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Tag: Paragon Solutions

  • Here’s the tech powering ICE’s deportation crackdown  | TechCrunch

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    President Donald Trump said he would make countering immigration one of his flagship policies during his second term in The White House, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. 

    A year in, data shows that deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection have surpassed at least 350,000 people. 

    ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass removal campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented people, prompting widespread protests and resistance from communities across the United States. 

    ICE uses several technologies to identify and surveil individuals. Homeland Security has also used the shadow of Trump’s deportations to challenge long-standing legal norms, including forcibly entering homes to arrest people without a judicial warrant, a move that legal experts say violates the Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures. 

    Here are some of the technologies that ICE is relying on.

    Cell-site simulators

    ICE has a technology known as cell-site simulators to snoop on cellphones. These surveillance devices, as the name suggests, are designed to appear as a cellphone tower, tricking nearby phones to connect to them. Once that happens, the law enforcement authorities who are using the cell-site simulators can locate and identify the phones in their vicinity, and potentially intercept calls, text messages, and internet traffic.  

    Cell-site simulators are also known as “stingrays,” based on the brand name of one of the earliest versions of the technology, which was made by U.S. defense contractor Harris (now L3Harris); or IMSI catchers, a technology that can capture a nearby cell phone’s unique identifier which law enforcement can use for identifying the phone’s owner.  

    In the last two years, ICE has signed contracts for more than $1.5 million with a company called TechOps Specialty Vehicles (TOSV), which produces customized vans for law enforcement. 

    A contract worth more than $800,000 dated May 8, 2025 said TOSV will provide “Cell Site Simulator (CSS) Vehicles to support the Homeland Security Technical Operations program.”  

    TOSV president Jon Brianas told TechCrunch that the company does not manufacture the cell-site simulators, but rather integrates them “into our overall design of the vehicle.” 

    Cell-site simulators have long been controversial for several reasons.  

    These devices are designed to trick all nearby phones to connect to them, which means that by design they gather the data of many innocent people. Also, authorities have sometimes deployed them without first obtaining a warrant.  

    Authorities have also tried to keep their use of the technology secret in court, withholding information, and even accepting plea deals and dropping cases rather than disclose information about their use of cell-site simulators. In a court case in 2019 in Baltimore, it was revealed that prosecutors were instructed to drop cases rather than violate a non-disclosure agreement with the company that makes the devices.  

    Facial recognition

    Clearview AI is perhaps the most well-known facial-recognition company today. For years, the company promised to be able to identify any face by searching through a large database of photos it had scraped from the internet. 

    On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE has signed a contract with the company to support its law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers.” 

    According to a government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million. 

    ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI in the last couple of years. In September 2024, the agency purchased “forensic software” from the company, a deal worth $1.1 million. The year before, ICE paid Clearview AI nearly $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”

    Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment. 

    ICE is also using a facial recognition app called Mobile Fortify, which federal agents use to identify people on the street. The app relies on scanning a person’s driver’s license photo against 200 million photos, much of the data sourced from state driver’s license databases.

    Paragon phone spyware

    Contact Us

    Do you have more information about ICE and the technology it uses? We would love to learn how this affects you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

    In September 2024, ICE signed a contract worth $2 million with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order,” putting the contract under review to make sure it complied with an executive order on the government’s use of commercial spyware. 

    Because of that order, for nearly a year, the contract remained in limbo. Then, last week, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, effectively reactivating the contract. 

    At this point, the status of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in practice is unclear.  

    The records entry from last week said that the contract with Paragon is for “a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.” Practically speaking, unless the hardware installation and training were done last year, it may take some time for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and running.

    It’s also unclear if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, an agency whose investigations are not limited to immigration, but also cover online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.

    Paragon has long tried to portray itself as an “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, and now has to decide if it’s ethical to work with Trump’s ICE. A lot has happened to Paragon in the last year. In December, American private equity giant AE Industrial purchased Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity company RedLattice, according to Israeli tech news site Calcalist.

