Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is sounding the alarm after a review of federal spending disclosures revealed that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement is spending billions of dollars to expand its mass surveillance capabilities, which include contracts with companies that provide iris scanning, facial-recognition and phone-hacking technology.
“I’m extremely concerned about how ICE will use spyware, facial recognition and other technology to further trample on the rights of Americans and anyone who Donald Trump labels as an enemy,” Wyden said, speaking with The Washington Post in a report published Friday.
According to the Post, which reviewed what it called a recent “blitz of surveillance purchases,” ICE has purchased technology that would allow it to remotely “hack into smartphones” within the past few weeks, allowing the agency to monitor a user’s communications and track their movements, and without a warrant from a court.
ICE has also contracted the company Penlink for digital surveillance technologies to help the agency “build detailed portraits of individuals” using social media and online data, announced a plan to establish a team of analysts to sift through social media platforms to generate leads, and spent $3.75 million for facial recognition software to be used in public spaces.
Wyden was not the only Democratic lawmaker raising concern over ICE’s push to expand its mass surveillance capabilities. Last week, three Democratic House members wrote a letter to the Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem – who oversees ICE – over concerns of a new ICE contract with the company Pradagon for Graphite, an Israeli-made spyware that allows for remote phone-hacking.
“Graphite can gain unauthorized access into mobile phones without the owner’s knowledge or consent, allowing access to encrypted applications, the phone’s location data, as well as messages and photographs saved to the phone,” wrote Reps. Summer Lee (D-PA), Shontel Brown (D-OH) and Yassamin Ansari (D-AZ).
“Given the Trump Administration’s disregard for constitutional rights and civil liberties in pursuit of rapid mass deportation, we are seriously concerned that ICE will abuse Graphite software to target immigrants, people of color, and individuals who express opposition to ICE’s repeated attacks on the rule of law.”
The three lawmakers never received a response, according to the Post.