According to Wired,ICE has asked American companies to sell their ad-tech and big-data capabilities to the federal investigators. This Orwellian request underscores a hard-line anti-immigration agency attempting to enlist the profit instincts of the ultra-rich in order to dramatically expand its domestic surveillance capacity.
They wrote:
The entry appears to be the first time that the term “ad tech” has appeared in a request for information, contract solicitation, or contract justification posted by ICE in the Federal Registry, according to searches by WIRED. The request underscores how tools originally developed for digital advertising and other commercial purposes are increasingly being considered for use by the government for law enforcement and surveillance.
This becomes even more chilling as this comes in the same week that the UK’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has also made moves to seek public consent for incorporating AI and tech to enable the state to have eyes on citizens ‘at all times’.
New: Amid the escalating situation in Minneapolis, ICE posted in the Federal Register asking companies to provide info about “commercial Big Data and Ad Tech” products that would “directly support investigations activities.” Link in reply pic.twitter.com/HBJBJWP5HG
— Caroline Haskins (@car0linehaskins) January 24, 2026
ICE and big data
You’d be forgiven if “ad tech” and “big data” sound like meaningless jargon. That’s precisely the point: ICE appears to be relying on technical obfuscation to disguise the shadiness of its request, betting it would slip through unnoticed by MAGA-aligned Americans. This latest request from the hostile, aggressive, and violence ICE federal agents is basically a tech-y way of saying: ‘Hey millionaires and billionaires who want to make an easy buck – sell the government your ad tech and big data so we can track everyone, everywhere, at all times’.
When you also factor in the endless cookie requests from sites, with permission requests for tracking location and our search histories, it becomes all the more terrifying.
Wired further referred to Palantir and its ‘Gotham’ tool, reminding us that this is increasingly becoming more common in state infrastructure. We wrote recently on the pervasive tools that billionaires are more than happy to create for the State and the futile conflict of interest at play.
The Canary’s Joe Glenton wrote:
In October 2025, the New Republic showed how ICE was building a social media tracking team. This comes as the American Immigration Council highlighted Palantir’s long history of developing surveillance tools — like ‘Gotham,’ ‘Falcon,’ and ‘Foundry’—for ICE and other branches of the US security apparatus. These are contributing directly to the war on immigrants and refugees in Trump’s America.
Palantir is complicit in the Israeli genocide in Gaza. Disturbingly, the company also has a hand in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), as the supplier of data systems. Oh, there’s also a high-stakes military contract, worth GBP 750 million, awarded to Palantir by Keir Starmer’s Labour government.
Palantir operates wherever there is pain and suppression, and does so purely for profit. All the while, it claims that it only builds the tools, but doesn’t make the rules. It’s pervasive presence in everything from genocide, to healthcare to violent immigration crackdowns, should disturb us all.
The optics are grim and unavoidable: after rigging our democracies, deregulating our industries, hollowing out essential services, and extracting obscene profits from nearly every aspect of life, billionaires are now being invited to help police ordinary citizens.
Great. The federal government wants to weaponize our adtech data (location history, search history, demographics, and behavioral patterns) against us to carry out investigations.
Everyone’s about to learn how bad those adtech monopolies really are. https://t.co/8oX07H52ti pic.twitter.com/TXMyYYwvbq
— Kyle Jacobs-Morse (@Kyle_A_Morse) January 25, 2026
‘Nothing to see here, folks’, as this X account points out:
TLDR; ICE literally wants to get your data in the easiest way possible without you knowing. By acquiring from a company willing to selling it, through ad space, or while you’re scrolling and unaware. https://t.co/9BgLMyU33O
— M4RIEPA (@m4riepa) January 25, 2026
This X account highlights the urgency of taking decisive action to ensure this never happens again. Although, ‘never again’ never seems to last, as the last two years have taught us all.
When democrats win in 2028, they better blacklist every company that responds to this RFI https://t.co/K6xCshBAFp
— Nik Marda (@nrmarda) January 25, 2026
Why this matters to the UK
It has always been the case, due to our close working relationship with the US, that the UK is only ever a few steps behind the Yanks. Just this last week we reported on Shabana Mahmood’s desires to incorporate AI and technology into the UK’s criminal justice system. This would ensure that the State has eyes on all citizens at all times, optimising and regulating human behaviour due to the psychological impact of feeling constantly ‘watched’.
We wrote:
The theory this rests on is true; people change their behavior when they’re under watch. Mahmood now appears to want to monitor us all the time. This Orwellian overreach of the state would seek to control how we act and strip away our right to privacy. The impact this would also have on our court system, and the legal doctrine of ‘innocent until proven guilty’ is also deeply concerning. And even more worryingly, she isn’t afraid to hide it suggesting a confidence in being able to achieve it.
Whether that purview will also monitor the behaviour of billionaires and big corporations in the country remains to be seen. Highly doubt their funders would like that, though.
This latest news from the US unfortunately appears to signal that the State is planning to unashamedly team up with those billionaires and big corporations in this increasingly aggressive class war. Consequently, the masses must have our eyes open to oppressive moves by the state. Reject this grave invasion of privacy and unite now against the far right – because losing this class war is exactly what they’re counting on.
We are more than cash cows, and we refuse to let the super-rich harvest us and turn our lives into data for state surveillance.
Featured image via the Canary
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