Title: How ICE is Using Surveillance Technology

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Brigid Bergin: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. I'm Brigid Bergin, senior reporter in the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, sitting in for Brian today. We had a discussion on the show the other day about why ICE agents are allowed to be masked. By covering their faces, they can shield their identities from civilians when they act outside the bounds of the law, but on the other side of this conversation about whether these agents should have a right to privacy is the question of whether civilians are entitled to privacy.

According to a new zine from the tech outlet 404 Media, the answer is not really. The Trump administration has been moving swiftly to empower ICE's growing surveillance apparatus, enlisting the help of private tech companies to gather an enormous amount of data on private civilians, immigrants, and non-immigrants alike. ICE has access to databases where they can filter for personal information that they've gathered, like the appearance of scars and tattoos, license plate numbers, and resident status. Trump also signed an executive order allowing agencies to share the data that's ordinarily kept within one agency.

That's a pretty significant change with some sweeping implications, particularly for people who are paying taxes and sending their kids to public schools under the promise that the information would be siloed. Joining us now to discuss his recent investigations into ICE's use of surveillance technology is Jason Koebler, a cofounder of 404 Media. Jason, welcome to WNYC.

Jason Koebler: Hey, thank you so much for having me.

Brigid Bergin: Jason, the news outlet you cofounded, where you published this zine, 404 Media, is really a tech outlet, but a majority of your recent reporting has been focused on ICE. Tell me how you fell into this beat and why it's really been dominating your recent coverage.

Jason Koebler: I've been writing about surveillance and privacy for about a decade now and have focused a lot on commercial companies and the capabilities that they've built. We've seen over the last year and a half, as ICE's funding has really exploded, they have started buying a lot of toys, and so basically, my reporting on commercial surveillance has intersected with this government surveillance as ICE has entered into contracts with companies like Palantir and Clearview AI, which is a facial recognition company. I believe that the ICE story is the most important thing happening in our country right now. That's why we've focused on it so much.

Brigid Bergin: Well, your reporting has broken a lot of new information about ICE's surveillance technology tactics. I want to dig into some of the details. Let's talk about Immigration OS. This is a surveillance tool built by the company Palantir, which ICE uses to track people's movements, among other things. Can you tell me about the scope of Palantir's data collection and how ICE is using it to track people down?

Jason Koebler: Yes. Unfortunately, Immigration OS is kind of difficult to say exactly what it is. What I mean by that is Palantir offers a variety of data analysis tools to federal government and specifically to ICE. In the early days of the Trump administration, they entered into a contract to build something called Immigration OS. What this does is it collects information from across the government. This can include IRS data. It can include information like biometric data from border entries, things like this, and it makes it a lot easier to search.

We've reported specifically on one tool called ELITE, which is a piece of software that combines a lot of this information and then combines it with address information. We know that in Minneapolis, for example, in places like Oregon as well, ICE has been using this database to search for the addresses of suspected undocumented immigrants. It gives what's called, like, a confidence score as to whether the person is perhaps undocumented and also whether that address is current.

We also reported on a database called Investigative Case Management, which is something that started under the Obama administration and had some privacy protections at that time, but since the Trump administration has taken over, a lot of those have-- sort of guardrails have come off. This combines information like a person's immigration status, "unique" physical characteristics, which can include scars, marks, tattoos, any suspected criminal affiliation, their hair and eye color, their Social Security number, things like this. It's really quite a lot of data from across the government that is being parsed by Palantir and by what we have broadly been calling Immigration OS.

Brigid Bergin: Wow. Now, would you say that, the information that they're parsing here, is this mainly targeted towards suspected immigrants or likely are citizens, everyone in some capacity, part of this data?

Jason Koebler: Well, citizens are part of this data. It's people who interact with the border. When you enter the country and your face is scanned by DHS, like at the border, that goes into a database. Things like IRS data is part of some of these databases. Then what we've seen is some of the other tools, there's a tool called Mobile Fortify, which is a facial recognition app that takes some of this data and is put onto a cell phone.

We've seen ICE sticking phones in people's faces and scanning their data. That has been used against US citizens in some cases. While a lot of these tools are designed or at least theoretically are supposed to be used against undocumented immigrants, there's been many cases where American citizens are swept up in that data. I think, more broadly, a lot of these tools are very mass surveillance type tools where necessarily anyone who exists in society is going to interact with them.

Brigid Bergin: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Are you concerned about ICE's data collection tactics? Have you taken any measures to protect your privacy or data and have any advice for how others can do the same? Or maybe you don't mind that they're collecting this kind of data and trust they'll use it for the right reasons. If that's true, tell us why. Also, do you have any questions for our guest about ICE's data collection tactics towards citizens and noncitizens alike, or any questions about how the data is being used?

You can call or text with your questions or your stories. The number is 212-433-WNYC. That's 212-433-9692. Jason, I wonder if you can tell me a little bit more about this facial recognition app, Mobile Fortify. You explain in the piece that for a long time the idea of using widespread facial recognition technology that could identify strangers and pull data about them crossed some sort of line. Even Meta and Google have refused to release those kinds of tools. What's changed? How is the Trump administration able to cross this line?

