No, ICE isn’t terrorizing innocent families with social media surveillance

A bombshell report came out over the weekend accusing Immigration and Customs Enforcement of surveying millions of Americans’ social media accounts. In what left-wing groups call an “assault on democracy and free speech,” this looks to be a major violation of American rights and freedoms.

Or ... maybe their journalistic machine isn’t telling the whole truth.

The problem

In the report, the Verge alleges that ICE has partnered with an AI-powered social media monitoring group Zignal Labs to survey the social media posts of everyday Americans as part of an online surveillance system. The platform can scan posts in 100 different languages, analyze photos and videos to pinpoint the precise location they were taken, and even review weather data thanks to a new partnership with NOAA.

If you do something illegal and you post it online, you’ve just supplied the evidence to charge your crime.

With the power to process up to 8 billion posts per day, the Verge raises serious concerns over Americans’ privacy and free speech, as if the Constitution had suddenly become precious again. And for what? According to Will Owen, the communications director at the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project, the goal is to “terrorize immigrant families” and “target activists fighting back against their abuses.”

That sounds terrible, if it were true. Unfortunately for Owen, he’s missing some details.

The details

For starters, ICE isn’t targeting “immigrant families.” Anyone who’s a legal citizen or in the country under an active visa isn’t under any pressure — or terror — at all. What ICE is looking for are illegal immigrants who have broken our nation’s laws and deserve a one-way ticket back home. Owen’s first claim is incorrect.

Second, the “targeted activists” he references are the ‘mostly peaceful’ protesters that have incited violence across the U.S. The most recent attack happened last week, when an anti-ICE protester in a U-Haul truck tried to ram into Coast Guardsmen at a base in Alameda, California. Or maybe you remember the deadly shooting at an ICE facility in Texas? Perhaps I could interest you in the rising tensions in Chicago, or the active calls for violence from former media pundits, or liberals’ outright disregard for law and order relating to ICE in general. These “activists” sound more like rioters, agitators, and criminals than law-abiding citizens who simply wish to exercise their First Amendment rights. Owen just isn’t being honest.

RELATED: House Democrats' ICE 'tracker' will 'put our lives in danger': DHS agent

Photo by Mathieu Lewis-Rolland

The Verge is right about one thing, though: Social media monitoring isn’t a new phenomenon. In fact, social media has been used as a political weapon for years. The Biden administration loved it, in fact. Unlike ICE, which is (allegedly) leveraging social media to bring illegal aliens and criminals to justice, the previous White House and its party apparatus preferred to target regular American citizens. Here are just a few examples:

• Let’s start with the Twitter Files. Remember when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) silenced journalists he didn’t like?
• Then the Biden White House pressured Facebook to censor conservative content, especially posts that questioned the COVID vaccine.
• The Biden-Harris campaign also ran a deep-state censorship campaign against the American people under the guise of misinformation and disinformation.
• Biden’s DOJ demanded info on users who interacted with Trump’s Twitter account.
• President Trump was banned from Twitter amid political pressure.
• The Biden administration indicted Douglass Mackey for jokingly telling voters to cast their vote for Hillary Clinton via text in the 2016 election. The conviction was later tossed out as saner minds prevailed.
• And on, and on, and on.

The truth

Believe it or not, social media isn’t a private space concealed under lock and key. It’s a public square brimming with comments, photos, videos, and data. When you post online, you willingly put your content in the public eye for all to see, and many groups regularly take advantage of it. Facebook can scan your posts to serve you ads. The large language models powering AI can gobble up your data for better responses. And yes, law enforcement can see illegal activity and charge offenders under the law. It all falls under fair use.

That means, if you do something illegal in the public square, there could be consequences. If you post about illegal things, legal repercussions will follow. The same goes for an illegal alien whose crime is simply residing in the country. All it takes is a photo, video, or some piece of information that confirms their location to pursue charges or, in this case, deportation.

A final word to the wise

Although illegal aliens don’t get to enjoy the same rights as American citizens (that requires citizenship), they do have to follow the same laws. No one — legal, illegal, or otherwise — has the right to commit a crime in a public space in the United States. If you do something illegal and you post it online, you’ve just supplied the evidence to charge your crime. Generally, it’s a good idea to refrain from posting about illegal things if you don’t want to get caught. In the case of an illegal immigrant living in the United States, it’s probably better not to post at all.