Social Media and ICE Data Requests.
Executive summary
ICE is actively pursuing expanded social-media and location-data surveillance through contracts, pilot programs and commercial vendors; reporting shows contracts and solicitations for tools like Babel Street’s Locate X and platforms from Zignal Labs, and requests to hire contractors to monitor platforms including Facebook, Instagram and X [1] [2] [3]. Civil‑liberties groups — EPIC, ACLU and others — have sued or filed FOIAs arguing these practices risk privacy, due‑process and free‑speech harms [1] [4].
1. What ICE says it wants: large‑scale, continuous monitoring
Documents and reporting describe ICE’s plans to stand up near‑real‑time monitoring that ingests public social‑media posts, commercial location trails and law‑enforcement databases to generate “leads” for enforcement. The agency issued solicitations and requests for information seeking contractors and software capable of 24/7 coverage, sentiment/behavioral analysis and location inference across many platforms (Facebook, Instagram, X, TikTok, WhatsApp, YouTube and others) [5] [6] [7].
2. The vendors and tools named in reporting
Investigations and federal records point to concrete suppliers or products in ICE’s toolkit: Babel Street’s Locate X for app‑derived location data (ICE had contracts totaling roughly $2.5 million since 2018), Zignal Labs licenses reportedly worth millions, and long‑standing relationships with firms offering social‑media scraping and analytics like ShadowDragon/SocialNet [1] [2] [8]. Reporting also links prior ICE use of analytics systems such as Giant Oak’s GOST via FOIA disclosures [9].
3. What civil‑liberties groups warn this will do
Privacy and civil‑liberties organizations assert that buying bulk datasets and contractor‑run scraping allows ICE to amass data without individualized warrants, build dossiers, track movement through app data, and sweep in contacts and associates — raising First Amendment and due‑process concerns [4] [10] [1]. EPIC and the ACLU have pursued FOIAs and lawsuits to force transparency on contracts and safeguards [1] [4].
4. Government rationale and operational framing
ICE frames these efforts as lead‑generation for enforcement: locating people who “pose a danger to national security or risk public safety” and responding to threats against the agency, per internal planning and the solicitation language. The agency’s intelligence arm (Homeland Security Investigations) is a primary user, queried through systems like TECS for social‑media data tied to investigations [3] [10].
5. The technical pathways: location data, scraping, aggregation
Reporting shows two main technical routes: purchasing aggregated location trails from app data brokers and using tools like Locate X to infer movements and crossings of particular places; and scraping public social posts and ingesting them into AI/analytics platforms to surface “derogatory” or threatening content and map networks of associates [1] [2] [6].
6. Oversight, secrecy and recent political shifts
Multiple outlets document friction over transparency: the Biden administration temporarily froze certain deals under spyware restrictions, while later administrative shifts reactivated some efforts; FOIAs and lawsuits from media and nonprofits seek contracts and records [4] [1]. Critics note that procurement documents and contract notices have been the primary source of public knowledge, suggesting limited proactive disclosure by the agency [4] [3].
7. Competing perspectives in reporting
Mainstream and investigative outlets converge on the existence of solicitations and vendor contracts (Wired, AP, The Verge, The Register), but they diverge on emphasis: watchdogs and civil‑liberties writers stress chilling effects and constitutional risk (EPIC, ACLU, The Conversation); other reporting centers operational aims and agency claims about public‑safety use without full access to internal limits or minimization practices [4] [1] [6].
8. What is not yet publicly documented
Available sources do not mention comprehensive, agency‑published minimization rules, the exact datasets delivered under each contract, or court findings about constitutionality of these particular solicitations; precise metrics of how many individuals have been surveilled via these new contracts are not provided in current reporting [1] [2] [3].
9. What to watch next
Watch for released contract documents from FOIA suits (EPIC, 404 Media), procurement award notices, and any DOJ or DHS responses to claims that bulk data acquisition circumvents warrant standards; also monitor litigation outcomes that could compel disclosure or curtail certain practices [1] [4].
Bottom line: reporting shows an active, expanding ICE effort to combine commercial location trails and social‑media analytics via private contractors and vendors; civil‑liberties groups view this as a significant privacy and free‑speech risk, and transparency is currently driven by FOIA and investigative reporting rather than full agency disclosure [1] [4] [2].