Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents use an array of surveillance technologies, from helping decide who to stop and detain to identifying and monitoring protestors and legal observers.
WIRED reporter Caroline Haskins said one of the most utilized technologies on the ground is license plate readers that track where a vehicle has been and who it belongs to.
And, Haskins said, agents use myriad facial recognition tools, including cellphone apps that connect to existing law enforcement databases, and a new tool called ELITE developed by Palantir.
ELITE allows ICE agents to create a dossier on the spot about any individual. From there, the software creates a probability score for whether a person will be in an area at a particular moment.
“ Federal agents have actually testified in court documents that they have actively used that app to decide whether to linger on a scene,” Haskins said, “or whether to move on and essentially go to the next target.”
2 questions with Caroline Haskins
Are ICE agents able to access phone data?
“ Everything that goes on social media is something that federal police and local law enforcement might be looking at to track protestors, to track legal observers.
“But another risk is presented if you actually hand your phone over to federal agents or if they take it from you in some way. And this could be at a protest, this could be even at the airport, because they have what’s called mobile forensic technology. One offering in particular comes from a company called Cellebrite, and if your phone is unlocked, it essentially allows them to extract messages from different messaging apps. It allows investigators to see the different apps that are on a person’s phone. It allows them to see the photos. It also allows them to conduct targeted searches … They could try and see the relationships that you have with different people that you’re communicating with.
“If you have your biometric unlock turned on on your phone, that could present a risk for your phone being unlocked and searched in this way. They could also ask for you to unlock your phone, but if you have previews turned off on your home screen, and if you have just a manual password unlock, it is an option for you to refuse to unlock your phone for federal law enforcement.”
Are any of these tools raising legal questions?
“ To the best of our knowledge, the use of pretty much all of these tools is legal. They have to detail the use of these in federal disclosures. They have to detail all of the contract payments. However, that doesn’t mean that it isn’t incredibly intrusive and scary for people that are on the ground.
“If people are concerned, there are certain digital hygiene tools that you can use. For instance, if you are at a protest and you don’t want to be transmitting any sort of data from your device, you could either leave your phone at home, you could use something that’s called a Faraday bag, which prevents signals from going out from your phone because even if it’s turned off or in airplane mode, it isn’t 100% safe.
“My coworkers at WIRED have recommended using Signal, which is encrypted end-to-end, and even just on the screen of your device, there’s a way to turn off the previews for incoming messages that essentially displays the content of the message. So even if your phone remains locked, there is information that law enforcement can technically glean just from looking at your lock screen. So turning off those previews is another way to sort of protect yourself if that’s something that observers or protesters are worried about.”
This interview was edited for clarity.
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Hafsa Quraishi produced and edited this interview for broadcast with Micaela Rodriguez. Grace Griffin adapted it for the web.
This article was originally published on WBUR.org.
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