US immigration agents will have access to one of the world’s most sophisticated hacking tools after a decision by the Trump administration to move ahead with a contract with Paragon Solutions, a company founded in Israel which makes spyware that can be used to hack into any mobile phone – including encrypted applications.
The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon, now owned by a US firm, in late 2024, under the Biden administration. But the $2m contract was put on hold pending a compliance review to make sure it adhered to an executive order that restricts the US government’s use of spyware, Wired reported at the time.
That pause has now been lifted, according to public procurement documents, which list US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) as the contracting agency.
It’s funny how one immigrant country is “securing homeland” from another immigrant country. At some point in the late XIX century US, Argentina, Brazil seemed similarly attractive directions for the “give me your tired …” thing.
I had two books called “anthology of romantic and adventure”, pretty much only centered around sea travel, it had both poetry of a fascist Russian white movement member who was a submariner and “Tamango” by Merimee and Vysotsky’s songs and Poe’s short horror stories and Melville’s “Benito Sereno” racist story, in general a pretty equal mix of radical views of life, honestly, both the good and the bad ones.
So - it’s mostly rather old stuff, as you might guess, and the image of all those overseas colonized lands is somehow similar and blended. Now you wouldn’t think that there’s much similarity between USA and Brazil and Argentina, LOL.
OK, I just got carried away. Perhaps that moment when your whole country started feeling “settled” is when the bad things started accumulating (other than lynchings of blacks and lobotomies of autists, I mean). And started feeling less of a union and more of one country.
EDIT: Forgot South Africa.