 The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is assembling a surveillance infrastructure capable of tracking people’s faces, phones, cars, movements, communications, and associations – and then combining that information into detailed personal dossiers. That is the alarming picture presented by a new Brennan Center for Justice report. Since January 2021, DHS has committed more than $2.9 billion to surveillance, data collection, and analytical tools. Because federal contracting records are opaque and often incomplete, the Brennan Center cautions that this figure is probably a minimum. The department’s arsenal falls into six broad categories: video surveillance, biometrics, location tracking, access to phone content, commercial-data purchases, and data analytics. DHS has spent or promised more than $1 billion for biometrics alone. Its tools can identify people through facial and iris recognition, including through mobile devices used by agents in the field. One system, Mobile Fortify, can collect information about anyone – including U.S. citizens – and DHS documentation says images may be retained for 15 years. Meanwhile, Customs and Border Protection has promised more than $675 million for drones. Although its drone program has long been justified as a border-security tool, the Brennan Center reports that drones have also been deployed inside the country to assist immigration raids and monitor protests. DHS also purchases access to commercial data capable of tracking phones and vehicles. Its technology can extract messages, contacts, photographs, and other contents from cellphones. Information from these sources flows into centralized repositories, where artificial intelligence tools can search across databases, connect disparate facts, and generate leads, targets, and detailed profiles. One such system, ICE’s Repository for Analytics in a Virtualized Environment, or RAVEn, allows investigators to combine information from multiple databases. Another tool, Palantir’s Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Enforcement, maps individuals’ locations and connects them with other personal information to guide enforcement operations. DHS policies generally prohibit acting solely because someone engaged in constitutionally protected speech, association, or dissent. But that protection offers little comfort when surveillance tools have reportedly been directed at protesters and observers. A database does not forget that someone attended a rally, visited a religious institution, met with a political organization, or associated with an unpopular group. The real danger lies not in collecting each piece of information, but in combining the pieces. Cameras, biometric databases, cellphone searches, location histories, commercial records, and AI analytics together give the government the power to reconstruct a person’s life. Congress funded this expansion. It must now reassert control over the purse, investigate how these technologies are being used, and impose enforceable privacy safeguards for American citizens. A comprehensive domestic surveillance machine is much easier to restrain before it becomes a permanent feature of American life. Comments are closed.
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