When most people think of immigration control, they imagine border crossings and airport checkpoints. But the new line of defense could be your social media feed.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) released a request for information for private sector contractors to implement a 24-hour social media monitoring program. The request indicates that private contractors will be paid to track “Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, VK, Flickr, Myspace,
The request for information seems like something out of a cyber thriller novel: dozens of analysts working in shifts, strict deadlines measured in minutes, a hierarchical system to prioritize high-risk people, and the most advanced software under constant surveillance.
I am a researcher studying the intersection between data governance, digital technologies, and the US federal government. I believe ICE’s request for information also signals a worrying, yet logical, next step in a long-term trend: moving the US border from the physical world to the digital one.
A new surveillance structure
ICE already conducts social media searches through a service called SocialNet that monitors most major online platforms. The agency also hired Zignal Labs for its artificial intelligence-based social media monitoring system.
Customs and Border Protection also reviews social media posts on some travelers’ devices at ports of entry, and the US State Department reviews social media posts when foreigners apply for visas to enter the United States.
What would change is not only the scale of monitoring, but its structure. Instead of government agents collecting evidence on a case-by-case basis, ICE is creating a loop of public-private surveillance that transforms everyday online activity into potential evidence.
Private companies would be hired to mine publicly available data and collect messages, including posts and other media and data. These companies could correlate those findings with data from commercial databases from vendors such as LexisNexis Accurint and Thomson Reuters CLEAR, as well as government databases. Analysts would have to prepare files for local ICE offices under very tight deadlines; sometimes only 30 minutes for a high priority case.
These files do not exist in isolation. They integrate directly into Palantir Technologies’ Investigative Case Management system, the digital backbone of modern immigration enforcement. There, this social media data would join a growing network of license plate scans, utility records, property data and biometric data, creating what is effectively a queryable profile of a person’s life.
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Who gets caught in the net?
Officially, ICE says its data collection will focus on people already linked to ongoing cases or potential threats. In practice, the net is much broader.
The danger is that by identifying a person, their friends, family, fellow organizers or acquaintances may also become the subject of scrutiny. Previous contracts for facial recognition and location tracking tools demonstrated how easily these systems expand beyond their original scope. What begins as a control measure can transform into surveillance of entire communities.
What ICE says and what history shows
ICE presents the project as a modernization: a way to identify a target’s location by recognizing aliases and detecting patterns that traditional methods might miss. Planning documents state that contractors cannot create fake profiles and must store all analyzes on ICE servers.
But history suggests that these types of security measures often fail. Investigations revealed how informal data sharing between local police and federal agents allowed ICE to access systems it was not authorized to access. The agency repeatedly purchased massive data sets from brokers to circumvent court order requirements. And despite the White House’s freeze on spyware acquisition, ICE quietly reactivated a contract with Paragon’s Graphite tool, software supposedly capable of infiltrating encrypted apps like WhatsApp and Signal.
Meanwhile, ICE’s ecosystem of providers continues to expand: Clearview AI for facial recognition, ShadowDragon’s SocialNet for network mapping, Babel Street’s Locate X location history service, and LexisNexis for people search. ICE is also acquiring tools from surveillance company PenLink that combine location data with social media data. Together, these platforms make continuous, automated monitoring not only possible, but routine.
The United States is not the only country that monitors social networks. In the United Kingdom, a new police unit tasked with analyzing online conversations about immigration and civil unrest has been criticized for blurring the line between public safety and political surveillance.
Around the world, spyware scandals have shown how legal access tools, initially justified for counter-terrorism, were later used against journalists and activists. Once these systems are in place, feature expansion, also known as goal stretching, becomes the norm.
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The social cost of surveillance
Continuous surveillance not only collects information, but also modifies behavior.
An investigation revealed that visits to Wikipedia articles on terrorism decreased dramatically following revelations about global surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA) in June 2013.
For immigrants and activists, the consequences are greater. A post about a protest or a joke can be reinterpreted as intelligence information. Knowing which federal contractors may be monitoring in real time encourages self-censorship and discourages citizen participation. In this environment, digital identity, composed of biometric markers, algorithmic classifications, risk scores and digital traces, becomes a risk that follows you across platforms and databases.
What’s new and why is it important now?
What is truly new is the privatization of interpretation. Not only does ICE collect more data, it outsources the judgment to private companies. Private analysts, with the help of artificial intelligence, are likely to decide which online behaviors indicate danger and which do not. This decision-making occurs quickly and among large numbers of people, largely without public oversight.
At the same time, data consolidation means that social media content can now coexist with location and biometric information on the Palantir platform. Law enforcement is increasingly done through data correlations, raising questions about due process.
ICE’s information request is likely to become a full procurement contract within months, and recent lawsuits filed by the League of Women Voters and the Electronic Privacy Clearinghouse against the Department of Homeland Security suggest that oversight is likely to lag far behind the technology. ICE’s plan to maintain permanent surveillance centers, open indoor spaces equipped with video and computer monitors, staffed 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, indicates that this is likely not a temporary experiment, but rather a new operating norm.
How is accountability manifested?
Transparency begins with public disclosure of the algorithms and scoring systems used by ICE. Organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) argue that law enforcement agencies should meet the same warrant standards online as they do in physical spaces. The Brennan Center for Justice and the ACLU argue that there should be independent oversight of surveillance systems to ensure their accuracy and avoid bias. Additionally, several US senators have introduced bills to limit bulk purchases from data brokers.
Without controls like these, I think the border between border control and everyday life will continue to blur. As the digital frontier expands, it risks trapping anyone whose online presence is readable by the system.
*Nicole M. Bennett is a PhD candidate in Geography and Deputy Director of the Center for Refugee Studies at Indiana University.
This text was originally published in The Conversation
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