    In a sign that the merger may have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were referred to RedLattice’s new vice president of marketing and communications Jennifer Iras. 

    RedLattice’s Iras did not respond to a request for comment for this article, nor for last week’s article.

    In the last few months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spyware scandal in Italy, where the government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon cut ties with Italy’s intelligence agencies. 

    Phone hacking and unlocking technology

    In mid-September, ICE’s law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations signed a contract with Magnet Forensics for $3 million.

    This contract is specifically for software licenses so that HSI agents can “recover digital evidence, process multiple devices,” and “generate forensic reports,” according to the contract description.

    Magnet is the current maker of the phone hacking and unlocking devices known as Graykey. These devices essentially give law enforcement agents the ability to connect a locked phone to them and unlock them and access the data inside of them. 

    Magnet Forensics, which merged with Graykey makers Grayshift in 2023, did not respond to a request for comment.

    Cellphone location data 

    At the end of September, 404 Media reported that ICE bought access to “an “all-in-one” surveillance tool that allows the agency to search through databases of historical cellphone location data, as well as social media information.  

    The tool appears to be made of two products called Tangles and Webloc, which are made by a company called Penlink. One of the tools promises to leverage “a proprietary data platform to compile, process, and validate billions of daily location signals from hundreds of millions of mobile devices, providing both forensic and predictive analytics,” according to a redacted contract found by 404 Media.  

    The redacted contract does not identify which one of the tools makes that promise, but given its description, it’s likely Webloc. Forbes previously cited a case study that said Webloc can search a given location to “monitor trends of mobile devices that have given data at those locations and how often they have been there.”  

    This type of cellphone location data is harvested by companies around the world using software development kits (SDKs) embedded in regular smartphone apps, or with an online advertising process called real-time bidding (RTB) where companies bid in real-time to place an ad on the screen of a cellphone user based on their demographic or location data. The latter process has the by-product of giving ad tech companies that kind of personal data.  

    Once collected, this mass of location data is transferred to a data broker who then sells it to government agencies. Thanks to this layered process, authorities have used this type of data without getting a warrant by simply purchasing access to the data. 

    The other tool, Tangles, is an “AI-powered open-source intelligence” tool that automates “the search and analysis of data from the open, deep, and the dark web,” according to Penlink’s official site.  

    Forbes reported in September that ICE spent $5 million on Penlink’s two tools.  

    Penlink did not respond to a request for comment.  

    License plate readers

    ICE relies on automated license plate reader (ALPR) companies to follow drivers across a large swath of the U.S., such as where people go and when.

    ICE also leans on its connections with local law enforcement agencies, which have contracts with ALPR providers, like surveillance company Flock Safety, to obtain immigration data by the backdoor. Flock is one of the largest ALPR providers, with over 40,000 license plate scanners around the United States, and only getting larger with its partnerships with other companies, such as video surveillance company Ring.

    Efforts by ICE to informally request data from local law enforcement has prompted some police departments to cut off federal agencies from their access.

    Border Patrol runs its own surveillance network of ALPR cameras, the Associated Press reported.

    For years, ICE has used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. 

    In 2022, two non-profits obtained documents via Freedom of Information Act requests, which revealed that ICE performed more than 1.2 million searches over seven months using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check the background information of migrants.   

    A year later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate migrants before they even committed a crime, a program that a critic said enabled “mass surveillance.”

    According to public records, LexisNexis currently provides ICE “with a law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations.” 

    This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service. 

    LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman told TechCrunch that ICE has used the company’s product “data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations.”

    “Our commitment is to support the responsible and ethical use of data, in full compliance with laws and regulations, and for the protection of all residents of the United States,” said Richman, who added that LexisNexis “partners with more than 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies across the United States to advance public safety and security.” 

    Surveillance giant Palantir

    Data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The biggest contract, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called “Investigative Case Management,” or ICM.

    The contract for ICM goes back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million deal with ICE. The Peter Thiel-founded company’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. 

