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"ICE's attempt to have eyes and ears in as many places as we exist both online and offline should ring an alarm for all of us," said one campaigner.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to hire a contractor as part of an effort to expand the monitoring of negative social media posts about the agency, its personnel, and operations, according to a report published Monday.
According toThe Intercept's Sam Biddle, ICE is citing "an increase in threats" to agents and leadership as the reason for seeking a contractor to keep tabs on the public's social media activity.
The agency said the contractor "shall provide all necessary personnel, supervision, management, equipment, materials, and services, except for those provided by the government, in support of ICE's desire to protect ICE senior leaders, personnel, and facilities via internet-based threat mitigation and monitoring services."
"These efforts include conducting vulnerability assessments and proactive threat monitoring," ICE added, explaining that the contractor will be required to provide daily and monthly status reports and immediately alert supervisors of "imminent threats."
Careful what you post: ICE is seeking private contractors to conduct social media surveillance including detection of merely "negative" sentiment about the agency's leadership, agents, and general operations theintercept.com/2025/02/11/i...
[image or embed]
— Sam Biddle (@sambiddle.com) February 11, 2025 at 9:27 AM
ICE will require the monitor to identify and report "previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE," as well as any information indicating that individuals or groups "making threats have a proclivity for violence" and anything "indicating a potential for carrying out a threat."
According to Biddle:
It's unclear how exactly any contractor might sniff out someone's "proclivity for violence." The ICE document states only that the contractor will use "social and behavioral sciences" and "psychological profiles" to accomplish its automated threat detection.
Once flagged, the system will further scour a target's internet history and attempt to reveal their real-world position and offline identity. In addition to compiling personal information—such as the Social Security numbers and addresses of those whose posts are flagged—the contractor will also provide ICE with a "photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth, possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation, and any identified possible family members or associates."
The document also requests "facial recognition capabilities that could take a photograph of a subject and search the internet to find all relevant information associated with the subject." The contract contains specific directions for targets found in other countries, implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.
"Careful what you post," Biddle warned in a social media post promoting his article.
ICE is already monitoring social media posts via contractor Giant Oak, which was hired during the first Trump administration and former Democratic President Joe Biden's term. However, "the goal of this [new] contract, ostensibly, is focused more narrowly on threats to ICE leadership, agents, facilities, and operations," according to Biddle.
Cinthya Rodriguez, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Mijente, told Biddle that "the current administration's attempt to use this technology falls within the agency's larger history of mass surveillance, which includes gathering information from personal social media accounts and retaliating against immigrant activists."
"ICE's attempt to have eyes and ears in as many places as we exist both online and offline should ring an alarm for all of us," Rodriguez added.
The search for expanded ICE social media surveillance comes as President Donald Trump's administration is carrying out what the Republican leader has promised will be the biggest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been deporting migrants on military flights, with some deportees imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, the notorious offshore U.S. military prison in Cuba.
"This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA," said one ACLU leader. "Section 702 is long overdue for reform by Congress, and this opinion shows why."
"Better late than never."
That's how Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) surveillance litigation director Andrew Crocker and senior policy analyst Matthew Guariglia responded to a federal court ruling unsealed late Tuesday that found warrantless searches conducted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) violate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
Section 702 allows for warrantless spying on noncitizens abroad to acquire foreign intelligence information—but that also leads to the collection of Americans' communications. Abuse of the related database, particularly by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), has led privacy advocates including EFF to demand that Congress pass significant reforms.
The December decision from U.S. District Judge LaShann DeArcy Hall in the Eastern District of New York, unsealed earlier this week, stems from over a decade of litigation in United States v. Hasbajrami. Agron Hasbajrami was arrested at a New York City airport in 2011 and charged with attempting to provide material support to a terrorist group. The U.S. resident pleaded guilty, and after he was serving his sentence, the government revealed some evidence was obtained without a warrant thanks to Section 702.
In 2017, EFF and the ACLU filed an amicus brief arguing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that "Section 702 surveillance, including the surveillance of Mr. Hasbajrami here, lacks safeguards for Americans that the Constitution requires." In 2019, the appellate court "found that backdoor searches constitute 'separate Fourth Amendment events' and directed the district court to determine a warrant was required," Crocker and Guariglia explained Wednesday. "Now, that has been officially decreed."
Throughout the litigation, Congress has repeatedly reauthorized Section 702 on a bipartisan basis—most recently for two years last April, meaning it is unlikely to be debated on Capitol Hill again before next year. Still, pro-privacy campaigners and experts welcomed the district judge's recent ruling as a crucial victory and used it to renew calls for congressional action.
