ICEBlock app sues Trump administration for censorship : NPR

The developer of ICEBlock, an iPhone app that anonymously tracks the presence of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, sued the Trump administration for violating free speech after Apple remote service from its on-demand app store from the White House.

Costume, filed on Monday The federal court in Washington is asking a judge to find that the administration violated the First Amendment when it threatened criminal prosecution of the app's developer and pressured Apple to make the app unavailable for download, which the tech company did in October.

After Apple removed ICEBlock, Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement that “today we asked Apple to remove the ICEBlock app from its App Store – and Apple has done so.”

Lawyer Noam Biale, who filed the lawsuit against the administration, said Bondi's remarks show the government is illegally pressuring a private company to suppress free speech.

“We view this as an admission that she, in her official role as a government official, used coercion to force Apple to remove this app,” Biale told NPR.

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment, but Trump administration officials said the app puts the lives of ICE agents at risk.

When contacted for comment, Apple also did not respond. The lawsuit, which does not name Apple, says the tech giant succumbed to political pressure.

“For the first time in Apple’s nearly fifty-year history, Apple has removed a US app in response to demands from the US government,” the lawsuit states.

Developer calls immigration crackdown 'disgusting'

Joshua Aaron, an Austin, Texas-based developer of ICEBlock, said he launched the app as a way to empower those who oppose Trump's immigration crackdown.

“It was the best idea: I had to do everything I could to fight back against what was happening,” Aaron said in an interview, calling Trump’s immigration enforcement measures “disgusting.”

The app allows people to report the sighting of an ICE agent within a 5-mile radius, similar to how mapping apps like Waze, Google, Apple Maps and others alert drivers to police speed traps. ICE sighting alerts do not include photos or videos and expire after four hours.

However, the Trump administration has portrayed the app as being used to incite violence against ICE agents, which Aaron denies. An analysis Federal court records do not support the administration's contention that violence against ICE agents has risen sharply.

Aaron's lawsuit says Bondi mischaracterizes the purpose of the app.

“As such, ICEBlock does not promote or encourage confrontation—it simply provides time-limited location information to help users stay aware of their surroundings in a responsible and non-violent manner,” the lawsuit states.

Bondi's Attorney General July interview with Fox News suggested that Aaron was under investigation and had committed a crime. “We're looking at it, we're looking at it, and he better be careful because it's not protected speech,” Bondi said.

For legal experts, ICEBlock is the latest “annoying” example.

For First Amendment advocates, the White House pressure campaign against ICEBlock is the latest example of what is known as “brutality,” where government officials use government power to suppress speech. The Cato Institute calls this practice “censorship by proxy.”

ABC Jimmy Kimmel disqualification after FCC Chairman Brendan Carr threatened regulatory action and Bondi promised suppression of hate speech Following the murder of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, there are two more notable incidents.

“Using a high-level government threat to force a private platform to suppress speech fundamentally undermines the public’s right to access information about government activities,” said Spence Purnell, a resident senior fellow at R Street, a center-right think tank. “If senior officials can successfully silence political opposition, it will set a dangerous precedent for the future of free speech in this country.”

Genevieve Laquier, a First Amendment scholar at the University of Chicago Law School, said the White House campaign against ICEBlock shows the administration is using what has become a familiar playbook: “Use threats of adverse legal and financial consequences, sometimes vague, sometimes not so vague, to pressure universities, media companies, law firms, whatever, to keep them from speaking as they please,” she said.

However, one potential weakness in the lawsuit is the lack of direct evidence that Attorney General Bondi or other administration officials threatened Apple to remove the app, rather than simply convincing the tech company to do so.

“And government officials do not violate the First Amendment when they persuade private speech platforms to suppress speech because that speech poses a national security threat or is otherwise harmful,” Lakier said. “They only violate the First Amendment when they force or attempt to force a private platform to suppress speech.”

Since Apple has removed ICEBlock from its app store, it is now unavailable to download, but those who had it on their phones before the ban can still use it. Removing it from the app store prevents Aaron from sending updates to the app's software, which can eventually cause crashes.

Aaron said he hopes the lawsuit will lead to ICEBlock being reinstated in iPhone app stores and send a clear message to the Trump administration that it will be illegal to prosecute him for his role in developing the app.

Aaron said he and his legal team were “preparing for this fight,” adding that “we will go as far as necessary to ensure something like this never happens again.”