ICE Uses Facebook Data To Find and Track Immigrants, Internal Emails Show (theintercept.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Intercept: ICE, the federal agency tasked with Trump's program of mass deportation, uses backend Facebook data to locate and track immigrants that it is working to round up, according to a string of emails and documents obtained by The Intercept through a public records request. The hunt for one particular immigrant in New Mexico provides a rare window into how ICE agents use social media and powerful data analytics tools to find suspects. In February and March of 2017, several ICE agents were in communication with a detective from Las Cruces, New Mexico, to find information about a particular person. They were ultimately able to obtain backend Facebook data revealing a log of when the account was accessed and the IP addresses corresponding to each login. Lea Whitis, an agent with Homeland Security Investigations, the investigative arm of ICE, emailed the team a "Facebook Business Record" revealing the suspect's phone number and the locations of each login into his account during a date range. Law enforcement agents routinely use bank, telephone, and internet records for investigations, but the extent to which ICE uses social media is not well known.

Comments

Is this a surprise to anyone?

[waspleg]

It has billions of users. Of course law enforcement is going to use it.

Re:Is this a surprise to anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

i would probably google using the facebook.com tag specification. i mean google probably has better records on facebook than facebook.

Law enforcement tracks law breakers

[Anonymous Coward]

"Federal immigration officials enforce federal immigration law."

This only seems to be a"controversy" because it hurts Democrat electoral chances...

Re:Law enforcement tracks law breakers

[tsqr]

Yes that's correct, compassion for people who committed a minor civil violation in order to come here and help their families.

Well, that depends upon how they "come here".

The civil violation is "unlawful presence", and can come about a number of ways, such as illegal entry or overstaying a visa.

Illegal entry, aka, border jumping, is most definitely a criminal -- not civil -- offense that carries a penalty of not more than 6 months in prison, and a fine of up to $250.

There should be a -1 Uniformed Partisanship moderation.

I agree with you on that one.

Re:Law enforcement tracks law breakers

[bobbied]

Yes that's correct, compassion for people who committed a minor civil violation in order to come here and help their families is purely a political issue and ther's no moral authority behind it. And it was entirely invented by the Democrats. It's not that it used to be a bi-partisan issue supported by presidents from both parties and then Republicans threw immigrants under the bus in order to appeal to the more extreme part of their base. [/sarcasm]

Well now, hit a nerve have I?

Why do you somehow think your side in this debate is the ONLY one with compassion for these people? Your assumption is wrong and shows your political bias and an active unwillingness to actually SOLVE the problem. You don't want a solution, you want the election issue to campaign on.

I think if you where to really discuss this with the opposing party, you'd find them wiling to deal with this issue in a fair and compassionate way. However, you have pretty much cut off all possible avenues of discussion with your "Only we have Moral high ground" perspective that precludes any solution except yours from consideration. This has all the hallmarks of a demagogue worthy campaign issue which has more value to you unsolved. You don't want to solve this, you want to run on it.

Re:Law enforcement tracks law breakers

[bobbied]

Yep, I can...

FIRST - Stop as much illegal immigration and encourage illegals to self deport by doing the following things:

1. Implement E-Verify nation wide and require it be followed by all employers. Follow up that requirement with strict enforcement. If you are not a citizen and don't have a work visa, you don't work here.

2. Visa exit tracking - Implement tracking of visa entries AND exits so we know who's here that have overstayed their visas. Step up enforcement of visa overstays.

3. Deport Criminals - Start deporting illegal immigrants who commit felonies after they are done with their prison time.

4. No access Social Services - Eliminate ALL social services for illegal immigrants including welfare, public education systems (including college).

5. Build the wall - Maybe not a physical wall, but a practical one. Protect our borders.

6. End "born here" citizenship for children of illegals. Make it necessary for at least one parent to be here legally before we confer US citizenship on a child.

SECOND - After the above are in place and starting to work....

1. Implement/Expand a "guest worker" visa program which allows foreign nationals to serve in seasonal labor. Make it easy to get such a visa, but make it necessary to apply for and receive it in your home country.