Jason Koebler: I think the line never really actually existed, as in, like you said, Amazon had a facial recognition tool that it pitched to police. There was some backlash against it during the Obama years, and they stopped working with police. There's been this idea that police maybe shouldn't be using facial recognition, especially in real time, on people who are just out living their lives.

That has changed slowly over the years. I mean, there's widespread facial recognition in some stores in airports, places like this, but we've really seen this take off in the last few months with this Mobile Fortify app, it is an app that is connected to biometric data that is taken from the border when you enter the country. It is literally just a smartphone app, where ICE opens it up, it looks like a camera, they stick it in your face, and it returns a suspected match for that person.

I think what's really concerning here is that, one, you have somewhat random use of facial recognition technology in the interior of the country while people are just out living their lives, but you also have-- this is a technology that is not particularly accurate. There's been many instances of police facial recognition technology misidentifying people. We were able to show, that there was one case where Mobile Fortify was used against a woman, and it returned two different people for that woman. Like they basically used it twice and it showed two different people, and neither one of them was her.

Brigid Bergin: Wow.

Jason Koebler: This is now part of a court case, that's kind of winding its way through the courts. This is technology that is being widely deployed, but we don't really know much about its accuracy rates. We don't know how it's being used to detain people. It's quite concerning.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to John in Westfield, New Jersey. John, you're on WNYC.

John: Thank you for having me on the show. I want to say thank you to your guest, 404 Media does excellent reporting. I really appreciate all the stuff you've been doing in hyperscale data centers in relation to GenAI, so first of all, thank you for your reporting. What I wanted to ask is, I work in technology, and there's a growing movement amongst personal data advocates to give individuals their own terms and conditions in a way that can have an algorithmic or an agentic level sort of way that they can say, "These are my terms and conditions."

Is that something you think might make sense with regards to surveillance? Of course, people's terms don't have to be honored, but the logic is they can at least be offered, if that makes sense.

Jason Koebler: I think that's a really interesting idea. I think that a lot of the ways that surveillance works in the United States right now is that commercial companies are collecting it, whether it's through your phone, whether it's apps that you use on your phone, or just like when you interact with society and go out into the real world and you're passively surveilled.

I think a lot of times we "give permission" to be surveilled by agreeing to terms of services that no one reads because they're super long, and you can't really use a phone or interact with society if you don't agree to them, and so I think it's a good idea. I think that so much of this surveillance is happening very passively as we just move through our lives, that I'm not sure exactly how that would be honored. I think our privacy laws and regulations are very outdated at this point. I think that we do need to look at how we protect people's data.

Brigid Bergin: I want to go to Paul in Brooklyn. Paul, you're on WNYC.

Paul: Hi. What I'm concerned about is that this surveillance that ICE is using on immigrants is just being fine-tuned, and eventually, it's going to be turned against American people. It's a small step to go from how they're using it here to just switching to the general population. If you have an administration like Trump that's very vindictive, they want to know everybody who is not happy with them and then use this kind of tool to silence people and go after them, as they've been doing in general.

Brigid Bergin: Paul, thanks so much.

Jason Koebler: I think that's absolutely correct. We've already seen instances where some of this technology is used against people who protested against ICE. Then more broadly, you have the proliferation of, again, commercial surveillance technologies that used to be a lot more siloed. What I mean by that is maybe an individual town would buy a surveillance system and the local police would use that specific surveillance system, but when you think about things like license plate readers which take photos of cars as they drive by, a lot of these are now networked between cities and between towns.

The surveillance is being automated with the use of AI. It's being added into these big searchable databases that police very rarely get warrants to use because it's often considered commercial data that they can just buy access to. We've seen that it is being used against American citizens. It is being used against people in non-immigration contexts. I think what's happening in immigration enforcement right now is that so many different types of surveillance are all being combined that it is showing this dystopian nightmare where you can get pulled into this, really horrible surveillance dragnet.

Brigid Bergin: I want to sneak in one more caller. Arthur in Queens, I think, has a question about facial recognition software. Arthur, you're on WNYC.

Arthur: Yes, good morning. Thank you for taking my call. My question was, I wasn't too sure, but I heard sometimes facial recognition is incorrect on Black people or darker skin tones or whatever. That's really the question. I'll get off and see if you can answer it or not. Thank you for taking my call.

Jason Koebler: That's absolutely correct. There's been a lot of academic studies that show that facial recognition technology is less accurate against people of color and specifically against Black men. I did some reporting a few years ago about a facial recognition program in Detroit where the accuracy rates were horrendous, not what you would want or expect for something that is so consequential to someone's life.

There's been multiple--, specifically Black men in Detroit who have been misidentified by facial recognition tools, falsely arrested, and then sued the police department. It's a tricky thing, because I think that if I were in charge, I wouldn't want to use the technology at all, but the way that it is being used is disproportionately less accurate against people of color.

