Key Takeaways: AI becomes a new surveillance tool: ICE’s $5.7M contract for Zignal Labs software marks a major step toward automated social media monitoring on a massive scale.
ICE’s $5.7M contract for Zignal Labs software marks a major step toward automated social media monitoring on a massive scale. Private tech feeds public surveillance: Software once used for PR and marketing analytics now fuels law enforcement intelligence and national security operations.
Software once used for PR and marketing analytics now fuels law enforcement intelligence and national security operations. Algorithms define ‘threats’: AI models scan billions of posts daily, flagging activity without context and blurring the line between public safety and political policing.
AI models scan billions of posts daily, flagging activity without context and blurring the line between public safety and political policing. Oversight fades as automation grows: With opaque models and secret datasets, AI surveillance normalizes constant monitoring while eroding transparency and accountability.
When government surveillance goes digital, it doesn’t just look through your window – it scrolls your feed.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has quietly signed a $5.7M deal for AI-driven social media surveillance software.
The technology, developed by a Silicon Valley firm called Zignal Labs and distributed by Carahsoft Technology, promises to monitor over 8B posts a day.
This isn’t a one-off experiment. It’s a five-year contract, giving ICE’s intelligence unit, Homeland Security Investigations, real-time access to a platform originally built for PR firms and political campaigns.
The same software that once helped brands track hashtags is now being used by law enforcement to find ‘threats.’
What exactly qualifies as a ‘threat,’ of course, is where things get interesting.
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