“ICE Deploys $5.7M AI Surveillance System to Track Millions”, 24 October 2025​

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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.

… 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 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.

… 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.

…David Greene from the Electronic Frontier Foundation explains the stakes: "Automated and AI-powered monitoring tools will give the government the ability to monitor social media for viewpoints it doesn't like on a scale that was never possible with human review alone."...