Data integration and analysis can facilitate automated and broad-scale surveillance, allowing a government to target any individual for any purpose. How might a government deploy that infrastructure to target and monitor a protester?
On January 30, 2026, thousands gathered at Foley Square in Lower Manhattan to protest ICE raids. Imagine someone in that crowd, carrying a phone like anyone else.
To an integrated system, this mobile location data is part of a web of structured data points: phone coordinates harvested from commercial vendors, license plate scans from roadside cameras, and feeds from thousands of surveillance cameras across the city. Each is a record in a searchable database.
Using data analysis tools, authorities can draw a digital perimeter around that location. Every device that pinged inside the fence is captured whether its owner was protesting, passing through, or simply nearby.
Data points such as a phone’s unique mobile advertising ID can reveal intimate details about a person. A phone like this one logs a new coordinate every few minutes, leaving digital breadcrumbs that can be tracked within the crowd.
The pings wouldn’t be limited to the protest — they would follow a person home. Mapping the phone across New York City, the densest cluster of pings would concentrate around a single block, like this one on the Upper East Side. Movement patterns would reveal this is where the person sleeps. And with a home address, combined with other information like a person’s place of work, an anonymous device becomes an identifiable person.
Location data could reveal an entire life — a person’s place of work, their hobbies, the routines that define their world.
Through a process called entity resolution, other scattered data points are linked to a single identity. For example, a unique mobile device advertising ID can be tied to a name, address, and a face. This resolved profile is fed into central platforms like ICE’s Investigative Case Management system, becoming the anchor of a target file.
With the target anchored, the system pulls from a vast network of federal, state, and commercial databases. Facial recognition matches, social media activity, financial records, and location data are continuously fed into the core, assembling a comprehensive, searchable profile that is accessible to government agents without a warrant or court order.