WHO CONTROLS OUR HOMELAND SECURITY?

For decades, the federal government has employed sophisticated investigative systems to address terrorism, organized crime, border security, and threats to public safety.

Today, the technologies available to immigration and homeland security authorities extend far beyond traditional investigative tools.

Facial recognition can compare a person's image against enormous identification databases. Commercial location intelligence can reveal patterns of travel. License plate readers can reconstruct vehicle movements. Cell-site simulators can help locate phones. Digital forensic systems can extract information from devices. Aerial surveillance can observe large geographic areas.

Separately, these technologies serve different investigative purposes.

Collectively, their availability raises a constitutional question:

Homeland security must protect the public. But the public must also be protected from the misuse of homeland security technologies.

This investigation examines that relationship.

Consider the information generated through ordinary activities:

• A smartphone registers location-related data.
• A vehicle passes automated license plate cameras.
• A photograph appears on social media.
• A face is captured by a surveillance camera.
• A government database contains a current or historical address.
• An investigative platform connects records believed to concern the same individual.

These data points do not necessarily reside in one system, nor are all available to every agency. But when legally and technically accessible information can be correlated, seemingly separate records may reveal patterns of movement, association, identity, and behavior.

It describes the construction of an increasingly detailed representation of a person from fragments of information gathered across separate systems.

The constitutional implications are significant. Information that appears mundane in isolation may become deeply revealing when assembled over time.

The critical questions are not simply what information exists, but who may collect it, combine it, retain it, interpret it, and act upon it.

Reporting published by 404 Media in January 2026 documented a Palantir-developed system used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement known as ELITE.

According to the reporting, internal ICE material and a user guide describe functionality that allows officials to view potential enforcement targets on a map, examine individual dossiers, and see confidence scores associated with reported addresses.

The reporting also identified information originating from the Department of Health and Human Services among the data sources used.

These findings raise several questions.

What safeguards govern the movement of information originally collected for public services into immigration enforcement systems?

How are address-confidence scores calculated and evaluated?

How are erroneous, outdated, or incorrectly associated records challenged?

And when computational outputs inform operational decisions, who bears responsibility for mistakes?

The presence of a confidence score does not itself establish that a predicted address is correct. A person may have moved, information may be outdated, or separate records may be incorrectly linked.

Digital Sovereignty Coalition maintains that consequential government decisions must remain subject to lawful authority, human accountability, and meaningful procedures for correction.

A computational assessment must never become a substitute for constitutional due process.

PenLink's Tangles and Webloc technologies represent two related but distinct investigative capabilities.

Tangles supports the collection and analysis of online and social-media information. Webloc provides access to commercially sourced mobile-device location intelligence.

Reporting by 404 Media describes Webloc's ability to examine devices observed within geographic areas and analyze patterns of movement over time.

Public procurement records independently establish ICE's acquisition of PenLink technologies.

A September 2025 federal contract identified Cobweb and Tangles licenses for Homeland Security Investigations. September 2026 procurement records subsequently identified Tangles and Webloc licenses.

The distinction between acquiring these technologies and employing them in any particular investigation is essential.

Nevertheless, their capabilities raise substantial questions about the commercial origins of government surveillance information.

Location information can reveal visits to religious institutions, medical facilities, political meetings, workplaces, private residences, and other sensitive places.

Social-media analysis can reveal lawful expression, relationships, and organizational participation.

Even where particular data is commercially available, government use can raise constitutional and statutory questions about the scope of collection, consent, authorization, and retention.

Commercial availability is not the same thing as constitutional legitimacy.

Biometric systems convert physical characteristics into information that can be compared against stored records.

ICE and Customs and Border Protection have employed mobile facial recognition capabilities for identification during enforcement operations.

One such system, Mobile Fortify, has attracted scrutiny following reporting about its use and reliability.

In January 2026, 404 Media reported testimony describing an incident in which the system returned two different incorrect identities for one woman.

This illustrates a fundamental danger in biometric enforcement: a computational match may be interpreted with greater confidence than the underlying evidence justifies.

The Washington Post also reported on ICE's access to Clearview AI facial recognition services and the acquisition of additional biometric capabilities, including iris-scanning technology.

DHS has maintained that Mobile Fortify is a lawful identification tool operating under privacy oversight and access restrictions.

Those assurances should be examined alongside documented errors, retention policies, independent testing, and individuals' ability to challenge results.

Digital Sovereignty Coalition asks:

Who decides whether a biometric match is sufficiently reliable to justify further government action?

Who audits the systems?

What happens when they identify the wrong person?

And who has the power to correct the record?

