ICE is building a social media panopticon

As Immigration and Customs Enforcement carries out raids across the country, the agency is working quickly to expand an online surveillance system that can track millions of users on the web. Federal records Detect by The crane It reveals that ICE is paying $5.7 million to use an AI-powered social media monitoring platform called Zignal Labs, which Will Owen, communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP), described as an “assault” on democracy and free speech.

The Real-Time Intelligence platform is capable of ingesting and analyzing massive amounts of publicly available data, such as social media posts, According to its website. in Publication shared by The craneZignal Labs says it uses machine learning, computer vision, and optical character recognition to analyze more than 8 billion posts daily in more than 100 languages. This allows it to process the data and sort it into “structured detection summaries” that ICE can use to flag individuals for deportation.

The brochure highlights Zignal’s ability to capture geotagged images and videos while providing alerts and information to “operators.” One example states that Zignal Labs used its technology to analyze a video on Telegram showing “the exact location of the ongoing operation in Gaza.” The company says its tool identifies logos and patches to “confirm participating operators,” allowing it to notify operators on the ground. This means that ICE can track someone’s location based on the location attached to a video posted on TikTok, or even a photo on Facebook.

ICE purchased Contracting with Zignal Labs through Carahsofta company that publishes IT solutions for government agencies. Zignal Labs more It recently entered into a partnership with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration To analyze weather events from public media sources and on the Internet. It also signed a contract with the US Secret Service in 2019, and works with the Ministries of Defense and Transportation, according to what Reuters reported. The crane. Edge She reached out to Zignal Labs to request more information about its contract with ICE but did not immediately receive a response.

Social media surveillance is nothing new. In 2016, the ACLU found that The police were using a CIA-backed tool Geofeedia is called to track police brutality protesters across Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. but With billions of dollars in fundingICE has the budget to use a range of social media monitoring tools that could lead to arrests and deportations across the country.

“With billions of dollars spent on spyware, it’s very alarming to think about the lengths ICE will go in monitoring social media,” Owen says. “Immigration and Customs Enforcement is a lawless agency that will use AI-driven social media surveillance to not only terrorize immigrant families, but also target activists who resist their abuses. This is an assault on our democracy and our right to free speech, powered by the algorithm and paid for with our tax dollars.”

Earlier this month, Report from Wired open ICE plans to hire approximately 30 workers to comb through content on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok,

A document seen before Wired It appears that ICE is requesting information from contractors who can help the agency implement this initiative, which may require workers to search for data on a target’s family members, friends or co-workers to determine their whereabouts to ICE officers. The document states that ICE will place about a dozen contractors at a monitoring facility in Vermont, while 16 employees will work in California, with some required to be available “at all times.”

says David Green, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation Edge Automated and AI-powered monitoring tools will give the government the ability to “monitor social media for views it doesn’t like on a scale that would never have been possible through human review alone.” “The scale of this spying is matched by a massive chilling effect on freedom of expression,” Green adds.

outside social media, 404 media Reports that ICE has It has been exploited in security cameras that scan license platesbesides I had access to a tool Which tracks the movement of millions of phones.

The Trump administration’s plans to monitor social media extend beyond ICE, to include Citizenship and Immigration Services Propose an initiative This may require people applying for US citizenship or personal residency to provide their social media accounts. In 2019, the State Department began requiring some visa applicants to list their social media handles on sites they have used within the past year, but the agency has expanded that to include Includes more types of nonimmigrant visas in June.

The US government has already begun searching social media for posts that do not align with the views of the Trump administration. And in March it started AI-powered “capture and cancel” initiative To track posts from student visa holders that appear to support Hamas or other designated terrorist organizations. Ministry of Foreign Affairs As announced earlier this month It canceled the visas of six people the US claimed “celebrated” the shooting of right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk. This week, Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested nine street vendors on New York City’s Canal Street shortly after a conservative influencer tagged ICE in a post showing vendors in the area.

But now, with a powerful AI-powered social media monitoring tool in the hands of ICE, the agency will no longer need influencers to report individuals for deportation — and speaking freely online will become more dangerous.

“This is another example of Big Tech CEOs partnering with an increasingly authoritarian federal government as part of Trump’s ongoing attempts to suppress free speech,” says Sasha Haworth, executive director of the Technology Oversight Project. Edge. “This should horrify and outrage every American.”