ICE Is Buying a Tool to Track Hundreds of Millions of Phones, Without Warrants
- Guest Writer
- Nov 4
- 4 min read
by Olga Lautman,
Republished from Dilate Magazine
Documents reviewed by 404 Media reveal that ICE is purchasing access to a powerful surveillance tool that harvests billions of pieces of location data daily from hundreds of millions of phones. This move reverses Biden-era curbs and marks a dramatic expansion of ICE’s ability to track people inside the U.S. without a warrant.
The contract has been awarded to PenLink, a little-known surveillance company headquartered in Nebraska that has quietly spent decades perfecting tools for geolocation data mining, mass communications interception, and real-time tracking, operating largely outside public scrutiny while steadily expanding its reach into the law enforcement and intelligence space.
This is not ICE’s first engagement with the company: in 2018, the agency signed a $2.4 million contract with PenLink, granting it access to the firm’s proprietary telecommunications analysis and intercept software suite, which was used to collect and analyze massive amounts of internet and social media communications data in real time. ICE has now deliberately selected PenLink over its competitors once again because it offers a comprehensive “all-in-one” platform capable of merging immense repositories of location data with sophisticated social media monitoring capabilities, thereby giving the agency an unprecedented ability to track, map, and analyze individuals’ movements and networks. In doing so, ICE is not simply reverting to its previous practice of warrantless location tracking; it is escalating this surveillance to a level of precision and integration that blurs the line between targeted investigation and dragnet monitoring.
[In recent years], the Department of Homeland Security had suspended the purchase of commercial location data after the Inspector General found the agency had violated federal law, but that temporary safeguard has now been dismantled. Now, federal agencies are resurrecting these programs with renewed vigor, tapping into massive datasets assembled by surveillance contractors that systematically harvest and monetize the movements of hundreds of millions of people through their smartphones, effectively creating a parallel data-acquisition pipeline that allows federal agencies to sidestep judicial oversight and bypass the warrant requirements that govern direct requests to telecommunications providers.
The threat posed by these capabilities is very real and happening now. These datasets can locate an individual within a single city block, construct detailed social graphs based on patterns of physical proximity, and generate real-time alerts when specific targets move, meet, or communicate. ICE has already tested similar analytical systems to assign “gang membership” through algorithmic inference — a program so deeply flawed that it infamously misidentified toddlers as gang members. . . These same technologies are being scaled up and turned loose on entire communities, dramatically increasing their potential for error, abuse, and political weaponization.
The latest developments around ICE’s surveillance powers should be setting off alarms everywhere. [The U.S. government] is quietly building the machinery of a domestic surveillance state using tools that, so far, have faced almost no scrutiny. Under the banner of “efficiency,” DOGE quietly began consolidating massive amounts of federal data. It functioned as a bureaucratic Trojan horse, allowing [the government] to merge agency datasets, centralize information flows, and bypass the oversight mechanisms that typically govern intelligence operations.
That initial framework is now being supercharged. ICE is being armed with a growing list of commercial surveillance tools: Graphite, an invasive spyware platform that can penetrate Signal and turn your phone into a surveillance tool using the camera and microphone; PenLink, which merges mass location tracking with social media monitoring; Flock’s license plate reader network; Clearview AI’s facial recognition database; and Palantir’s powerful data-integration and analysis systems. These are just a few examples. Together, they can weave DOGE’s centralized data stores with private-sector capabilities into a single, flexible, and largely unaccountable surveillance apparatus.
This is exactly how Russia built its surveillance state. It began with the quiet centralization of telecommunications data, followed by the rollout of SORM, which gave the government mass interception and geolocation powers, and ended with the targeted use of those capabilities against political opponents, journalists, and civil society. Immigrants, ethnic minorities, and marginalized groups were the first targets—people with little power to resist. Once the system was normalized, the net widened, and tools designed for “security” quickly became instruments of political control.
And [our government] is following the same blueprint. Immigrants are the test case, but the surveillance architecture being built is meant to reach far beyond them. ICE is being transformed into a personal security force equipped with spyware, dragnet tracking, and powers that bypass the courts and Congress. This is a deliberate, methodical effort to fuse state power with commercial surveillance markets, creating a system that operates with no transparency or accountability.
Russia offers a chilling preview of where this leads. Once surveillance infrastructure is in place, legal limits become irrelevant. The tools designed for “security” end up targeting opposition politicians, journalists, NGOs, and eventually ordinary citizens. If this trajectory continues unchecked, the same will happen here.
What We Can Do
This story should be front-page news, but it isn’t. So it is up to us to make noise.
Spread this story widely. Most Americans have no idea ICE is buying tools that let them track phones in real time without warrants.
Contact your representatives in Congress and at the state level. Demand hearings, oversight, and legal restrictions on warrantless location tracking.
Support watchdog groups like the ACLU, EFF, and Citizen Lab that investigate these surveillance programs.
Harden your devices: keep phones updated, consider Lockdown Mode, and reduce app location sharing.
References/Links:
Author: Olga Lautman
Olga Lautman is a researcher and analyst, a Russian hybrid war Senior fellow, and a Center for European Policy Analysis Senior Investigative Researcher at the Institute for European Integrity, as well as the Co-Founder & Director of the Syria Ukraine Network. She is also also the creator and co-host of Kremlin File podcast series, which features expert discussions on the Kremlin’s internal affairs, global operations, and tactics used from their hybrid warfare toolkit to destabilize Western democracies. For investigative tips, email: innam07@proton.me. Find her on Bluesky, Substack, and more: https://linktr.ee/olgalautman.
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