American immigration authorities are preparing a great expansion of their online surveillance. The Immigration and Customs Control Agency (ICE) provides, in fact, recruiting around thirty private suppliers responsible for analyzing social networks to extract usable information for their searches and arrest operations.
These teams will look for publications, photos and messages transmitted on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, YouTube and other platforms, to transform this public data into survey roads.
Open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
According to federal documents consulted by Wired magazine, the ICE seeks to outsource this long -term surveillance system based on two discrete orientation centers located in Vermont and southern California. Suppliers will be responsible for continuous active duty, 24 hours a day, and will have to provide rapid and precise results.
The center of Williston, in Vermont, will cover the east of the country, while that of Santa Ana, in California, will supervise the western area. Together, these two structures will become central relays for the collection and analysis of information within the agency. Internal plans also specify the composition of these units: senior analysts, team leaders and researchers will work together to process a permanent data flow.
Some twelve subcontractors will be assigned to Vermont, while sixteen people will operate in California, with a sure permanence day and night. These teams will gather their discoveries in files aimed at directly supporting ICE field offices.
An extraordinary device
And the device will extend far beyond social networks. Suppliers will have access to powerful databases such as lexisnexis, accuri and reuters, which will allow them to cross online information with personal data of land, invoices and records records.
Tax processing deadlines will be strict: thirty minutes for emergencies related to national security, one hour for priority cases and twenty -four hours for others. The agency expects its future partners to be a compliance rate “of at least 75% in time, with an optimal 95% objective.”
At the same time, ice seeks to strengthen the technological dimension of the project. Ask suppliers to offer solutions that incorporate artificial intelligence to automate the detection of suspicious behaviors and improve the accuracy of alerts. This program is part of the continuity of the previous projects, revealed by the Intercept and 404 Media, in relation to the automated analysis of negative speeches towards the agency and the use of facial recognition.
And mass surveillance does not stop there. A few days ago, the immigration police finally announced that they would use the geolocation data of hundreds of millions of smartphones in their search for illegal immigrants. In short, George Orwell can congratulate himself, he had seen herself well.
Source: BFM TV
