# ICE Is Going on a Surveillance Shopping Spree | Electronic Frontier Foundation

<https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/ice-going-surveillance-shopping-spree>

- Host: [eff.org](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/hosts/eff.org/)
- Saved: January 11, 2026 (2026-01-12T00:15:22Z)
- Record: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e44c23818f39/
- JSON: https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e44c23818f39.json

## What Jamie wrote

This is an incredible amount of surveillance infrastructure and capability. 

> A [2022 report](https://americandragnet.org/) by Georgetown Law's Center for Privacy and Technology found the following:
> 
> - ICE had scanned the driver's license photos of 1 in 3 adults.
> - ICE had access to the driver's license data of 3 in 4 adults.
> - ICE was tracking the movements of drivers in cities home to 3 in 4 adults.
> - ICE could locate 3 in 4 adults through their utility records.
> - ​​ICE built its surveillance dragnet by tapping data from private companies and state and local bureaucracies.
> - ICE spent approximately $2.8 billion between 2008 and 2021 on new surveillance, data collection and data-sharing programs. 
> 
> With a budget for 2025 that is 10 times the size of the agency's total surveillance spending over the last 13 years, ICE is going on a shopping spree, creating one of the largest, most comprehensive domestic surveillance machines in history.

The ICE budget has nearly tripled in just the last two years, and some chunk of that is going to building an incredible surveillance network. And you might think no big deal since the FBI and CIA have huge surveillance functions, but those are entirely different as they are in the intelligence community. This surveillance is less regulated.

## Facts

- Kind: [Page](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/kinds/page/)

## Appears in

- [WT337: Weekly Thing 337 / Sunrise, Vision, Offline](https://weekly.thingelstad.com/archive/337/), Notable

## Same host

- [Lawmakers Want to Ban VPNs—And They Have No Idea What They're Doing | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/f9e76a8d893a/) (eff.org, November 19, 2025)
- [EFF Statement on ICE and CBP Violence | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/16bb220afea9/) (eff.org, January 29, 2026)
- [Report: ICE Using Palantir Tool That Feeds On Medicaid Data | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/092fddc3607b/) (eff.org, January 29, 2026)
- [Beware: Government Using Image Manipulation for Propaganda | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/66e33a35e43c/) (eff.org, January 29, 2026)
- [EFF is Leaving X | Electronic Frontier Foundation](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/0352aae8eca0/) (eff.org, April 9, 2026)

## Saved the same week

- [Nine Years, One Sunrise Composition: A New Year’s Day Photo Project](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/d156da9fdb7d/) (bryanhansel.substack.com, January 11, 2026)
- [You probably don't need Oh My Zsh | Artem Golubin](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/8ae099269bc3/) (rushter.com, January 11, 2026)
- [Don't fall into the anti-AI hype - <antirez>](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/31df5b400fdd/) (antirez.com, January 11, 2026)
- [WORDS.ZIP - Infinite Collaborative Word Search Game Online](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/fb57be4a8788/) (words.zip, January 11, 2026)
- [A quick Markdown Fixup update - BrettTerpstra.com](https://links.thingelstad.xyz/links/e75352862d1c/) (brettterpstra.com, January 11, 2026)

## Elsewhere

- Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/ice-going-surveillance-shopping-spree