    Earlier this year, 404 Media, which has reported extensively on the technology powering Trump’s deportation efforts, and particularly Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed details of how the ICM database works. The tech news site reported that it saw a recent version of the database, which allows ICE to filter people based on their immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more. 

    According to 404 Media, “a source familiar with the database” said it is made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of data and that it can build reports that show, for example, people who are on a specific type of visa who came into the country at a specific port of entry, who came from a specific country, and who have a specific hair color (or any number of hundreds of data points).” 

    The tool, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial enough that sources within the company leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki where Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE. 

    Palantir is also developing a tool called “ImmigrationOS,” according to a contract worth $30 million revealed by Business Insider. 

    ImmigrationOS is said to be designed to streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” give “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visa, according to a document first reported on by Wired.

    First published on September 13, 2025 and updated on September 18, 2025 to include Magnet Forensics’ new contract, again on October 8, 2025 to include cell-site simulators and location data, and again on January 26, 2026 to include license plate readers.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai, Zack Whittaker

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  • You’ve been targeted by government spyware. Now what? | TechCrunch

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    It was a normal day when Jay Gibson got an unexpected notification on his iPhone. “Apple detected a targeted mercenary spyware attack against your iPhone,” the message read.

    Ironically, Gibson used to work at companies that developed exactly the kind of spyware that could trigger such a notification. Still, he was shocked that he received a notification on his own phone. He called his father, turned off and put his phone away, and went to buy a new one.

    “I was panicking,” he told TechCrunch. “It was a mess. It was a huge mess.”  

    Gibson is just one of an ever-increasing number of people who are receiving notifications from companies like Apple, Google, and WhatsApp, all of which send similar warnings about spyware attacks to their users. Tech companies are increasingly proactive in alerting their users when they become targets of government hackers, and in particular those who use spyware made by companies such as Intellexa, NSO Group, and Paragon Solutions.

    But while Apple, Google, and WhatsApp alert, they don’t get involved in what happens next. The tech companies direct their users to people who could help, but at which point the companies step away.

    This is what happens when you receive one of these warnings. 

    Warning 

    You have received a notification that you were the target of government hackers. Now what? 

    First of all, take it seriously. These companies have reams of telemetry data about their users and what happens on both their devices and their online accounts. These tech giants have security teams that have been hunting, studying, and analyzing this type of malicious activity for years. If they think you have been targeted, they are probably right. 

    It’s important to note that in the case of Apple and WhatsApp notifications, receiving one doesn’t mean you were necessarily hacked. It’s possible that the hacking attempt failed, but they can still tell you that someone tried. 

    A photo showing the text of a threat notification sent by Apple to a suspected spyware victim (Image: Omar Marques/Getty Images)

    In the case of Google, it’s most likely that the company blocked the attack, and is telling you so you can go into your account and make sure you have multi-factor authentication on (ideally a physical security key or passkey), and also turn on its Advanced Protection Program, which also requires a security key and adds other layers of security to your Google account. In other words, Google will tell you how to better protect yourself in the future. 

    In the Apple ecosystem, you should turn on Lockdown Mode, which switches on a series of security features that makes it more difficult for hackers to target your Apple devices. Apple has long claimed that it has never seen a successful hack against a user with Lockdown Mode enabled, but no system is perfect. 

    Mohammed Al-Maskati, the director of Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline, a 24/7 global team of security experts who investigate spyware cases against members of civil society, shared with TechCrunch the advice that the helpline gives people who are concerned that they may be targeted with government spyware.

    This advice includes keeping your devices’ operating systems and apps up-to-date; switching on Apple’s Lockdown Mode, and Google’s Advanced Protection for accounts and for Android devices; be careful with suspicious links and attachments; to restart your phone regularly; and to pay attention to changes in how your device functions.

    Contact Us

    Have you received a notification from Apple, Google, or WhatsApp about being targeted with spyware? Or do you have information about spyware makers? We would love to hear from you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email.

