New details emerge on ICE's crackdown on online critics

Since the beginning of President Donald Trump's second term, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has spent over $525 million on surveillance technologies, including millions in private contracts to "dramatically expand the agency's ability to monitor online critics and potential threats," according to a Wall Street Journal report published on Monday.

The report has revealed more details about the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) emerging surveillance dragnet used to track, unmask, and prosecute critics of ICE, and its chilling effect on Americans' constitutionally protected speech.

Many of the contracts the report cites are part of an initiative headed by ICE's Office of Professional Responsibility where contractors are asked to compile daily reports on potential online threats, including information such as "the poster's name, location, date of birth, workplace, Social Security number, vehicle registration and criminal history when possible," writes the Journal.

This information is collected by monitoring social media sites, public documents, and police reports "to identify and map key relationships of users who have been flagged as a 'threat originator,'" and analyzed via AI-powered software to identify "potential threats before they come to fruition."

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