"This is a major constitutional ruling on one of the most abused provisions of FISA," Patrick Toomey, deputy director of ACLU's National Security Project, said in a Wednesday statement. "As the court recognized, the FBI's rampant digital searches of Americans are an immense invasion of privacy, and trigger the bedrock protections of the Fourth Amendment. Section 702 is long overdue for reform by Congress, and this opinion shows why."
Crocker and Guariglia argued that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court—which has primary judicial oversight of Section 702—should immediately "amend its rules for backdoor searches and require the FBI to seek a warrant before conducting them."
In the longer term, the EFF experts wrote, "we ask Congress to uphold its responsibility to protect civil rights and civil liberties by refusing to renew Section 702 absent a number of necessary reforms, including an official warrant requirement for querying U.S. persons data and increased transparency."
"On April 15, 2026, Section 702 is set to expire," they added. "We expect any lawmaker worthy of that title to listen to what this federal court is saying and create a legislative warrant requirement so that the intelligence community does not continue to trample on the constitutionally protected rights to private communications."
Although Hall's ruling was issued against the Biden administration, it was unsealed a day after Republican U.S. President Donald Trump returned to power—backed by narrow GOP majorities in both chambers of Congress. Patrick G. Eddington, a senior fellow in homeland security and civil liberties at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, wondered Wednesday, "Will the new Trump administration appeal the decision?"
"Attorney general nominee Pam Bondi testified under oath at her confirmation hearing that she supported the FISA Section 702 program, though the issue of warrantless 'backdoor' searches did not come up as I recall," Eddington noted.
Tulsi Gabbard, Trump's pick for director of national intelligence "has gone from FISA Section 702
opponent to supporter in record time," he added. "Assuming Gabbard gets a confirmation hearing, asking her about Hall's ruling should be the first question posed to her."
"AI tools have the potential to expand the NSA's surveillance dragnet more than ever before," the civil liberties group warned.
The ACLU on Thursday sued the National Security Agency in an effort to uncover how the federal body is integrating rapidly advancing artificial intelligence technology into its mass spying operations—information that the agency has kept under wraps despite the dire implications for civil liberties.
Filed in a federal court in New York, the lawsuit comes over a month after the ACLU submitted a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking details on the kinds of AI tools the NSA is using and whether it is taking any steps to prevent large-scale privacy abuses of the kind the agency is notorious for.
The ACLU said in its new complaint that the NSA and other federal agencies have yet to release "any responsive records, notwithstanding the FOIA's requirement that agencies respond to requests within twenty working days."
"Timely disclosure of the requested records [is] vitally necessary to an informed debate about the NSA's rapid deployment of novel AI systems in its surveillance activities and the safeguards for privacy, civil rights, and civil liberties that should apply," the complaint states, asking the court for an injunction requiring the NSA to immediately process the ACLU's FOIA request.
In a blog post on Thursday, the ACLU's Shaiba Rather and Patrick Toomey noted that AI "has transformed many of the NSA's daily operations" in recent years, with the agency utilizing AI tools to "help gather information on foreign governments, augment human language processing, comb through networks for cybersecurity threats, and even monitor its own analysts as they do their jobs."
"Unfortunately, that's about all we know," the pair wrote. "As the NSA integrates AI into some of its most profound decisions, it's left us in the dark about how it uses AI and what safeguards, if any, are in place to protect everyday Americans and others around the globe whose privacy hangs in the balance."
"That's why we're suing to find out what the NSA is hiding," they added.
BREAKING: We just filed a FOIA lawsuit to find out how the NSA — one of America's biggest spy agencies — is using artificial intelligence.
These are dangerous, powerful tools and the public deserves to know how the government is using them.
— ACLU (@ACLU) April 25, 2024
The ACLU filed its lawsuit less than a week after Congress approved a massive expansion of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), warrantless spying authority that the NSA has heavily abused to sweep up the communications of American journalists, activists, and lawmakers.
With their newly broadened authority, the NSA and other intelligence agencies will have the power to enlist a wide range of businesses and individuals to participate in their warrantless spying operations—a potential catastrophe for privacy rights.
Rather and Toomey warned Thursday that the growing, secretive use of artificial intelligence tools has "the potential to expand the NSA's surveillance dragnet more than ever before, expose private facts about our lives through vast data-mining activities, and automate decisions that once relied on human expertise and judgment."
"The government's lack of transparency is especially concerning given the dangers that AI systems pose for people's civil rights and civil liberties," Rather and Toomey wrote. "As we've already seen in areas like law enforcement and employment, using algorithmic systems to gather and analyze intelligence can compound privacy intrusions and perpetuate discrimination."