    Reaching out for help

    What happens next depends on who you are. 

    There are open source and downloadable tools that anyone can use to detect suspected spyware attacks on their devices, which requires a little technical knowledge. You can use the Mobile Verification Toolkit, or MVT, a tool that lets you look for forensic traces of an attack on your own, perhaps as a first step before looking for assistance. 

    If you don’t want or can’t use MVT, you can go straight to someone who can help. If you are a journalist, dissident, academic, or human rights activist, there are a handful of organizations that can help. 

    You can turn to Access Now and its Digital Security Helpline. You can also contact Amnesty International, which has its own team of investigators and ample experience in these cases. Or, you can reach out to The Citizen Lab, a digital rights group at the University of Toronto, which has been investigating spyware abuses for almost 15 years. 

    If you are a journalist, Reporters Without Borders also has a digital security lab that offers to investigate suspected cases of hacking and surveillance. 

    Outside of these categories of people, politicians or business executives, for example, will have to go elsewhere. 

    If you work for a large company or political party, you likely have a competent (hopefully!) security team you can go straight to. They may not have the specific knowledge to investigate in-depth, but in that case they probably know who to turn to, even if Access Now, Amnesty, and Citizen Lab cannot help those outside of civil society. 

    Otherwise, there aren’t many places executives or politicians you can turn to, but we have asked around and found the ones below. We can’t fully vouch for any of these organizations, nor do we endorse them directly, but based on suggestions from people we trust, it’s worth pointing them out. 

    Perhaps the most well known of these private security companies is iVerify, which makes an app for Android and iOS, and also gives users an option to ask for an in-depth forensic investigation. 

    Matt Mitchell, a well-regarded security expert who’s been helping vulnerable populations protect themselves from surveillance has a new startup, called Safety Sync Group, which offers this kind of service. 

    Jessica Hyde, a forensic investigator with experience in the public and private sectors, has her own startup called Hexordia, and offers to investigate suspected hacks. 

    Mobile cybersecurity company Lookout, which has experience analyzing government spyware from around the world, has an online form that allows people to reach out for help to investigate cyberattacks involving malware, device compromise, and more. The company’s threat intelligence and forensics teams may then get involved.  

    Then, there’s Costin Raiu, who heads TLPBLACK, a small team of security researchers who used to work at Kaspersky’s Global Research and Analysis Group, or GReAT. Raiu was the unit’s head when his team discovered sophisticated cyberattacks from elite government hacking teams from the United States, Russia, Iran, and other countries. Raiu told TechCrunch that people who suspect they’ve been hacked can email him directly.

    Investigation

    What happens next depends on who you go to for help. 

    Generally speaking, the organization you reach out to may want to do an initial forensic check by looking at a diagnostic report file that you can create on your device, which you can share with the investigators remotely. At this point, this doesn’t require you to hand over your device to anyone. 

    This first step may be able to detect signs of targeting or even infection. It may also turn out nothing. In both cases, the investigators may want to dig deeper, which will require you to send in a full backup of your device, or even your actual device. At that point, the investigators will do their work, which may take time because modern government spyware attempts to hide and delete its tracks, and will tell you what happened. 

    Unfortunately, modern spyware may not leave any traces. The modus operandi these days, according to Hassan Selmi, who leads the incident response team at Access Now’s Digital Security Helpline, is a “smash and grab” strategy, meaning that once spyware infects the target device, it steals as much data as it can, and then tries to remove any trace and uninstall itself. This is assumed as the spyware makers trying to protect their product and hide its activity from investigators and researchers.  

    If you are a journalist, a dissident, an academic, a human rights activist, the groups who help you may ask if you want to publicize the fact that you were attacked, but you’re not required to do so. They will be happy to help you without taking public credit for it. There may be good reasons to come out, though: To denounce the fact that a government targeted you, which may have the side effect of warning others like you of the dangers of spyware; or to expose a spyware company by showing that their customers are abusing their technology. 

