Working With The Private Sector And Hundreds Of Law Enforcement Agencies, ICE Has Assembled A Massive Surveillance Network
from the and-it's-using-it-to-eject-law-abiding-immigrants-as-quickly-as-possible dept
The New York Times has published a lengthy report on ICE's surveillance network it uses to hunt down undocumented immigrants all over the country. The report is based on the results of public records requests, which show ICE's ability to utilize social media networks, dozens of law enforcement databases, and a bunch of private sector options to find the people they're looking for.
This public records investigation mainly focuses on ICE's operations in the Pacific Northwest. The documentation used to compile it includes recordings of phone calls to local law enforcement agencies and interviews with detainees. Together, the hundreds of documents show ICE's breathtaking reach.
[P]ublic records make clear that ICE, like other federal agencies, sucks up terabytes of information from hundreds of disparate computer systems, from state and local governments, from private data brokers and from social networks. It piggybacks on software and sharing agreements originally meant for criminal and counterterrorism investigators, fusing little bits of stray information together into dossiers. The work is regulated by only a set of outdated privacy laws and the limits of the technology.
What the New York Times has obtained only shows part of ICE's operational reach. It includes surveillance of detainees' phone calls from ICE facilities, as well as information compiled from sources both public and private, like DMV databases and data analytics companies like Thomson Reuters.
These efforts began during the Obama administration, which still holds the record for most immigrants removed from the United States in a single year. Of course, this big bump in deportations was a bit of a dodge. For the first time, ICE and CBP began counting migrants whose attempts to cross the borders had failed as being "formally removed," which resulted in an impressive spike in formal removals.
ICE's priorities have shifted under President Trump. Rather than search for the "worst of the worst" -- as the administration claims to be doing -- border agencies are again engaged in numbers games. ICE will now go after anyone, reviving the practice of workplace raids to detain and remove immigrants who are gainfully employed -- something the "worst of the worst" rarely are. Obama shifted ICE away from breaking up families and detaining children, but that's back in play again under an administration that treats every immigration violation as a criminal act, even if some are just civil violations.
The rise in data brokers selling tech and data to the government has resulted in a golden era of third-party surveillance. This has been coupled with the federal government's ongoing efforts to de-silo surveillance efforts to encourage "information sharing." Sounds good in principle, but in execution it means ICE can look at almost anything it wants to, no matter what government agencies holds the data.
Under Obama, the agency signed several key data and analytics contracts that have since drawn controversy, including with Thomson Reuters, the Silicon Valley firm Palantir and the Beltway start-up Giant Oak, and it relied ever more on local-federal data-sharing initiatives that flourished after Sept. 11. Information that was once siloed or tedious to access — driver’s-license photos, phone records, jail bookings — was increasingly at deportation officers’ fingertips.
Even with this wealth of information at their fingertips, the supposedly undermanned agency still lets officers troll for deportees. What should be resulting in streamlined searches for the "worst of the worst" is instead officers just driving around, hoping to find someone they can take into custody. Deportation officers are running nearly 10,000 searches a month against Seattle's Department of Licensing DAPS (Driver and Plate System) database. The public records turned over to the New York Times shows modern day stakeouts still involve a lot of sitting around, but the officers involved don't really seem to have a target.
Officers Miller and Dietz, whose beat also includes parts of Oregon — which DAPS doesn’t cover — used the system regularly in 2017. Together they searched it 4,542 times. They searched it 67 times in the 24 hours before Gladys Díaz was arrested. Roughly half of their searches in 2017 were for names, not plates, implying that they already knew whom they were looking for and simply needed an address or other information. But many days, perhaps the days the officers sat at the side of the road and watched traffic pass, perhaps the days they cruised parking lots outside restaurants or seafood processors or apartment buildings, perhaps the days they saw drivers they decided looked foreign, the searches followed the telltale pattern of a fishing expedition: plate, plate, plate, plate, plate, plate, plate, plate.
This sort of thing is no longer necessary. ICE now works (indirectly) with Vigilant, utilizing its massive license plate database to peruse five years of plate/location data, allowing officers to easily identify probable residences and places of employment, as well as other places their targets spend their time, like the places they worship or the schools they attend.
Of additional interest to ICE is the growing number of facial recognition options at its disposal. When ICE can't find what it needs in federal biometric databases, it just asks local law enforcement to take a look at their own records on ICE's behalf.
But the surveillance doesn't end there. ICE is still trying to get an automated social media vetting program off the ground. It's shelling out federal dollars to analytics companies and buffing up its underlying infrastructure to ensure officers have the connection speed and processing power to take advantage of the agency's multiple data firehoses.
And the surveillance continues even after immigrants are in custody. ICE personnel enter answers obtained during questioning into a database that churns out recommendations for bond amount and other supervision requirements. Phone calls from detention facility phones are recorded and logged and information obtained here feeds either the risk assessment database or fuels more ICE investigations.
But the greatest gift to ICE's surveillance is the work of the private sector. Since it's not subject to federal privacy regulations, ICE has access to a wealth of information about millions of immigrants… and US citizens.
A key benefit of [Thomson Reuter's] CLEAR, even after Trump’s 2017 executive order exempted most foreign visitors and immigrants from the Privacy Act, is that it isn’t restricted by protections on what data the government can collect or keep — because it isn’t government-owned. It has real-time access to address and name-change data from credit reports and to motor-vehicle registrations in 43 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. Its utility records, which come from more than 80 electric, gas, water, telephone, cable and satellite television companies nationwide, are updated daily, making it hard for immigrant families — or anyone else — to move into a new home without detection.
