Sophisticated new ICE tracking system raises privacy concerns for public

DENVER ‒ Federal officials are gathering a sprawling caller database strategy they're calling "ImmigrationOS" to way and people millions of radical surviving illegally successful the United States

A $30 cardinal no-bid declaration with GOP megadonor Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies volition assistance Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents physique a blase strategy to prioritize radical for deportation, including accused pack members and radical who person overstayed their tourer visas. The declaration with the Denver-based institution calls for rolling retired a prototype this fall.

Thiel, the laminitis and president of Palantir, is adjacent to Vice President JD Vance and DOGE caput Elon Musk, with whom helium launched PayPal.

The ImmigrationOS task reflects the attack DOGE has brought to the national bureaucracy nether Trump, arsenic Musk's deputies question technology-focused solutions to marque authorities much efficient. Palantir already runs the ICE strategy utilized for Homeland Security investigations, and the caller ImmigrationOS volition merge information from aggregate databases from the authorities and backstage sources.

"These transnational organizations' ongoing campaigns of unit and panic successful the United States and internationally are extraordinarily violent, vicious, and likewise endanger the American people," ICE officials said successful justifying the no-bid declaration with Palantir. "They contiguous an antithetic and bonzer menace to the nationalist security, overseas policy, and system of the United States."

Palantir's existing declaration with ICE has already topped $88 million, and the caller ImmigrationOS strategy volition outgo different $30 million, according to declaration details reviewed by USA TODAY. Several of Musk's DOGE deputies person antecedently worked astatine Palantir, according to postings connected LinkedIn and different societal media sites.

The strategy volition besides way radical who "self deport" oregon permission the United States voluntarily, to assistance prioritize ICE enforcement against those who remain. Trump wants to deport 1 cardinal radical annually, a melodramatic summation requiring a vast, blase and costly targeting, detention and removal operation.

System could beryllium repurposed to way Americans

Civil liberties groups pass systems similar ImmigrationOS airs important risks to the wide public, successful portion due to the fact that it's unclear however the strategy would beryllium constricted lone to radical surviving illegally successful the United States. Such a system, they warn, could easy beryllium expanded to people immoderate American.

Trump has suggested that helium wants to region not conscionable immigrants but U.S. citizens if they're deemed dangerous, and said he's ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate.

Cooper Quintin, a elder unit technologist with Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit integer rights group, said Palantir's enactment has agelong raised concerns by truthful efficaciously collating nationalist databases with things similar Facebook tracking and adjacent shopper reward cards.

While the national authorities collects and retains immense quantities of accusation astir idiosyncratic Americans, the machine databases person typically been kept abstracted from each different to sphere idiosyncratic privacy. In April, USA TODAY reported that the IRS had agreed to springiness ICE agents entree to payer data, including information astir radical who filed taxes without a Social Security number,

ICE agents could usage ImmigrationOS to fig retired wherever a targeted idiosyncratic lives and works, erstwhile they're apt to beryllium home, who they unrecorded with, the benignant of car they thrust and adjacent what restaurants oregon shops they frequent.

Quintin said a strategy designed to people radical surviving illegally successful the United States could easy beryllium repurposed to people the president's governmental enemies.

"What they person built is simply a really, truly susceptible motor for analyzing large data, linking it unneurotic and picking retired parts of it. That gives you the quality to collate this information connected idiosyncratic and spell looking for a crushed to prosecute them," Quintin said. "Even if you deliberation you're harmless for now, you mightiness not beryllium harmless for long."

This nonfiction primitively appeared connected USA TODAY: ICE is gathering a blase caller migrant tracking system