    We hope you never get one of these notifications. But we also hope that, if you do, you find this guide useful. Stay safe out there.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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  • Meet the team that hunts government spyware

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    For more than a decade, dozens of journalists and human rights activists have been targeted and hacked by governments all over the world. Cops and spies in Ethiopia, Greece, Hungary, India, Mexico, Poland, Saudi Arabia, and United Arab Emirates, among others, have used sophisticated spyware to compromise the phones of these victims, who at times have also faced real-world violence being intimidated, harassed, and in extreme cases, even murdered.

    In the last few years, in the fight to protect these higher-risk communities, a team of a dozen digital security experts, mostly based in Costa Rica, Manila, and Tunisia, among other places, have played a key role. They work for the New York-headquartered nonprofit Access Now, specifically its Digital Security Helpline. 

    Their mission is to be the team of people who journalists, human rights defenders, and dissidents can go to if they suspect they’ve been hacked, such as with mercenary spyware made by companies like NSO Group, Intellexa, or Paragon. 

    “The idea is to provide this 24/7 service to civil society and journalists so they can reach out whenever they have… a cybersecurity incident,” Hassen Selmi, who leads the incident response team at the Helpline, told TechCrunch. 

    According to Bill Marczak, a senior researcher at the University of Toronto’s Citizen Lab who has been investigating spyware for almost 15 years, Access Now’s Helpline is a “frontline resource” for journalists and others who may have been targeted or hacked with spyware.

    The helpline has become a critical funnel for victims. So much so that when Apple sends its users a so-called “threat notification” alerting them that they have been targeted with mercenary spyware, the tech giant has long directed victims to Access Now’s investigators. 

    In speaking with TechCrunch, Selmi described a scenario where someone gets one of these threat notifications, and where Access Now can help victims.

    “Having someone who could explain it to them, tell them what they should do, what they should not do, what this means… This is a big relief for them,” said Selmi. 

    According to several digital rights experts who have investigated spyware cases and previously spoke with TechCrunch, Apple is generally taking the right approach, even if the optics look like a trillion-dollar tech giant offloading its responsibility to a small team of nonprofit workers. 

    Being mentioned by Apple in the notifications, said Selmi, was “one of the biggest milestones” for the helpline.

    Selmi and his colleagues now look into about 1,000 cases of suspected government spyware attacks per year. Around half of those cases turn into actual investigations, and only around 5% of them, around 25, result in a confirmed case of spyware infection, according to Mohammed Al-Maskati, the helpline’s director.

    When Selmi started doing this work in 2014, Access Now were only investigating around 20 cases of suspected spyware attacks per month. 

    At the time, there were three or four people working in each timezone in Costa Rica, Manila, and Tunisia, locations that allowed them to have someone online throughout the whole day. The team isn’t that much bigger now, with fewer than 15 people working for the helpline. The helpline has more people in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, and Sub-Saharan region, given that these are hotspots for spyware cases, according to Selmi.  

    The increase in cases, Selmi explained, is due to several circumstances. For one, the helpline is now more well known, so it attracts more people. Then, with government spyware going global and becoming more available, there are potentially more cases of abuse. Finally, the helpline team has done more outreach to potentially targeted populations, finding cases of abuse they may not have found otherwise. 

    Contact Us

    Have you received a notification from Apple, Google, or WhatsApp about being targeted with spyware? Or do you have information about spyware makers? We would love to hear from you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email.

    When someone contacts the helpline, Selmi told TechCrunch, its investigators first acknowledge receipt, then they do a first check to see if the person who contacted them is within the organization’s mandate, meaning if they are part of civil society — and not, for example, a business executive or lawmaker. Then, the investigators assess the case in triage. If a case is prioritized, the investigators ask questions, such as why the person believes they were targeted (if there was no notification), and what device they own, which helps to establish what kind of information the investigators may need to collect from the victim’s device.

