At the core of the spreading surveillance lies LexisNexis Risk Solutions, whose Accurint tool produces comprehensive dossiers with identifying information, court data, and details of relatives says the piece
Aided by electronic monitoring and data mining companies that extract, aggregate, and sell personal information from tens of thousands of private and public digital databases without the consent of individuals, the Biden administration is expanding the surveillance of immigrants to unprecedented levels—stifling dissent and political organizing and sowing fear among non-citizens and civil rights advocates.
At the core of the spreading surveillance lies LexisNexis Risk Solutions, whose Accurint tool produces comprehensive dossiers with identifying information, court data, and details of relatives, associates, and social media usage of practically all U.S. residents, citizens and non-citizens alike. It also incorporates license plate reader data, which can determine where a person was at various times, and real-time information on county jails’ bookings, which allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to apprehend people upon release.
Though the Biden administration requested an approximately $100 million cut from the fiscal year 2023 to the fiscal year 2024 budget for ICE, an agency denounced for using private contractors to abuse immigrants, both the House and the Senate proposed significant budget increases. If approved, ICE will have its largest budget, at least $9.1 billion, partly to broaden what is already the most extensive surveillance apparatus in U.S. history.
“This mass surveillance program of ICE instills fear and chills organizing political activity,” said Laura Rivera, a senior staff attorney at Just Futures Law, one of the grassroots organizations at the forefront of uncovering ICE’s surveillance network. “It has repercussions in all areas of life from workplaces to religious institutions to schools and homes.”
Other companies have paved the way for LexisNexis Risk Solutions and the taking over of immigration enforcement by surveillance capitalism—or the mining of data to repackage and exploit it for profit without the consent of individuals, shaping their behavior as consumers and, in this case, as non-citizens.
The Canadian information conglomerate Thomson Reuters’ CLEAR tool also aggregates information about practically all U.S. residents—more than 400 million names and records. Though CLEAR contracted with ICE from 2015 to 2021, Thomson Reuters has a current five-year contract with the Department of Homeland Security, which houses ICE, for more than $22 million, although allegedly not for CLEAR. The data collected by CLEAR led to “further human rights abuses,” according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and after years of activists’ pressure, Thomson Reuters signed the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights in 2022.
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