2. For those with existing DACA exemptions, citizenship is available after an extended wait of at least a decade if they stay here. If they wish, they will be given preferential treatment for guest worker permits. However, if they self deport, they will be able to immediately apply for citizenship and a guest worker permit with preferential treatment (the front of the line).

3. Open a path to citizenship for LEGAL immigrants based on merit. Preference given to immigrants with H1b's then seasonal work permits followed by other immigrants who apply. But, we need to end the visa lottery and chain migration beyond immediate family (To include parents, children and siblings only).

Any means possible

[nwaack]

Good. They should use any means possible to find these law breakers. Why the hell should we have to put up with this rampant illegal immigration? Canada has even stricter immigration laws but no one says boo about that.

Re:Any means possible

[edtice1559]

And Australia even more strict that that. More to the point, though, using Facebook for "round ups" is something we could probably debate. But when ICE is looking for a *particular* person, it's almost always the case that said individual has committed some sort of crime above and beyond any immigration status issue. At that point, they're just another fugitive.

Re:Any means possible

[jwhyche]

Yup, labeled a troll. Typical way SJW, aka snowflakes, deal with speech they don't agree with. They would rather silence you than debate you on the merits of their beliefs.

Re:Any means possible

[jwhyche]

Damn, I love it when they prove my point for me.

Re:ICE = WMD

[Z80a]

Legal immigrants.

Re:wow

[BlueStrat]

Sort of like how the Israelis "had it in" for people who worked as staff at concentration camps ?

None of the people in media and government had any real problem with what FB did while Democrats used FB data the same exact way until it came out that the Trump campaign might have benefited from FB data.

Now, suddenly, it's torches, pitchforks, and Nazi references.

The hypocrisy would be hilariously funny if it was not so frighteningly fascist.

Strat

We continue to treat immigrants well

[SuperKendall]

Most people support immigrants anywhere I've been in the U.S.

Just as most people I've seen do not support ILLEGAL ALIENS. They are not immigrants; they are criminals, who have screwed over REAL immigrants that have been trying to come here legally but we don't allow very many because we already have so many people here illegally.

Why should criminals be treated with any respect whatsoever? They are taking the place of immigrants.

Re:We continue to treat immigrants well

[AHuxley]

Entering a nation without been allowed to enter that nation is illegal.
Normal people have documents and line up outside an embassy.
They enter anther nation legal and work, study.
Normal people ask another nation if they can move in and stay.
Nations then look over that persons documents and grant that request.
The person is then legal in another nation.
Just wondering in and taking gov support services, jobs, using fake documents, using education, health care is illegal.

Re:We continue to treat immigrants well

[Obfuscant]

Immigration violations are mostly civil offenses.

You are wrong. 8 U.S. Code Section 1325 "Improper entry by alien" makes it a criminal offense. Where did you get the idea that it wasn't a crime?

Re:Slashdot

[tsqr]

Putin didn't try to 'steal' the election, it was instead Cambridge Analytica, with the help of *Facebook*, that offered to do it for a price, and of course Trump and his team accepted.

Yeah, during the primaries. You know, that period of time when what's-her-name was busy stealing her party's nomination from that crazy old coot the young kids were so in love with.

Re:wow

[knorthern knight]

> The media and government might well have had a problem if the
> Democrats had done the same thing. But they didn't, so they didn't.

Carol Davidsen, Obama's digital campaign manager for 2012 disagrees with you. She spoke about this at a TED TALK in 2015. The interesting part begins at 19 minutes into the video https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

In her own words...
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but we were actually able to ingest the entire social network, social network of the US that's on Facebook, which is most people. Where this gets complicated is... that freaked Facebook out... right? So they cut off the feature. Well the Republicans never built an app to do that. So the data is out there. You can't take it back... right? The Democrats have this information, so when they look at a voter file ansd someone comes to them, they can immediately be like "Oh, here are all the other people they know. And here are people they can help us persuade, because they're really good friends with this person".

The Republicans do not have that information and will not get that information... right? I'm a democrat, so maybe I could argue that's a great thing. But really, it's not, in the overall process...right? Like that wasn't thought all the way through and now there's a disadvantage of information that to me seems unfair. But I'm not Facebook, so this is the reality.
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