Obviously, the government doesn't have the money or manpower to amass all of this itself. But contracts with private companies are somehow exempted from privacy regulations that prevent government agencies from collecting this data for themselves. Nothing restricts this data-gathering on the private side and all the government needs to do to work around its own restrictions is outsource the collection and pay only for access. ICE seems to be a bit spoiled and it shows in its work. It no longer feels the need to make the nation more secure by ejecting hardened criminals with lengthy rap sheets. Instead, it's using this embarassment of data riches to eject anyone it stumbles across while surfing its multi-laned informational highway.
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Filed Under: ice, immigration, social media, surveillance
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I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
I hope that, one day, we think of the private companies collaborating with ICE (and DHS, natch) in the same way we think of companies who collaborated with the Nazis.
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Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
You mean companies like Ford, Volkswagen, Versace, and Hugo Boss?
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Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
Don't forget IBM.
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Re: Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
How could I forget IBM. And Bayer, too. They were directly involved in the Holocaust.
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Re: Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
And Coke..
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Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
Don't forget IBM!
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Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
Godwin's been pretty clear that he thinks comparing our current treatment of immigrants to 1930s Germany's treatment of Jews is entirely appropriate.
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Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
The old system was almost entirely de-facto open borders because we didn't really enforce border law in any significant way except for on people who voluntarily entered in a legal fashion. We do need to find a better 'happy' medium though.
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Re: Re: Re: I’ll get the Godwinning out of the way.
"The old system was almost entirely de-facto open borders"
When was that, what has changed and when did that happen?
I'm sure we did not care about our borders during WWII did we?
And about those people who voluntarily entered ... ever read what we did to the American citizens of Japanese descent? Their internment was in a legal fashion wasn't it?
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Re:
You might want to read a history book or two before you put your ignorance on proud display, again.
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Re: Re:
I know your type... You would have let the concentration camp guards go home!!!
ROMA'S DESERVE JUSTICE TOO
(I have never got into a godwin argument before it's actually somewhat fun)
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Re: Re: Re:
No, Roma's aren't one of the "special" groups.
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
Roma's == gypsies without calling them a racist name
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Re: Re: Re: Re:
If I start screeching holocaust denial is that too far even for Godwin?
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and, of course, the USA is not a Police State! yeah, right!!
i seem to remember reading where Bin Laden reckoned that terrorist organizations wouldn't have to do much at all as the various countries own security services would be doing all the deeds needed to make citizens feel terrorized. seems he wasn't far wrong! and with almost no oversight or consequences against those performing these deeds, it's only gonna get worse! it makes me wonder whether fighting WWII was worth it (apart from saving the Jews, obviously). the end game seems to be as was wanted anyway!
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Makes sense for a federal agency with limited resources that is already used to piggybacking off of a lot of other departments. Developing their own networks and databases would be expensive duplication of work that is already being done.
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Re:
It only makes sense if you are building a fascist state, as it integrates companies with the state. Do you really want the state to have access to every record created when you interact with a company? Especially as such access is only useful for ICE purposes if they can search without a warrant.
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Re: Re:
No, it also makes sense if you work for one of these agencies or companies. It doesn't take actual fascists, or a grand conspiracy, just regular people doing their jobs and being paid/motivated to believe in the company/agency's mission.
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Re: Re: Re:
The problem is that they AREN'T really doing their jobs, and they are not really supporting the agency's mission either. They're doing a much lazier task that just externally looks similar to doing their job. And they've probably been doing that long enough that even those at the top don't remember what their actual job was supposed to be.
Actually doing their job would require balancing the enforcement actions against the privacy and civil rights concerns, and obeying the spirit of the law rather than finding loopholes. They clearly aren't bothering with that part.
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Dont forget the zionists/Judenrate
IBM punch cards and corporations controlled by zionists are so minor compared to what they (the Zuckerberg/Bezos cabal) have planned this time around.
I mean, whoever “they” are.....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
Signed-
Das Judenrate High Councillor
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Re: I think I speak for almost all of us here
Fuck off nazi scum.
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So much for going dark.
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Re:
Its only "dark" in one tiny, insignificant corner of the warehouse full of every other bit of information about the American public. But it's the last piece of their puzzle in completing a picture of 100% coverage so obviously that's where they'll focus their efforts. No matter how wrong or illegal all of this is.
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Always wondered how the USA gov.
Can track/trace the internet so very well..
That we can tell you which nation has hit our country and the location they hit very quickly..
With a bit of understanding of the old web, where you could direct your connection almost ANY way you wanted to travel, and the USE of VPN, and faking your connection data..
Topic...
Who is really getting all the Online access and data dumps.. Hacking sites. What use is that Data..and to whom?
Once you start getting abit paranoid, and understand alittle tech/software.. There are only a few groups that want this data.
Consider the hit on Sony in Brazil, Terabytes of data. no one will tell you what it was. I could give you a list of hundreds of hit around the nation, into Many services/business/Medical facilities..And 1 large credit agency.
For all the personal Data lost and wondering around, its a great deal for a company to SELL the Personal data to other corps, spammers, and those FUN phone calls we get all day long.
But what about a security agency wanting this data? Hacking ourselves. I dont even think the IRS has a list of everyone, only the workers. Ya, this is a theory. but why all the hits on all the facilities in the USA..
Credit card info? If these companies that GOT HIT, would share they got hit, we could Turn off all those cards.. but they HATE to tell us. Has there been any major Credit card hits?? aint heard anything.
Fake ID?? Stolen ID...with all the data lost, you would think they would/could make a TON of fake ID.. nothing heard.
Who wants all this data?
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And this is why undocumented immigrants cost the government so much money.
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