'Masked Engagement': Leaked Docs Reveal DHS Infiltrating Private Online Spaces

US Department of Homeland Security agents are increasingly infiltrating social media platforms to monitor users, collect intelligence, and target people, according to new reporting based on leaked documents.

Ken Klippenstein exposed the open source monitoring program, which DHS calls "masked engagement," with new reporting Thursday that details how agents "assume false identities and interact with users—friending them, joining closed groups, and gaining access to otherwise private postings, photographs, friend lists, and more."

"A senior [DHS] official tells me that over 6,500 field agents and intelligence operatives can use the new tool, a significant increase explicitly linked to more intense monitoring of American citizens," Klippenstein wrote.

The so-called "masked engagement" by DHS operatives online comes as actual masked federal agents are engaged in the Trump administration's deadly deployments in communities nationwide.

Masked engagement adds a new level to DHS' open source intelligence (OSINT) collection regime, which previously consisted of overt engagement, overt research, overt monitoring, masked monitoring, and undercover engagement. Masked engagement, in which agents conceal their government affiliation without assuming a false identity while interacting with a target, is a step below undercover engagement, in which DHS operatives use false identities and cover stories.

According to Klippenstein:

Masked monitoring allows officers at agencies like [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] and Border Patrol to use alias accounts to passively observe public online activity. Crucially, this level of monitoring bars DHS representatives from interacting with other users directly. Under masked monitoring, officers are not allowed to ask an admin for entry into a private group or to “friend” a target to see non-public posts.

But with masked engagement (separate from masked monitoring), that firewall has now been dismantled. The only restriction imposed on masked engagement is that DHS officers [note] the threshold of “substantive engagement”—a term the rules leave conveniently ill-defined.

"By labeling this a 'middle ground' between monitoring and full-blown undercover work, the DHS allows agents to infiltrate private digital spaces without the rigorous internal approvals and legal checks required for a formal undercover 'sting,'" Klippenstein explained.

Sources told Klippenstein that DHS has been using masked engagement tactics to infiltrate pro-Palestine groups in the United States and to compile databases of suspected Mexican and Mexican American transnational criminals.

“Open source monitoring has become so ubiquitous that we even have databases of identities used by the department to track our own online engagements,” the senior DHS official said.

“Yes, we have safeguards against violating people’s privacy, but masked engagement is just the first step in breaching people’s privacy settings in ways that they are not even aware of," they added.

Rachel Levinson-Waldman, director of the Brennan Center for Justice's Liberty and National Security Program, told Klippenstein that “CBP’s expansion into what they’re calling ‘masked engagement’ is cause for real concern."

“This new capability is being shoehorned in one step below undercover engagement (which already allows for a lot of overreach), it appears CBP believes that friending someone, following them, or joining a group is not as invasive as directly engaging or interacting with individuals," she continued.

“In addition, doing so through an alias account—an account that doesn’t reveal the user’s CBP affiliation, and pretends to be someone else—will weaken trust in government and weaken the trust that is critical to building community both online and off,” Levinson-Waldman added.

A DHS spokesperson told Klippenstein that the agency "has utilized its congressionally directed undercover authorities to root out child molesters and predators for years."

“We will continue using every tool at our disposal to protect the American people as our agents and officers Make America Safe Again," they added.

Those tools include an error-plagued mobile facial recognition application, mass phone surveillance technology, data broker platforms that allow operatives to circumvent warrant requirements, forensic extraction to bypass phone locks, artificial intelligence and predictive analytics, and more.

Civil liberties groups, digital rights advocates, and some Democratic lawmakers are pushing back.

Last week, Sens. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) introduced the ICE Out of Our Faces Act, legislation that would ban ICE and Customs and Border Protection "from acquiring and using facial recognition technology and other biometric identification systems."

The bill would "also require the deletion of all data collected for use in or by biometric identification systems and allow individuals and state attorneys general to seek civil penalties for violations."