A bombshell report from 404 Media revealed that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has acquired new technology that allows the agency to monitor entire city neighborhoods by tracking the movements of its residents without a warrant, sparking widespread fears over the Trump administration’s growing surveillance state.
“Horrifying for a lot of reasons but thinking about all the domestic abusers, stalkers, freaks, in and out of ICE, who will use this stuff to torment their victims is blood curdling,” wrote purported journalist Shane Proteus in a social media post on X Sunday night.
According to 404 Media, which recently obtained internal ICE data that revealed new details about the surveillance tech, ICE had purchased two products produced by the American software company Pen-Link back in September, known as Tangles and Webloc.
The products allow ICE to search specific geographic locations such as neighborhoods or city blocks using individuals’ phone data. The products also allow ICE to select specific devices of interest to get more information – including past and real-time location data – on individuals, allowing immigration agents to track individuals to their homes or places of work, and all without obtaining a warrant.
“This seems bad,” wrote Gabriel Montoya, a California filmmaker, in a social media post on X to his more than 12,000 followers.
Now flush with cash, ICE has been ramping up its mass surveillance tech under the second Trump administration, spending billions of dollars to allow the agency to use iris scanning, facial-recognition and phone-hacking technologies to carry out President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation policy.
For Jake Laperruque, deputy director of the Security and Surveillance Project for the Center for Democracy & Technology, ICE’s new surveillance capabilities would only increase instances of ICE “abuse.”
“It's dangerous for ICE or any government agency to be vacuuming up this type of sensitive data in bulk and absent checks,” Laperruque told 404 Media last week. “This type of surveillance dragnet will enable draconian policing and abuse.”
🟢 NEW | ICE has quietly bought access to a powerful surveillance system that can monitor entire neighborhoods by sweeping up cellphone location data and tracking people’s movements over time, according to documents obtained by 404 Media.
The system, built by Penlink, consists… pic.twitter.com/EyseeiEvsr
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