Until now, ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) operations have been “low-tech”, stops for reasons, checks in public places, but now a new frontier of control. Several videos published on social media show officers stopping motorists and passers-by, taking out a phone and pointing it in their faces. These episodes, along with other videos collected by 404 Media, document the use of facial recognition technology by ICE and CBP (Customs and Border Protection), among these a new app called Fortify.
Not just Fortify. ICE is investing in technologies biometric surveillanceamong these the facial recognition provided by Clearview AI and mobile iris scanning systems. These software are part of a larger strategy. According to federal procurement records reviewed by Wired the agency is looking for private vendors to operate a multiannual surveillance program.
ICE also signed a $2 million contract with Paragon, the Israeli company that makes spyware that can crack phones and encrypted chats, and, earlier this year, The Intercept revealed that was evaluating an automated system able to monitor social media to identify alleged “negative feelings” towards the agency, reporting users considered “at risk of violent behaviorThe expansion of these biometric and digital technologies raises urgent questions about privacy, freedom and democratic accountability: Who controls the controllers — and to what extent?
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The ICE surveillance system
As revealed by 404 Media, Mobile Fortify It is built on a database of 200 million images and linked to government archives, including the State Department, CBP, FBI and state records. The app allows you to get real time name, date of birth and the status of any deportation orders. Some advanced features, such as “Super Query”, allow you to query information on people, vehicles, addresses, telephone numbers and weapons at the same time.
Internal ICE emails, filtered in recent months, also reveal that Mobile Fortify can acquire fingerprints without secondary devices, and which in the future could integrate data from commercial brokers such as LexisNexis, further expanding the reach of tracking, it could even trace back to family members.
From videos uploaded on social media to anti-ICE apps
In recent months, as ICE operations have intensified in New York and other U.S. cities, many citizens have fought back documenting the raids with their phones, confronting the agents and spreading images of the operations online. As he explained Kyle Chayka in The New Yorker this constant recording activity has become a form of civil resistance and transparency, reminiscent of the use of social media during movements such as the Arab Spring or Black Lives Matter.
Several apps have emerged — such as ICEBlock, Red Dot, DEICER and Eyes Up — designed to locate officers, report suspicious activity and document abuse. However, many of these applications were removed from the Apple and Google stores after political pressure, on the grounds that they could “put agents at risk”.
The face of the new state surveillance
Bennie G. Thompsona member of the House Homeland Security Committee, defined Mobile Fortify as “a dangerous tool, capable of putting American citizens at risk and facilitating unjustified detention or deportation.” Jeremy Scott, of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, added to Media404: “Facial recognition is a powerful and dangerous surveillance technology, shifting control from the people to the government.”
The experts’ alarm is clear: the spread of these surveillance technologies without stringent regulations risks transforming everyday reality into a dystopian context, limiting civil rights and liberties and profoundly changing the relationship between citizens and the State.
