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Podcast: Privacy Under Pressure (With Harlo Holmes)


Harlo and Sam discuss the important privacy and security work she does every day alongside and for journalists, and why it’s only becoming more crucial.

In this week’s interview, Sam is joined by Harlo Holmes. Harlo is the Chief Security Programs Officer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. She’s a media scholar, software programmer, and activist.

Harlo and Sam discuss the important work she does every day, and why it’s only becoming more crucial. They also get into how to fight back against privacy nihilism, digital security practices everyone can be implementing regardless of their threat model, and the recent arrests and raids of journalists in the U.S.
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Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you’re a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.
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404 Media and Freedom of the Press Foundation Sue DHS


Last week Freedom of the Press Foundation and 404 Media filed a lawsuit against the multiple parts of the U.S. government demanding they hand over a copy of an agreement that shares the personal data of nearly 80 million Medicaid patients with ICE. The data sharing marked a watershed moment for ICE and its access to highly sensitive data that is ordinarily siloed off from the agency. We believe it’s important for the public to see this unprecedented data sharing agreement for themselves.

As the Associated Press wrote when it first reported on the data sharing agreement between the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), the agreement will give ICE the ability to find “the location of aliens.” The data shared includes home addresses and ethnicities, according to the Associated Press.

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Do you know anything else about this data sharing agreement? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

Both Freedom of the Press Foundation and 404 Media filed similar Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests with DHS and CMS seeking a copy of the agreement. Neither agency provided the requested records in time, so we have now filed the lawsuit. In 404 Media’s case, CMS acknowledged the request but has not provided the records, and DHS did not even acknowledge the request at all.

404 Media’s request asked for a copy of the specific agreement, and if the agencies were unable to locate it, to alternatively provide copies of all agreements between DHS and CMS from this year.

“Despite having received the FOIA requests, and despite their obligations under the law, Defendants have failed to notify Plaintiffs of the scope of documents that they will produce or the scope of documents that they plan to withhold in response to the FOIA requests,” the lawsuit reads.
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Freedom of the Press Foundation is a non-profit organization that monitors press freedom issues in the U.S. and trains journalists on how to keep themselves and their sources safe. It regularly sues the U.S. government for access to records.

The data sharing agreement is just one of a growing list of ways that ICE is sourcing highly sensitive, and sometimes legally protected, information as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort. ProPublica reported on the vast system the IRS is building to share millions of taxpayers’ data with ICE. 404 Media previously reported ICE has gained access to ISO Claimsearch, a massive insurance and medical bill database to find deportation targets. The database is nearly all encompassing and contains details on more than 1.8 billion insurance claims and 58 million medical bills.

Separately, 404 Media filed a lawsuit against ICE in September for access to the agency’s $2 million spyware contract.

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