TL;DR: 404 Media, the journalist-owned investigative outlet, turned their ICE surveillance reporting into a free 16-page zine. It covers facial recognition, neighborhood phone monitoring, license plate readers, and the full surveillance stack ICE uses. Download the PDF, print it, fold it, share it. Spanish version available. This is solid reporting in a format you can hand to someone who doesn't read tech news.
Download Links
The zine is available in three formats, all free:
- Full English PDF (62 MB), High resolution for printing
- Compressed English PDF (5 MB), Smaller file for digital reading
- Spanish Translation (5 MB), Human-translated, not machine
All versions are at 404media.co/icezine
What the Zine Covers
404 Media's reporters have spent months filing FOIA requests, reading court documents, and talking to sources about ICE's surveillance apparatus. This zine condenses that work into 16 pages covering:
Palantir's ImmigrationOS
The $30 million "all-in-one" platform that integrates driver's license scans, cell phone location data, air travel records, and social media monitoring into a single targeting system.
License Plate Readers
How ICE accesses networks like Flock Safety's 20+ billion license plate scans. Your car's movements tracked across cities, stored for years.
Facial Recognition
Mobile Fortify and other tools that let agents point a phone at your face and search databases of 1.2 billion images. No consent required.
Neighborhood Phone Monitoring
The ELITE system and tools that monitor all phones in a given area, watching who's at a particular address, when they arrive and leave.
The zine also covers phone-hacking malware (Paragon's Graphite spyware), social media surveillance contractors, and AI-powered smart glasses being tested by ICE agents.
Why a Zine?
Not everyone reads investigative journalism websites. Not everyone has time to parse a 3,000-word article about surveillance technology.
A zine is something you can print at home, fold into a pocket-sized booklet, and hand to someone at a community meeting, a church, a workplace, or a protest. It's journalism that travels.
404 Media's co-founder Jason Koebler explained the thinking: the reporting they've done on ICE surveillance is important, but it was scattered across dozens of articles. The zine brings it together in a format designed to be shared.
The physical zines sold out. They printed 1,000 copies initially for an LA benefit concert, then ran two more printings for a total of 3,500 copies. All gone. But the PDF is free forever.
Who Made It
The zine is a collaboration:
- 404 Media, The journalist-owned outlet founded by former Vice Motherboard reporters. They've broken major stories on ICE surveillance, including the Flock federal access scandal and the ELITE neighborhood monitoring tool.
- Ernie Smith, Layout design
- Veri Alvarez, Cover art
- Karina Richardson / Punch Kiss Press, Printed the physical copies on a 1990s riso printer in Los Angeles. Each copy was assembled and cut by hand.
The Spanish translation was done by human translators, funded partly by a subscriber donation. No machine translation.
How to Use It
Print and Fold
Download the full-resolution PDF. Print double-sided. Fold into a booklet. Instructions on the download page.
Share Digitally
Send the compressed PDF to group chats, email lists, community networks. The 5 MB version is phone-friendly.
Distribute Physically
Leave copies at community centers, libraries, churches, legal aid offices, anywhere people gather who might need this information.
Print at Scale
If you have access to a riso printer or print shop, 404 Media says they may share print files for bulk production. Email them.
Why This Matters
ICE's surveillance capabilities have exploded. They're not just tracking undocumented immigrants, they're filming protesters, running facial recognition on US citizens without consent, and monitoring entire neighborhoods through phone signals.
The technology moves faster than most people can follow. A zine won't stop deportations. But it can help communities understand what they're up against, which surveillance tools exist, how they work, and how data flows from your phone to an ICE database.
Knowledge is the first step toward protection.