by Brett Wilkins at AntiWar Blog
US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is operating a digital surveillance dragnet through which the agency is able to access information about nearly every person in the United States, a two-year investigation by researchers from the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law revealed Tuesday.
The study – entitled American Dragnet: Data-Driven Deportation in the 21st Century – found that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) “has built its dragnet surveillance system by crossing legal and ethical lines, leveraging the trust that people place in state agencies and essential service providers, and exploiting the vulnerability of people who volunteer their information to reunite with their families.”
Nina Wang, a policy associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology and a report author, told The Guardian that even the study’s researchers were shocked by the scale of the surveillance.
“I was alarmed to discover just how easily federal immigration agents can pull detailed records from the most intimate corners of all our lives,” she said. “These tactics open massive side doors around existing privacy protections, and many lawmakers still have no idea.”
1/ ??NEW REPORT ??
We’re excited to release our new investigation into ICE surveillance: https://t.co/LmKUeGEkAo.What did we find in two years of research on thousands of records? ICE surveillance is much broader than people realize–it’s an #AmericanDragnet.
— Georgetown Privacy (@GeorgetownCPT) May 10, 2022
The study’s researchers wrote that “since its founding in 2003, ICE has not only been building its own capacity to use surveillance to carry out deportations but has also played a key role in the federal government’s larger push to amass as much information as possible about all of our lives.”
“By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies,” they added, “ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time.”
The government often unleashes its surveillance capabilities on our most vulnerable communities first, including immigrants. But time and again, these intrusive programs expand to encompass everyone.
ICE surveillance tears apart immigrant families — and is a privacy nightmare. https://t.co/QksvE6CDdb
— ACLU (@ACLU) May 10, 2022
According to the study:…
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