Let us not forget that the reason Nazi Germany was so great at exporting Jews from the Netherlands was for a large part because of the great databases the Netherlands kept at that time containing religious and ethnic information on its’ population.
It’s not enough to have its agents in streets and schools; ICE now wants to see what data online ads already collect about you. The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement last week issued a Request for Information (RFI) asking data and ad tech brokers how they could help in its mission.
The RFI is not a solicitation for bids. Rather it represents an attempt to conduct market research into the spectrum of data – personal, financial, location, health, and so on – that ICE investigators can source from technology and advertising companies.
“[T]he Government is seeking to understand the current state of Ad Tech compliant and location data services available to federal investigative and operational entities, considering regulatory constraints and privacy expectations of support investigations activities,” the RFI explains.
Issued on Friday, January 23, 2026, one day prior to the shooting of VA nurse Alex Pretti by a federal immigration agent, two weeks after the shooting of Renée Good, and three weeks after the shooting of Keith Porter Jr, the RFI lands amid growing disapproval of ICE tactics and mounting pressure to withhold funding for the agency.
ICE did not immediately respond to a request to elaborate on how it might use ad tech data and to share whether any companies have responded to its invitation.
The RFI follows a similar solicitation published last October for a contractor capable of providing ICE with open source intelligence and social media information to assist the ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) directorate’s Targeting Operations Division – tasked with finding and removing “aliens that pose a threat to public safety or national security.”
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Tom Bowman, policy counsel with the Center for Democracy & Technology’s (CDT) Security & Surveillance Project, told The Register in a phone interview that ICE is attempting to rebrand surveillance as a commercial transaction.
“But that doesn’t make the surveillance any less intrusive or any less constitutionally suspect,” said Bowman. “This inquiry specifically underscores what really is a long-standing problem – that government agencies have been able to sidestep Fourth Amendment protections by purchasing data that would otherwise need a warrant to collect.”
The data derived from ad tech and various technology businesses, said Bowman, can reveal intimate details about people’s lives, including visits to medical facilities and places of worship.
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“Ad tech compliance regimes were never designed to protect people from government surveillance or coercive enforcement,” he said. “Ad tech data is often collected via consent that is meaningless. The data flows are opaque. And then these types of downstream uses are really difficult to control.”
Bowman argues that while there’s been a broad failure to meaningfully regulate data brokers, legislative solutions are possible.
[…]
Source: ICE takes aim at data held by advertising and tech firms • The Register
Robin Edgar
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