An algorithmic match is evidence to be evaluated—not an infallible declaration of identity.

Automated license plate recognition systems capture license plate information and associate it with locations and timestamps.

When records are retained and searchable, investigators can reconstruct elements of a vehicle's movement history.

The Washington Post reported ICE procurement involving Motorola Solutions and Thomson Reuters vehicle-location intelligence resources.

It also examined the relationship between ICE and data originating from Flock Safety systems used by local police departments.

These arrangements warrant careful distinction. Direct federal access, local agency searches, indirect information sharing, and independent commercial databases are not interchangeable arrangements.

Each may involve different permissions, contractual terms, retention rules, and oversight mechanisms.

The relevant constitutional question is whether systems originally deployed for bounded law enforcement purposes can enable broader monitoring of lawful movement and association.

Federal investigative technology includes several different means of obtaining information from mobile devices.

Cell-site simulators imitate cellular infrastructure to help investigators locate or identify nearby devices.

Digital forensic equipment may extract information from seized devices, depending on technical access, device protections, and legal authorization.

Commercial spyware can offer different forms of remote access, subject to the capabilities of the particular system.

The Washington Post identified L3Harris cell-site technologies alongside contracts involving Cellebrite, Paragon Solutions, and Finaldata.

These products should not be described as interchangeable.

A cell-site simulator does not perform the same function as a device-extraction platform, and a forensic extraction tool should not automatically be characterized as remote spyware.

Government agencies have investigative interests in recovering evidence of serious criminal activity. At the same time, the scope of electronic searches raises significant Fourth Amendment and statutory issues.

The essential safeguards include appropriate authorization, limits on collection, protection of unrelated information, audit trails, retention controls, and judicial review where required.

Possession of a technical capability does not establish legal permission to use it.

Drones can provide investigators with imagery and situational awareness without placing personnel directly at a location.

Federal agencies have employed aerial systems for border security and other law enforcement operations.

The Washington Post documented purchases involving Skydio drones and described Customs and Border Protection's use of larger General Atomics aircraft in connection with monitoring demonstrations.

Different platforms carry different sensors and operational capabilities. The presence of a particular aircraft does not establish that every available sensor or surveillance system was used during a specific operation.

The constitutional and civic questions concern the conditions under which aerial observation becomes persistent monitoring, what information is retained, and whether the monitoring of lawful demonstrations has an unjustified chilling effect on free expression.

A free society must be capable of protecting public safety while also protecting lawful public assembly.

Homeland security surveillance technologies are not created or operated solely within government agencies.

They are often provided by commercial developers, analytics companies, hardware manufacturers, data brokers, and specialized government contractors.

These relationships establish procurement chains that citizens should be able to examine.

The central questions include:

1. Which company supplies the system?
2. Which agency or office purchases it?
3. What is the contracted purpose?
4. Which data sources does the product access?
5. Who controls system configuration and permissions?
6. Who can audit its use?
7. What information is retained or shared?
8. What happens when a contract ends?
9. Can affected individuals challenge errors?
10. Are independent oversight findings publicly available?

Contract value, technical capability, and verified deployment must be reported separately.

A public award notice confirms procurement information; it does not automatically prove a particular tool was used against any identified individual or group.

Digital Sovereignty Coalition supports a public-interest standard of technological accountability that follows both the money and the operational authority.

The First Amendment protects expression, association, and peaceful assembly.

The Fourth Amendment limits unreasonable searches and seizures.

The Fifth Amendment provides essential due process protections in federal proceedings.

These constitutional provisions operate alongside federal statutes, agency regulations, judicial decisions, and the distinct legal authorities governing different forms of investigation.

They do not prohibit every use of surveillance technology, nor do all technologies trigger identical legal requirements.

But they establish a framework within which government power must be justified, limited, and accountable.

Digital Sovereignty Coalition advances a clear public-interest principle:

The development of a new technological capacity does not itself provide democratic authorization for its deployment.

Public institutions must retain meaningful control over the technologies they acquire. Private suppliers must remain subject to enforceable oversight. Individuals must have lawful routes to challenge consequential mistakes and violations.

And technological convenience must never be mistaken for constitutional consent.

Elected representatives? Federal agencies? Private technology contractors? Data suppliers? Proprietary algorithms?

The answer cannot rest solely in any one of these institutions.

Homeland security is a public responsibility. Its technologies may be privately developed, but its exercise of authority must remain governed by law.

The future of legitimate security requires systems that are effective, accountable, transparent where feasible, and subject to constitutional limits.

The Constitution must govern the technology. The technology must never govern the Constitution.