directly the sort of thing the First Amendment and the rest of the Bill of Rights was designed to protect.
"For centuries, speech about immigration has shaped the law and inspired movements that reflect the nation's ongoing struggle to balance liberty, security, and equality," Aaron's lawyers argued in the suit. "For these reasons and more, Aaron's creation, distribution, and promotion of ICEBlock is plainly lawful and protected by the First Amendment."
Regarding claims that ICEBlock encouraged violence against ICE officers, Aaron said in an interview with CNN that the app wasn't designed to enable interference with officers' activities; he instead saw it as a way for the public to use it to know where ICE officials were located.
As the lawsuit argues, the crowdsourced nature of ICEBlock is effectively no different than apps like Waze, or the official Apple and Google Maps apps, each of which allows users to report the location of law enforcement officers to help other drivers avoid speed traps.
"Defendants have not made comparable demands – and Apple has not removed similar applications – that crowdsource or track the location of police officers engaged in non-immigration-related enforcement activities," the suit argues.
Aaron's lawyers also argue that, in addition to stifling legally-protected speech by forcing Apple to remove the app, Bondi and other Trump administration officials violated the First Amendment by threatening the ICEBlock developer with prosecution for engaging in protected speech.
"Officials have made reference to obstruction of justice and the aiding and abetting statute, but have not been more specific than that," Noam Biale, Aaron's attorney in the case, told The Register.
While ICEBlock was developed exclusively for Apple devices, Google has also taken action to remove similar apps from the Play Store, and Apple has removed other ICE-tracking apps as well.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a Freedom of Information Act suit against the Departments of Justice and Homeland Security last month to get a better understanding of what, precisely, administration officials said to Apple and Google to coerce them into removing the apps. While the EFF didn't have any updates on that issue to share with us, Foundation attorney F. Mario Trujillo did tell us that he agreed with Aaron's attorneys that ICEBlock was protected under the first amendment.
"There is a long history that shows documenting law enforcement performing their duties in public is protected First Amendment activity," Trujillo told The Register in an email. "While this case is rightfully only against the government, Apple should also take a hard look at its own capitulation."
Neither Apple nor the DoJ responded to questions for this story. ®