    After an initial, limited check of the device performed remotely over the internet, the helpline’s handlers and investigators may ask the victim to send more data, such as a full backup of their device, to do a more thorough analysis examining for signs of intrusions. 

    “For each known kind of exploit that has been used in the last five years, we have a process on how to check that exploit,” said Selmi, referring to known hacking techniques. 

    “We know more or less what is normal, what is not,” said Selmi.

    The Access Now handlers, who manage communication and often speak the victim’s language, will also give the victim advice on what to do, such as whether to get another device, or take other precautions. 

    Every case that the nonprofit looks into is unique. “It’s different from person to person, from culture to culture,” Selmi told TechCrunch. “I think we should do more research, get more people on board — not just technical people — to know how to deal with these kinds of victims.”

    Selmi said that the helpline has also been supporting similar investigative teams in some regions of the world, sharing documentation, knowledge, and tools, as part of a coalition called CiviCERT, a global network of organizations that can help members of civil society who suspect they were targeted with spyware. 

    Selmi said this network has also helped to reach journalists and others in places where otherwise they could not get to. 

    “No matter where they are, [victims] have people who could talk to and report to,” Selmi told TechCrunch. “Having these people talk their language and know their context helped a lot.”

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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  • Here’s the tech powering ICE’s deportation crackdown  | TechCrunch

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    President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during last year’s presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. 

    In his first eight months in office, that promise turned into around 350,000 deportations, a figure that includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE (around 200,000), Customs and Border Protection (more than 132,000), and almost 18,000 self-deportations, according to CNN.  

    ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass deportation campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented immigrants. To aid its efforts, ICE has at its disposal several technologies capable of identifying and surveilling individuals and communities.

    Here is a recap of some of the technology that ICE has in its digital arsenal. 

    Clearview AI facial recognition

    Clearview AI is perhaps the most well-known facial-recognition company today. For years, the company promised to be able to identify any face by searching through a large database of photos it had scraped from the internet. 

    On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE has signed a contract with the company to support its law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers.” 

    According to a government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million. 

    ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI in the last couple of years. In September 2024, the agency purchased “forensic software” from the company, a deal worth $1.1 million. The year before, ICE paid Clearview AI nearly $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”

    Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment. 

    Paragon phone spyware

    Contact Us

    Do you have more information about ICE and the technology it uses? We would love to learn how this affects you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

    In September 2024, ICE signed a contract worth $2 million with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order,” putting the contract under review to make sure it complied with an executive order on the government’s use of commercial spyware. 

    Because of that order, for nearly a year, the contract remained in limbo. Then, last week, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, effectively reactivating the contract. 

    At this point, the status of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in practice is unclear.  

    The records entry from last week said that the contract with Paragon is for “a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.” Practically speaking, unless the hardware installation and training were done last year, it may take some time for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and running.

    It’s also unclear if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, an agency whose investigations are not limited to immigration, but also cover online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.

    Paragon has long tried to portray itself as an “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, and now has to decide if it’s ethical to work with Trump’s ICE. A lot has happened to Paragon in the last year. In December, American private equity giant AE Industrial purchased Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity company RedLattice, according to Israeli tech news site Calcalist.

    In a sign that the merger may have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were referred to RedLattice’s new vice president of marketing and communications Jennifer Iras. 

    RedLattice’s Iras did not respond to a request for comment for this article, nor for last week’s article.

    In the last few months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spyware scandal in Italy, where the government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon cut ties with Italy’s intelligence agencies. 

    Phone hacking and unlocking technology

    In mid-September, ICE’s law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations signed a contract with Magnet Forensics for $3 million.

    This contract is specifically for software licenses so that Homeland Security Investigations agents can “recover digital evidence, process multiple devices” and “generate forensic reports,” according to the contract description.

    Magnet is the current maker of the phone hacking and unlocking devices known as Graykey. These devices essentially give law enforcement agents the ability to connect a locked phone to them, and be able to unlock it and access the data inside of them. 

    Magnet Forensics, which merged with Graykey makers Grayshift in 2023, did not respond to a request for comment.

