In front of the employee entrance at 26 Federal Plaza, in Manhattan's Civic Center, a member of Rise and Resist holds a sign that says "ICE is Trump's Gestapo" during a protest against the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and its agents for detaining immigrants. Photo: Gina M Randazzo/Zuma Press.
By Bruno Sgarzini – Aug 4, 2025
In the shadows of the US immigration apparatus operates a surveillance machinery that turns every social media post, every message, and every digital interaction into a tool of persecution. To track, map, and deport migrants, the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) uses the services of the private contractor Shadow Dragon, responsible for the SocialNet software dedicated to monitoring over 200 websites, ranging from BlueSky, Discord, Telegram, and Paypal to TikTok.
SocialNet effectively functions as a people tracker, since ICE agents can input an email address, an alias, a name, or a phone number and the platform immediately creates a complete profile based on their interests, friendships, photos, videos, and connections.
“The promotional material available online indicates that SocialNet, the tool from ShadowDragon, can map identities to find connections between them, create maps of suspicious activity, and ‘track a target and the traces they leave in their digital life to find hidden correlations that aid an investigation,’ according to the 404 Media portal.”
The leaked list of platforms (click here to see it in full) that feed this surveillance system reveals the breadth of the spying: Apple, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, TikTok, WhatsApp, PayPal, OnlyFans, Roblox, Chess.com, Instagram, LinkedIn, Medium, Patreon, Rumble, Spotify, TripAdvisor, Yelp, Yahoo, YouTube, Animal Planet, and many others. No digital space remains beyond the reach of state surveillance.
ShadowDragon’s surveillance even reaches the virtual worlds of video games. Jonathan Couch, the company’s chief operating officer and future CEO, stated, “Fortnite is fascinating simply because it allows you to verify if a username is registered on that platform. What other aliases are connected to that username?” Couch detailed other gaming platforms that the company tracks, including Xbox, PlayStation, and Steam, according to an audio shared publicly by Jack Poulson from the transparency organization Tech Inquiry. The executive also highlighted Cash App and what he classified as “emotive websites” where people express their opinions: Yelp and Tripadvisor. “This represents another valuable source of information,” declared Couch.
This information came to light after the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), under the FOIA law, obtained an internal ICE document where the agency claims to have used this software to spy on migrants who are on the deportation list. “ICE analysts conduct investigations based on publicly available information in open domains that extend beyond US cyberspace,” the document states. “This requires ICE to effectively track and investigate criminal elements in order to mitigate the flow of illegal goods and people into the territories and borders of the United States. SocialNet is a subscription service that maps connections on social networks to identify other associated aliases and generate inferences about the lifestyle and physical location of individuals who pose a threat. SocialNet conducts connected searches and visualizes connections to quickly identify identities, relationships, and networks of contacts. SocialNet’s data enhances the Department of Homeland Security’s ability to meet these objectives and its public responsibility through the use of tools with proven results in both physical and cyber investigations of criminal cases and forensic analysis of social networks.”
According to Jeramie Scott, senior advisor and director of the Surveillance Oversight Project at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, “the extensive list of sites and services that ShadowDragon’s SocialNet tool has access to highlights the magnitude to which our data is collected and analyzed for surveillance purposes, both by the government and third parties. SocialNet is just one example of the uncontrolled surveillance ecosystem, lacking transparency and oversight, that allows the government to bypass constitutional and legal protections to access sensitive personal data.” Government records reveal that ShadowDragon maintains lucrative contracts with multiple agencies: the US State Department, the US Army, the US Fish and Wildlife Service, the DEA, and ICE (with which it renewed its contract on February 24 to ensure access to SocialNet).
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Several tech companies have expressed their opposition to these practices. Pinterest, Cash App, and Meta point out that automated data scraping violates their terms of service. Chess.com, for example, also spoke out against this practice in a statement: “we do not allow the use of our users’ personal information without a valid legal basis or without ensuring compliance with applicable laws, even if such information is publicly available.” However, according Sandy MacKay, the vice president of operations of SocialNet, the searches are conducted in real-time and do not store data.
According to Daniel Clemens, CEO of the company, “Clients turn to Shadow Dragon for its ability to identify and analyze previous patterns of behavior and relationships using only public information.” Among the services offered by the company is a tool called OIM Monitor, dedicated to predicting “disturbance and threat incidents.” Shadow Dragon, in one of its promotional materials, also claims that its tools can be used to monitor protests and dissolve them before they happen. “The protesters shouldn’t be surprised when people want to investigate them for making their lives difficult,” said Clemens.
For Michael Kwet, “ShadowDragon is part of a clandestine industry of software companies that exploit what is known as ‘open-source intelligence’ or OSINT, whose work is based on the traces of information that people leave on the internet.”
Shadow Dragon, a spin-off of Clemens’s cybersecurity firm Packet Ninja, has had contracts with ICE since 2022. Its main financier is the Sverica Capital fund. Sverica’s investment pattern reveals a deliberate strategy of building a portfolio oriented toward the US national security complex. The firm was the first institutional investor in Accuvant in 2008, a company it transformed into Optiv Security—one of United States’ leading cybersecurity providers—before selling it to KKR in 2017 for over US $2 billion. Additionally, Sverica invested in Electronic Source Company, an ITAR-registered manufacturer that produces electronic components for critical military programs such as F-35 and F-18 fighter jets, Apache helicopters, and the Patriot missile system. This concentration on companies that serve both defense contractors and domestic intelligence agencies demonstrates how private capital structures and finances contemporary surveillance infrastructure and creates links between commercial interests and state control capabilities.
The use of these cyber-espionage tools by ICE, moreover, is part of the Trump administration’s pressure on its agents to accelerate the deportation of migrants to reach the goal of one million per year. In this context, the US authorities are working on assembling a master database by the companies Palantir and Databricks that would cross-reference information from agencies such as the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Social Security Administration (SSA), and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). “One aim is to cross-reference datasets and leverage access to sensitive SSA systems to effectively cut immigrants off from participating in the economy, which the administration hopes would force them to leave the country,” reported Wired.
They are also using technologies for facial recognition in their controls, AI to monitor the sentiments of people entering and leaving the country based on their social media posts, and even a surveillance system with more than 77,000 cameras from a private company. At the center of this control apparatus are companies, or investment funds, of Trump supporter technologists like Peter Thiel or Marc Andreessen Horowitz, who believe that a minority of modern technocrats should govern society without limits, controls, or democracy.
(Diario Red)
Translation: Orinoco Tribune
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