Immigration and Customs Enforcement just turbocharged its surveillance capabilities with a $5.7 million AI-powered social media monitoring system that can track millions of users across the web. The Zignal Labs platform processes over 8 billion posts daily in 100+ languages, giving ICE unprecedented power to flag individuals for deportation based on their online activity. Civil liberties experts are calling it a direct assault on free speech and democracy.
While ICE agents conduct raids across the country, the agency is quietly building what amounts to a digital panopticon. Federal records reveal ICE just dropped $5.7 million on Zignal Labs' AI-powered surveillance platform - a system capable of monitoring and analyzing the online lives of millions of Americans and immigrants alike.
The implications hit immediately. Will Owen from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project didn't mince words, calling this an "assault on democracy and free speech, powered by the algorithm and paid for with our tax dollars." That's not hyperbole when you consider what Zignal Labs actually does.
The company's "real-time intelligence" platform devours over 8 billion social media posts daily across more than 100 languages. Using machine learning, computer vision, and optical character recognition, it creates what ICE calls "curated detection feeds" - essentially automated target lists for deportation. The system doesn't just read posts; it can trace your exact location from a TikTok video's metadata or identify you from patches and emblems in photos.
One chilling example from Zignal's own marketing materials shows how the platform analyzed a Telegram video from Gaza, pinpointing "the precise location of an ongoing operation" and identifying specific operators through visual recognition. Now imagine that same technology scanning your Instagram stories or Facebook check-ins.
ICE procured this surveillance superpower through Carahsoft, a government IT contractor that's been quietly building the infrastructure for America's surveillance state. Zignal Labs isn't some shadowy startup either - they've got contracts with the Secret Service, Department of Defense, and even NOAA for weather monitoring. But deportation surveillance represents a dramatic escalation.
This isn't ICE's first rodeo with social media spying. Earlier this month, Wired revealed the agency plans to hire almost 30 workers to monitor Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube and other platforms around the clock. Twelve contractors will work from Vermont, 16 from California, with some required to be "available at all times." They're not just watching targets - they're mapping entire social networks, tracking family members, friends, and coworkers to pinpoint locations for ICE officers.