    For years, ICE has used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. 

    In 2022, two non-profits obtained documents via Freedom of Information Act requests, which revealed that ICE performed more than 1.2 million searches over seven months using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check the background information of migrants.   

    A year later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate migrants before they even committed a crime, a program that a critic said enabled “mass surveillance.”

    According to public records, LexisNexis currently provides ICE “with a law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations.” 

    This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service. 

    LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman told TechCrunch that ICE has used the company’s product “data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations.”

    “Our commitment is to support the responsible and ethical use of data, in full compliance with laws and regulations, and for the protection of all residents of the United States,” said Richman, who added that LexisNexis “partners with more than 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies across the United States to advance public safety and security.” 

    Surveillance giant Palantir

    Data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The biggest contract, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called “Investigative Case Management,” or ICM.

    The contract for ICM goes back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million deal with ICE. The Peter Thiel-founded company’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. 

    Earlier this year, 404 Media, which has reported extensively on the technology powering Trump’s deportation efforts, and particularly Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed details of how the ICM database works. The tech news site reported that it saw a recent version of the database, which allows ICE to filter people based on their immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more. 

    According to 404 Media, “a source familiar with the database” said it is made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of data and that it can build reports that show, for example, people who are on a specific type of visa who came into the country at a specific port of entry, who came from a specific country, and who have a specific hair color (or any number of hundreds of data points).” 

    The tool, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial enough that sources within the company leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki where Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE. 

    Palantir is also developing a tool called “ImmigrationOS,” according to a contract worth $30 million revealed by Business Insider. 

    ImmigrationOS is said to be designed to streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” give “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visa, according to a document first reported on by Wired.

    First published on September 13, and updated on September 18 to include Magnet Forensics’ new contract.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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  • Here’s the tech powering ICE’s deportation crackdown  | TechCrunch

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    President Donald Trump made countering immigration one of his flagship issues during last year’s presidential campaign, promising an unprecedented number of deportations. 

    In his first eight months in office, that promise turned into around 350,000 deportations, a figure that includes deportations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (around 200,000), Customs and Border Protection (more than 132,000), and almost 18,000 self-deportations, according to CNN.  

    ICE has taken center stage in Trump’s mass deportation campaign, raiding homes, workplaces, and public parks in search of undocumented immigrants. To aid its efforts, the ICE has at its disposal several technologies capable of identifying and surveilling individuals and communities.

    Here is a recap of some of the technology that ICE has in its digital arsenal. 

    Clearview AI facial recognition

    Clearview AI is perhaps the most well-known facial recognition company today. For years, the company promised to be able to identify any face by searching through a large database of photos it had scraped from the internet. 

    On Monday, 404 Media reported that ICE has signed a contract with the company to support its law enforcement arm Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), “with capabilities of identifying victims and offenders in child sexual exploitation cases and assaults against law enforcement officers.” 

    According to a government procurement database, the contract signed last week is worth $3.75 million. 

    ICE has had other contracts with Clearview AI in the last couple of years. In September 2024, the agency purchased “forensic software” from the company, a deal worth $1.1 million. The year before, ICE paid Clearview AI nearly $800,000 for “facial recognition enterprise licenses.”

    Clearview AI did not respond to a request for comment. 

    Contact Us

    Do you have more information about ICE and the technology it uses? We would love to learn how this affects you. From a non-work device, you can contact Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai securely on Signal at +1 917 257 1382, or via Telegram and Keybase @lorenzofb, or email. You also can contact TechCrunch via SecureDrop.

    Paragon phone spyware

    In September 2024, ICE signed a contract worth $2 million with Israeli spyware maker Paragon Solutions. Almost immediately, the Biden administration issued a “stop work order,” putting the contract under review to make sure it complied with an executive order on the government’s use of commercial spyware. 

    Because of that order, for nearly a year, the contract remained in limbo. Then, last week, the Trump administration lifted the stop work order, effectively reactivating the contract. 

