The U.S. Immigration and Customs Service (Ice) has built an extensive digital surveillance system that gives it access to the personal data of almost everyone in America, according to a two-year investigation by Georgetown University Law Center.
Researchers from the Center for Privacy and Technology on Tuesday released one of the most comprehensive reviews of Ice’s activities, concluding that the federal organization has deviated well beyond its obligations as an immigration authority to become what it is internal monitoring.
Working largely in secret and with minimal public oversight, Ice has amassed a vast arsenal of digital capabilities that allow its agents to “pull detailed files for just about anyone, seemingly at any time.”
The vast mountain of data that Ice now has access to includes:
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Driver’s data for three out of four adults living in the United States.
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Data from utilities registries of 75% of adults covering more than 218 million unique utility users in all 50 states.
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Information on the movement of drivers in cities that contain 75% of the US population.
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Face Detection Technology derived from driver’s license photos of at least one third of all adults.
Researchers in Georgetown base their report, American Dragnet: 21st Century Data-Driven Deportation, on hundreds of requests for freedom of information and a review of more than 100,000 unprecedented Ice transactions.
The documents reveal the extent to which the agency’s monitoring has expanded beyond sharing information with law enforcement to the use of an array of public and private databases.
The agency manages a vast network of information stored by state and local authorities, utilities, social media platforms and private data brokers. The end result is that Ice enjoys an almost universal range, as its intelligence is armed through the use of powerful algorithmic tools for searching and analyzing data.
Almost all of this activity, the report said, is carried out in the absence of orders and in secret, outside the reach of federal and state authorities.
The scale of the ice sighting shocked even the authors of the report.
“I was anxious to find out how easily federal immigration agents could retrieve detailed recordings from the most intimate corners of our lives,” Nina Wang, a political associate at the Center for Privacy and Technology and author of a report, told the Guardian.
She added: “In an attempt to target an increasing number of people for detention and deportation, Ice has reached the private homes and lives of almost everyone in America.”
Wang said the immigration agency now has unlimited ability to “track the movement of your vehicle on the road, search your address from your water or electricity bills, and conduct face-search searches on your identity photos without the need for search warrant.
“These tactics open huge side doors around existing privacy protections and many lawmakers still have no idea.
The ice was created in 2003, in the era of febriles after September 11. Initially, it focused on exploiting the intelligence-gathering potential of the criminal justice system by running a scheme known as S-Comm, in which digital fingerprint data is shared with it by federal, state and local law enforcement agencies.
Since then, Ice has increasingly resorted to databases compiled by law enforcement agencies as a way to expand its network. Researchers in Georgetown suggest that the motivation is partly to increase the number of deportations of undocumented people and partly as part of “greater pressure from the US government to gather as much information as possible for the rest of our lives.”
A review of the Ice Cost Center from 2008 to last year found that total investment in new surveillance infrastructure increased fivefold from about $ 71 million to $ 388 million. During that time, Ice spent more than $ 1.3 billion on geolocation technology, including contracts with private companies that have registration number scanning databases.
Another $ 96 million was spent on biometric data, mostly facial recognition databases; $ 97 million for private data brokers who collect data on individuals from a number of different sources, including more than 80 utility companies; and the staggering $ 569 million for data analysis just to be able to read the vast amounts of intelligence Ice now had.
Approximately $ 189 million was paid to Palantir Technologies, the technology company co-founded and chaired by Trump-backed billionaire Peter Thiel. The money went to specially designed programs created by Palantir to allow Ice agents to connect public and private databases so that, according to the center, they could “visualize an interconnected network of data extracted from almost any part of the world.” the life of the individual. “
Researchers found a highly inadequate response from federal and state authorities regarding privacy protection. Congress, for example, has not yet held a full hearing to oversee ice surveillance.
One of the most troubling aspects of the Ice Surveillance System is how it has been used to circumvent the controls imposed by cities and states and designed to protect communities from just that kind of intrusive search.
After many legislators introduced so-called “asylum” policies that prevented police forces from working with Ice agents to facilitate deportations, Ice simply circumvented the restrictions by finding other channels through which it could gain intelligence, including through DMV, private data brokers and utilities.
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