Brigid Bergin: Jason, you reported on several other companies that ICE has enlisted to help expand its surveillance operations. There's ShadowDragon, which monitors social network activity. Paragon, a company that sells hacking tools that can break into cell phones and pull really private information like WhatsApp or Signal messages. There's also the facial recognition app we've been talking about. Can you tell me about the relationship between these different companies and the data they're collecting? Do we know whether the Trump administration is compiling all this disparate information into one-- some kind of mega database, or is this what Immigration OS is already doing?

Jason Koebler: There's been a lot of talk and a lot of-- There's been reporting about the idea of a master database. We don't have enough reporting to say whether something like that is being built. I think that it is true that there's just, like, if you can imagine a type of surveillance, ICE is trying to do it right now. Like they are entering into new contracts with new companies to do new types of surveillance, seemingly on a weekly basis at this point.

That's, honestly, how we do a lot of our reporting, is just follow procurement records and then file public records requests and talk to people on the ground about how they're seeing this stuff show up. I think right now, I said this earlier, but I think that ICE has bought a lot of new toys. It's like these are new technologies that they are seeing which ones work, I guess, or which ones they like using and which ones they don't.

I can't really speak to whether this information is being combined into anything that could be considered like a master database, but it is true that, when we do see people arrested and court cases, very often multiple types of these surveillance technologies show up in the court records, and so a lot of it, I would say, is being cross-referenced in specific cases, at the very least.

Brigid Bergin: We have a listener who texted, "What do you do if your phone is misbehaving when you use certain platforms, and you suspect maybe there's some secret malware on your phone." Is that something you can speak to?

Jason Koebler: I think it depends on what your phone is doing, but we actually did just report on the Washington Post reporter whose phone was seized as part of an FBI investigation, I believe. A really interesting thing is that she put her phone on lockdown mode, is what it's called, it's an Apple iPhone feature. You need to look up how to put it on, but basically, you hold a couple buttons, and it makes it harder for-- it basically locks down the phone in a much more secure way than it typically is.

In this court case, we're learning that the FBI can't get any information off of that phone. That's kind of interesting. I think other general tips are, just keep your software updated, really take a hard look before you do things like enable location services on your phone for specific apps. Yes, I don't know, if you suspect your phone has been hacked, I think that's a little bit above my pay grade, but yes.

Brigid Bergin: Well, I'm wondering, Jason, as you're talking, I think, about some of the built-in apps that we use. The Apple operating system has an option where you can do facial recognition to unlock your phone. That has always made me personally nervous because I don't know what Apple's doing with that data. Is there reason to be nervous about using that kind of tool given the scenarios that you've laid out about how these tools are advancing?

Jason Koebler: I think it's natural to see these technologies existing and being used and wanting to be extremely careful and possibly even paranoid about how you interact in the real world and what technologies you use. I think that part of the problem with surveillance is that it's designed to scare people. It's designed to make people think that the federal government is all-knowing.

That's something that I grapple with a lot both in my real life as well as my reporting, because we want to inform people that this technology is being used and that it exists, but at the same time, I think one of the worst things that someone could do is to say, "Well, I'm going to stay inside my house and not use any technology." I do think that you need to be careful.

I think that when it comes to things like Face ID, you need to consider your threat model, which is basically your likelihood of either being hacked or being surveilled or interacting with the federal government. In this case, that Washington Post reporter I mentioned had turned off Face ID to enter her phone. That was actually a very important move because the warrant that the feds had in that case allowed them to essentially try to force her to use her biometric, her face, to unlock the phone.

What she did was she turned it off, and she had a very strong password, which is a lot harder to get in. I believe she was not compelled to give her password, and so if you do think that you're very at risk, if you're going to protests, if you're an activist, if you're a journalist, if you are an undocumented immigrant, you might want to turn off something like Face ID, but at the same time, I wouldn't recommend becoming a shut in, if that makes sense.

Brigid Bergin: Sure. Jason, before I let you go, I think the fundamental question a lot of us have is, do civilians actually have the right to privacy or anonymity? Are there any civil liberties groups taking action to curb this kind of privacy overreach?

Jason Koebler: Yes, there's a lot happening. There's a lot of organizations that are suing the federal government, that are suing individual companies, and that are suing state and local municipalities that have deployed surveillance in pretty reckless ways. I've reported extensively on a company called Flock, which makes license plate readers. A lot of this data was getting fed to ICE through this side-door method where they were talking to local police and getting data that way.

Since our reporting, we've seen a lot of cities actually cancel their contracts with that company. I think it's hard to say on an individual level you can protect yourself or you can avoid this surveillance entirely, because I think that's very difficult, but I think that if we inform ourselves about how this is working, we can pressure both companies to work a little bit more ethically with governments, and then we can also pressure governments to either reform how they're used or to cancel some of these contracts.

With ICE, that might be difficult, but a lot of this is actually happening on a local level and then it's filtering up, and so I would encourage people to see what surveillance technologies your local government has, and then go from there.

Brigid Bergin: Jason Koebler is cofounder of 404 Media. Jason, thanks for your reporting and thanks for joining me this morning.

Jason Koebler: Thank you so much.

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