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facial recognition
'Careful What You Post': ICE Expanding Surveillance of Social Media Critics
"ICE's attempt to have eyes and ears in as many places as we exist both online and offline should ring an alarm for all of us," said one campaigner.
Feb 11, 2025
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to hire a contractor as part of an effort to expand the monitoring of negative social media posts about the agency, its personnel, and operations, according to a report published Monday.
According toThe Intercept's Sam Biddle, ICE is citing "an increase in threats" to agents and leadership as the reason for seeking a contractor to keep tabs on the public's social media activity.
The agency said the contractor "shall provide all necessary personnel, supervision, management, equipment, materials, and services, except for those provided by the government, in support of ICE's desire to protect ICE senior leaders, personnel, and facilities via internet-based threat mitigation and monitoring services."
"These efforts include conducting vulnerability assessments and proactive threat monitoring," ICE added, explaining that the contractor will be required to provide daily and monthly status reports and immediately alert supervisors of "imminent threats."
Careful what you post: ICE is seeking private contractors to conduct social media surveillance including detection of merely "negative" sentiment about the agency's leadership, agents, and general operations theintercept.com/2025/02/11/i...
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— Sam Biddle (@sambiddle.com) February 11, 2025 at 9:27 AM
ICE will require the monitor to identify and report "previous social media activity which would indicate any additional threats to ICE," as well as any information indicating that individuals or groups "making threats have a proclivity for violence" and anything "indicating a potential for carrying out a threat."
According to Biddle:
It's unclear how exactly any contractor might sniff out someone's "proclivity for violence." The ICE document states only that the contractor will use "social and behavioral sciences" and "psychological profiles" to accomplish its automated threat detection.
Once flagged, the system will further scour a target's internet history and attempt to reveal their real-world position and offline identity. In addition to compiling personal information—such as the Social Security numbers and addresses of those whose posts are flagged—the contractor will also provide ICE with a "photograph, partial legal name, partial date of birth, possible city, possible work affiliations, possible school or university affiliation, and any identified possible family members or associates."
The document also requests "facial recognition capabilities that could take a photograph of a subject and search the internet to find all relevant information associated with the subject." The contract contains specific directions for targets found in other countries, implying the program would scan the domestic speech of American citizens.
"Careful what you post," Biddle warned in a social media post promoting his article.
ICE is already monitoring social media posts via contractor Giant Oak, which was hired during the first Trump administration and former Democratic President Joe Biden's term. However, "the goal of this [new] contract, ostensibly, is focused more narrowly on threats to ICE leadership, agents, facilities, and operations," according to Biddle.
Cinthya Rodriguez, an organizer with the immigrant rights group Mijente, told Biddle that "the current administration's attempt to use this technology falls within the agency's larger history of mass surveillance, which includes gathering information from personal social media accounts and retaliating against immigrant activists."
"ICE's attempt to have eyes and ears in as many places as we exist both online and offline should ring an alarm for all of us," Rodriguez added.
The search for expanded ICE social media surveillance comes as President Donald Trump's administration is carrying out what the Republican leader has promised will be the biggest mass deportation campaign in U.S. history. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security has been deporting migrants on military flights, with some deportees imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay, the notorious offshore U.S. military prison in Cuba.
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EU Deal on AI Act Is 'Missed Opportunity' to Ban Mass Surveillance, Say Privacy Groups
"Whilst the Parliament fought hard to limit the damage, the overall package on biometric surveillance and profiling is at best lukewarm," said one advocate.
Dec 09, 2023
Privacy advocates on Saturday said the AI Act, a sweeping proposed law to regulate artificial intelligence in the European Union whose language was finalized Friday, appeared likely to fail at protecting the public from one of AI's greatest threats: live facial recognition.
Representatives of the European Commission spent 37 hours this week negotiating provisions in the AI Act with the European Council and European Parliament, running up against Council representatives from France, Germany, and Italy who sought to water down the bill in the late stages of talks.
Thierry Breton, the European commissioner for internal market and a key negotiator of the deal, said the final product would establish the E.U. as "a pioneer, understanding the importance of its role as global standard setter."
But Amnesty Tech, the branch of global human rights group Amnesty International that focuses on technology and surveillance, was among the groups that raised concerns about the bloc's failure to include "an unconditional ban on live facial recognition," which was in an earlier draft, in the legislation.
The three institutions, said Mher Hakobyan, Amnesty Tech's advocacy adviser on AI, "in effect greenlighted dystopian digital surveillance in the 27 EU Member States, setting a devastating precedent globally concerning AI regulation."
