ICE Will Use AI to Surveil Social Media

Summary

Immigration and Customs Enforcement has inked a new $5.7 million contract for AI-driven social media surveillance software, according to federal procurement records reviewed by The Lever. It’s the latest move in the agency’s ongoing quest to build out a social media surveillance dragnet. The five-year contract with government technology middleman Carahsoft Technology, made public in September, provides Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) licenses for a product called Zignal Labs, a social media monitoring platform used by the Israeli military and the Pentagon. An informational pamphlet marked confidential but publicly available online advertises that Zignal Labs “leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning” to analyze over eight billion social media posts per day, providing “curated detection feeds” for its clients. The information, the company says, allows law enforcement to “detect and respond to threats with greater clarity and speed.” The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, has in the past procured Zignal licenses for the US Secret Service, signing its first contract for the software in 2019. The company also has contracts with the Department of Defense and the Department of Transportation. But the September notice appears to be the first indication that ICE has access to the platform. The licenses will be provided to Homeland Security Investigations, ICE’s intelligence unit, to provide “real-time data analysis for criminal investigations,” per the disclosure. Zignal joins ICE’s growing arsenal of social media surveillance tools, many of which employ artificial intelligence to generate leads and identify “threats” from vast quantities of online data. These tools pose a particular threat as ICE, under the Trump administration, appears to be increasingly using social media to direct its immigration enforcement strategy. Several pro-Palestinian activists, including Mahmoud Khalil, were targeted and jailed by immigration authoritie...