    At this point, it’s unclear what’s the status of Paragon’s relationship with ICE in practice. 

    The records entry from last week said that the contract with Parago is for “a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training.” Practically speaking, unless the hardware installation and training were done last year, it may take some time for ICE to have Paragon’s system up and running.

    It’s also unclear if the spyware will be used by ICE or HSI, an agency whose investigations are not limited to immigration, but also cover online child sexual exploitation, human trafficking, financial fraud, and more.

    Paragon has long tried to portray itself as an “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, and now has to decide if it’s ethical to work with Trump’s ICE. A lot has happened to Paragon in the last year. In December, American private equity giant AE Industrial purchased Paragon, with a plan to merge it with cybersecurity company Red Lattice, according to Israeli tech news site Calcalist.

    In a sign that the merger may have taken place, when TechCrunch reached out to Paragon for comment on the reactivation of the ICE contract last week, we were referred to RedLattice’s new vice president of marketing and communications Jennifer Iras. 

    RedLattice’s Iras did not respond to a request for comment for this article, nor for last week’s article.

    In the last few months, Paragon has been ensnared in a spyware scandal in Italy, where the government has been accused of spying on journalists and immigration activists. In response, Paragon cut ties with Italy’s intelligence agencies. 

    For years, ICE has used the legal research and public records data broker LexisNexis to support its investigations. 

    In 2022, two non-profits obtained documents via Freedom of Information Act requests, which revealed that ICE performed more than 1.2 million searches over seven months using a tool called Accurint Virtual Crime Center. ICE used the tool to check the background information of migrants.   

    A year later, The Intercept revealed that ICE was using LexisNexis to detect suspicious activity and investigate migrants before they even committed a crime, a program that a critic said enabled “mass surveillance.”

    According to public records, LexisNexis currently provides ICE “with a law enforcement investigative database subscription (LEIDS) which allows access to public records and commercial data to support criminal investigations.” 

    This year, ICE has paid $4.7 million to subscribe to the service. 

    LexisNexis spokesperson Jennifer Richman told TechCrunch that ICE has used the company’s product “data and analytics solutions for decades, across several administrations.”

    “Our commitment is to support the responsible and ethical use of data, in full compliance with laws and regulations, and for the protection of all residents of the United States,” said Richman, who added that LexisNexis “partners with more than 7,500 federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial agencies across the United States to advance public safety and security.” 

    Surveillance giant Palantir

    Data analytics and surveillance technology giant Palantir has signed several contracts with ICE in the last year. The biggest contract, worth $18.5 million from September 2024, is for a database system called “Investigative Case Management,” or ICM.

    The contract for ICM goes back to 2022, when Palantir signed a $95.9 million deal with Palantir. The Peter Thiel-founded company’s relationship with ICE dates back to the early 2010s. 

    Earlier this year, 404 Media, which has reported extensively on the technology powering Trump’s deportation efforts, and particularly Palantir’s relationship with ICE, revealed details of how the ICM database works. The tech news site reported that it saw a recent version of the database, which allows ICE to filter people based on their immigration status, physical characteristics, criminal affiliation, location data, and more. 

    404 Media cited “a source familiar with the database,” who said it is made up of ‘tables upon tables’ of data and that it can build reports that show, for example, people who are on a specific type of visa who came into the country at a specific port of entry, who came from a specific country, and who have a specific hair color (or any number of hundreds of data points).” 

    The tool, and Palantir’s relationship with ICE, was controversial enough that sources within the company leaked to 404 Media an internal wiki where Palantir justifies working with Trump’s ICE. 

    Palantir is also developing a tool called “ImmigrationOS,” according to a contract worth $30 million revealed by Business Insider. 
    ImmigrationOS is said to be designed to streamline the “selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens,” give “near real-time visibility” into self-deportations, and track people overstaying their visa, according to a document first reported on by Wired.

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    Lorenzo Franceschi-Bicchierai

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