Immigration agents have new technology to identify and track people (www.npr.org)

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is rolling out a suite of new surveillance technologies that let agents identify and track people in the field and online. Reported tools include mobile facial‑recognition apps that allow an agent to point a phone at a face (Ice’s Mobile Fortify and CBP’s Mobile Identify are named in reporting) to search Customs and Border Protection photo databases and return biographic details (name, DOB, alien number, possible citizenship or “overstay” status); iris‑scanning tools; contracts for access to large location‑based datasets; AI‑driven social‑media monitoring to build dossiers across platforms like Facebook and TikTok; and a revived contract with Paragon Solutions for spyware (Graphite) that can infect phones via a text message and extract encrypted messages and other data without user interaction. DHS documents also say photos may be retained for 15 years and that contractors could run 24/7 database sweeps. For the AI/ML community this matters because these systems combine biometric matching, large commercial data feeds, and automated social‑media analytics at scale—raising technical and ethical risks. Facial and iris algorithms have known bias and error rates that disproportionately affect people of color, while spyware and massive location or social datasets create novel privacy and Fourth Amendment issues. The lack of clear oversight, legal justification, and public transparency—plus proposed rulemaking to expand biometric collection to relatives—signals a fast‑escalating deployment of automated, model‑driven surveillance with substantial implications for civil liberties, system reliability, and responsible AI governance.