ICE Alert
Protect yourself with onchain ICE agent reports.
About
The problem it solves # ICE Alert > **Censorship-resistant, anonymous community reporting for ICE activity — powered by Hedera Consensus Service.** --- ## The Problem When communities need to warn each other about ICE enforcement activity, they rely on apps, social media, and group chats. But those platforms can be **taken down, pressured, or censored** — exactly when they're needed most. A centralized server can be seized. A social media account can be banned. A database can be wiped. **What if the data couldn't be deleted by anyone?** --- ## The Solution ICE Alert stores every report on the **Hedera Consensus Service (HCS)** — an immutable, decentralized ledger. Once a report is submitted, no government, company, or admin can remove it. Not even us. - No accounts. No logins. No tracking. - Reports are permanent, timestamped, and publicly verifiable. - The app can go offline. The data lives forever on Hedera. --- ## How It Works ``` User submits report → Next.js API → Hedera SDK → HCS Topic (immutable ledger) ↓ Map auto-refreshes ← Mirror Node API ``` 1. **Drop a pin** on the interactive map (or use your location) 2. **Choose a report type**: ICE Sighting or All Clear 3. **Submit anonymously** — transaction confirmed on Hedera in ~15 seconds 4. **Watch the map update** — all users see the new marker within 30 seconds --- ## Features | Feature | Description | |---|---| | **Interactive Map** | Live Leaflet map with color-coded markers (red = sighting, green = all clear) | | **Anonymous Reports** | Zero accounts, zero tracking, zero identifying data | | **All Clear Status** | Communities can mark areas as safe, not just flag danger | | **Real-time Sync** | Auto-refreshes every 30 seconds from the Hedera Mirror Node | | **Immutable Storage** | Reports on HCS cannot be edited, deleted, or censored | | **Stats Dashboard** | Live sighting vs. all-clear counts + recent reports list | Use of AI tools and agents --- ## Why Hedera? Most blockchains are too slow or expensive for high-frequency community reporting. Hedera Consensus Service gives us: - **~3–5 second finality** — fast enough for real-time alerts - **Extremely low fees** — fractions of a cent per message - **No mining / PoW** — energy efficient and predictable - **Immutability** — messages on an HCS topic cannot be altered The data layer is fully decentralized. The frontend is just a lens. --- ## Tech Stack | Layer | Technology | |---|---| | Frontend | Next.js 15 (App Router) + React 19 | | Language | TypeScript | | Blockchain | Hedera Hashgraph SDK v2 (HCS) | | Map | Leaflet + OpenStreetMap | | Data reads | Hedera Mirror Node REST API | | Deployment | Vercel-ready |
How it's made
Challenges we ran into ## Challenges - **Complete blockchain beginner** — had never touched Hedera or any SDK before this hackathon - **Private key format hell** — Hedera keys come in three formats (DER, ED25519, ECDSA); the SDK silently misparsed the wrong one, causing transactions to fail with no clear error - **Mirror Node decoding** — messages come back from Hedera base64-encoded; took a while to realize the data wasn't corrupted, just encoded - **The controversy** — ICE Alert is deliberately political. Not everyone will agree with what this tool is for. But that's exactly the point: censorship-resistance only matters when the speech is controversial. A tool that only protects popular speech isn't protecting anything.