ICE Revives Contract With Previously Banned Spyware Maker
ICE will have access to Israeli-made spyware that can hack into any phone and view encrypted messages. The Department of Homeland Security first entered into a contract with Paragon Solutions in 2024. But the Biden Administration put the $2 million deal on pause as it faced compliance reviews related to privacy and security concerns.
The Guardian reports that the pause has now been lifted, allowing ICE to have access to the tool. Paragon’s Graphite software will enable agencies to infiltrate smartphones, access encrypted applications such as WhatsApp, extract data, and even activate microphones to turn devices into listening tools in secret.
ICE accessing Paragon’s Graphite software
Paragon’s Graphite software is one of the most powerful stealth cyber weapons created in history, which was produced outside of the US. Critics are concerned that ICE has access to a tool that civil and human rights groups have accused of violating people’s due process rights.
John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto, who is one of the world’s leading experts on cases in which governments have abused spyware like Graphite, said in a statement that tools like this “were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights”.
“As long as the same mercenary spyware tech is going to multiple governments, there is a baked-in counterintelligence risk. Since all of them now know what secret surveillance tech the US is using, and would have special insights on how to detect it and track what the US is doing with it,” Scott-Railton said.
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Biden Administration and Paragon
An executive order signed by the Biden Administration said the US “shall not make operational use of commercial spyware that poses significant counterintelligence or security risks to the United States government or significant risks of improper use by a foreign government or foreign person”.
The Biden administration also placed one of Paragon’s competitive spyware makers, NSO Group, on a Commerce Department blacklist, stating that the company had knowingly supplied foreign governments to “maliciously target” the phones of dissidents, human rights activists, and journalists.
Past controversies of the spyware
Last year, 90 people, including journalists and members of civil society in two dozen countries, shared that the spyware had targeted them. Subsequently, Paragon broke off its ties with Italy. People whom the Italian government targeted included human rights activists who have been critical of Italy’s dealings with Libya. Several journalists were also targeted, but it’s not clear who ordered the hacking attacks.
Image: Colin Lloyd