"While proponents argue that the draft allows only limited use of facial recognition and subject to safeguards, Amnesty's research in New York City, Occupied Palestinian Territories, Hyderabad, and elsewhere demonstrates that no safeguards can prevent the human rights harms that facial recognition inflicts, which is why an outright ban is needed," said Hakobyan. "Not ensuring a full ban on facial recognition is therefore a hugely missed opportunity to stop and prevent colossal damage to human rights, civic space, and rule of law that are already under threat throughout the E.U."
The bill is focused on protecting Europeans against other significant risks of AI, including the automation of jobs, the spread of misinformation, and national security threats.
Tech companies would be required to complete rigorous testing on AI software before operating in the EU, particularly for applications like self-driving vehicles.
Tools that could pose risks to hiring practices would also need to be subjected to risk assessments, and human oversight would be required in deploying the software,
AI systems including chatbots would be subjected to new transparency rules to avoid the creation of manipulated images and videos—known as deepfakes—without the public knowing that the images were generated by AI.
The indiscriminate scraping of internet or security footage images to create facial recognition databases would also be outright banned.
But the proposed AI Act, which could be passed before the end of the European Parliament session ends in May, includes exemptions to facial recognition provisions, allowing law enforcement agencies to use live facial recognition to search for human trafficking victims, prevent terrorist attacks, and arrest suspects of certain violent crimes.
Ella Jakubowska, a senior policy adviser at European Digital Rights, told The Washington Post that "some human rights safeguards have been won" in the AI Act.
"It's hard to be excited about a law which has, for the first time in the E.U., taken steps to legalize live public facial recognition across the bloc," Jakubowska toldReuters. "Whilst the Parliament fought hard to limit the damage, the overall package on biometric surveillance and profiling is at best lukewarm."
Hakobyan also noted that the bill did not include a ban on "the export of harmful AI technologies, including for social scoring, which would be illegal in the E.U."
"Allowing European companies to profit off from technologies that the law recognizes impermissibly harm human rights in their home states establishes a dangerous double standard," said Hakobyan.
After passage, many AI Act provisions would not take effect for 12 to 24 months.
Andreas Liebl, managing director of the German company AppliedAI Initiative, acknowledged that the law would likely have an impact on tech companies' ability to operate in the European Union.
"There will be a couple of innovations that are just not possible or economically feasible anymore," Liebl told the Post.
But Kris Shrishak, a senior fellow at the Irish Council for Civil Liberties, toldThe New York Times that the E.U. will have to prove its "regulatory prowess" after the law is passed.
"Without strong enforcement," said Shrishak, "this deal will have no meaning."
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Markey, Jayapal Lead Call for Biden to Include 'AI Bill of Rights' in Executive Order
"By turning the AI Bill of Rights from a nonbinding statement of principles into federal policy, your administration would send a clear message to both private actors and federal regulators."
Oct 11, 2023
Amid the rapid development and deployment of artificial intelligence systems, a pair of Democratic U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday led more than a dozen of their colleagues in urging President Joe Biden to issue an executive order making the White House's "AI Bill of Rights" official federal policy.
Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) spearheaded a letter to Biden asserting that "the federal government's commitment to the AI Bill of Rights would show that fundamental rights will not take a back seat in the AI era."
"By turning the AI Bill of Rights from a nonbinding statement of principles into federal policy, your administration would send a clear message to both private actors and federal regulators: AI systems must be developed with guardrails," the letter states. "Doing so would also strengthen your administration's efforts to advance racial equity and support underserved communities, building on important work from previous executive orders."
The lawmakers asserted that implementing the AI Bill of Rights is "a crucial step in developing an ethical framework for the federal government's role" in artificial intelligence. They stressed that five principles—"safe and effective systems; algorithmic discrimination protections; data privacy; notice and explanation; and human alternatives, consideration, and fallback"—must be the core of the policy.
The letter further argues that "implementing these principles will not only protect communities harmed by these technologies, it will also help inform ongoing policy conversations in Congress and show clear leadership on the global stage."
In July, the White House secured voluntary risk management commitments from seven leading AI companies, a move praised by campaigners and experts—even as they stressed the need for further action from Congress and federal regulators.
Earlier this year, Markey and Rep. Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) reintroduced the Algorithmic Justice and Online Platform Transparency Act, which would prohibit Big Tech from using black-box algorithms that drive discrimination and inequality.
Jayapal, Markey, and Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) in March led the reintroduction of the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which would stop the government from using facial recognition and other biometric technologies, which they said "pose significant privacy and civil liberties issues and disproportionately harm marginalized communities."
Wednesday's letter came as the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen urged the Federal Election Commission to officially affirm that so-called "deepfakes" in U.S. political campaign communications are illegal under existing legislation proscribing fraudulent representation.
The lawmakers' call also comes just weeks after Public Citizen warned that Big Tech is creating and deploying AI systems "that deceptively mimic human behavior to aggressively sell their products and services, dispense dubious medical and mental health advice, and trap people in psychologically dependent, potentially toxic relationships with machines."
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