ICE Is Paying a Controversial AI Firm to Hide the Identities of Agents

U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement is launching a new “Doxing Mitigation Initiative” using AI to help ICE personnel keep their identities hidden from the public, according to an email addressed to all agency employees on Monday.

The memo, signed by Acting ICE Director David Venturella and leaked to The Intercept by ICE employees, identifies a company called ZeroFox as the tech firm behind the initiative. The communication describes ZeroFox as “a modernized protective technology solution designed to strengthen safeguards for our most valuable resource: You and your families.”

The Department of Homeland Security, ICE’s parent agency, quietly entered a
$15 million contract
with ZeroFox in July for software licenses to support ICE operations and investigations, according to public procurement records. The records indicate that ZeroFox will provide services for the Office of Intelligence at ICE’s
Homeland Security Investigations
division.

ZeroFox develops AI-driven software aimed at stopping data leaks across social media and the dark web, according to
its website
. “ZeroFox never stops finding, mapping, and monitoring your digital presence,” the company vows. It’s not clear from the contract or the internal email how, precisely, the new initiative will function, and neither ICE nor ZeroFox responded to requests for comment.

“It sounds like inside surveillance,” said an ICE official who spoke to The Intercept on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.

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ZeroFox has used its tech in the past to
identify and categorize people
engaged in political activism, including during public unrest in Baltimore after the 2015 police killing of Freddie Gray and the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

The ICE official expressed concern that ZeroFox tech could now be used to weed out
whistleblowers and critics

of the Trump a