The popular data broker LexisNexis began selling face recognition services and personal location data to U.S. Customs and Border Protection late last year, according to contract documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
According to the documents, obtained by the advocacy group Just Futures Law and shared with The Intercept, LexisNexis Risk Solutions began selling surveillance tools to the border enforcement agency in December 2022. The $15.9 million contract includes a broad menu of powerful tools for locating individuals throughout the United States using a vast array of personal data, much of it obtained and used without judicial oversight.
“This contract is mass surveillance in hyperdrive.”
Through LexisNexis, CBP investigators gained a convenient place to centralize, analyze, and search various databases containing enormous volumes of intimate personal information, both public and proprietary.
“This contract is mass surveillance in hyperdrive,” Julie Mao, an attorney and co-founder of Just Futures Law, told The Intercept. “It’s frightening that a rogue agency such as CBP has access to so many powerful technologies at the click of the button. Unfortunately, this is what LexisNexis appears now to be selling to thousands of police forces across the country. It’s now become a one-stop shop for accessing a range of invasive surveillance tools.”
A variety of CBP offices would make use of the surveillance tools, according to the documents. Among them is the U.S. Border Patrol, which would use LexisNexis to “help examine individuals and entities to determine their admissibility to the US. and their proclivity to violate U.S. laws and regulations.”
Among other tools, the contract shows LexisNexis is providing CBP with social media surveillance, access to jail booking data, face recognition and “geolocation analysis & geographic mapping” of cellphones. All this data can be queried in “large volume online batching,” allowing CBP investigators to target broad groups of people and discern “connections among individuals, incidents, activities, and locations,” handily visualized through Google Maps.
CBP declined to comment for this story, and LexisNexis did not respond to an inquiry. Despite the explicit reference to providing “LexisNexis Facial Recognition” in the contract, a fact sheet published by the company online says, “LexisNexis Risk Solutions does not provide the Department of Homeland Security” — CBP’s parent agency — “or US Immigration and Customs Enforcement with license plate images or facial recognition capabilities.”
The contract includes a variety of means for CBP to exploit the cellphones of those it targets. Accurint, a police and counterterror surveillance tool LexisNexis acquired in 2004, allows the agency to do analysis of real-time phone call records and phone geolocation through its “TraX” software.
While it’s unclear how exactly TraX pinpoints its targets, LexisNexis marketing materials cite “cellular providers live pings for geolocation tracking.” These materials also note that TraX incorporates both “call detail records obtained through legal process (i.e. search warrant or court order) and third-party device geolocation information.” A 2023 LexisNexis promotional brochure says, “The LexisNexis Risk Solutions Geolocation Investigative Team offers geolocation analysis and investigative case assistance to law enforcement and public safety customers.”
Any CBP use of geolocational data is controversial, given the agency’s recent history. Prior reporting found that, rather than request phone location data through a search warrant, CBP simply purchased such data from unregulated brokers — a practice that critics say allows the government to sidestep Fourth Amendment protections against police searches.
According to a September report by 404 Media, CBP recently told Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., it “will not be utilizing Commercial Telemetry Data (CTD) after the conclusion of FY23 (September 30, 2023),” using a technical term for such commercially purchased location information.
The agency, however, also told Wyden that it could renew its use of commercial location data if there were “a critical mission need” in the future. It’s unclear if this contract provided commercial location data to CBP, or if it was affected by the agency’s commitment to Wyden. (LexisNexis did not respond to a question about whether it provides or provided the type of phone location data that CBP had sworn off.)
The contract also shows how LexisNexis operates as a reseller for surveillance tools created by other vendors. Its social media surveillance is “powered by” Babel X, a controversial firm that CBP and the FBI have previously used.
According to a May 2023 report by Motherboard, Babel X allows users to input one piece of information about a surveillance target, like a Social Security number, and receive large amounts of collated information back. The returned data can include “social media posts, linked IP address, employment history, and unique advertising identifiers associated with their mobile phone. The monitoring can apply to U.S. persons, including citizens and permanent residents, as well as refugees and asylum seekers.”
While LexisNexis is known to provide similar data services to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, another division of the Department of Homeland Security, details of its surveillance work with CBP were not previously known. Though both agencies enforce immigration law, CBP typically focuses on enforcement along the border, while ICE detains and deports migrants inland.
In recent years, CBP has drawn harsh criticism from civil libertarians and human rights advocates for its activities both at and far from the U.S.-Mexico border. In 2020, CBP was found to have flown a Predator surveillance drone over Minneapolis protests after the murder of George Floyd; two months later, CBP agents in unmarked vehicles seized racial justice protesters off the streets of Portland, Oregon — an act the American Civil Liberties Union condemned as a “blatant demonstration of unconstitutional authoritarianism.”
Just Futures Law is currently suing LexisNexis over claims it illegally obtains and sells personal data.
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