Congressional Dems press DHS watchdog on ICE location data purchases

The Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General Joseph Cuffari has been urged by over 70 House and Senate Democrats to launch a probe into Immigration and Customs Enforcement's warrantless purchasing of Americans location information, reports FedScoop.

Cuffari should also look into the use of the obtained location data and the implementation of employee access audits, as well as data governance policies, said the lawmakers in a letter. Such a development comes almost three years after a report from the DHS OIG showed that Customs and Border Protection, the Secret Service, and ICE had violated federal law by purchasing and using location data without warrants. At the time, the watchdog also found DHS components failed to follow privacy policies and lacked safeguards for handling the data.

The inspector general recommended that ICE stop using commercial telemetry data until privacy assessments and compliance controls were put in place. Despite the fact that ICE terminated a mobile data program during that investigation, the Democrats claimed that contracting documents show the agency has now continued the practice and that a DHS-wide policy controlling the use of commercial location data has still not been put into place.