CNN One Thing

This is One Thing, I'm David Rind, and if federal agents can recognize your face, what else do they know about you?

Deep can they go? Like how broad is their ability to like just mess with you?

Stick around.

I ended up, there was probably four people that were at one point in time following. I shouldn't say following, I should say commuting. That sounds much better than following, we were commuting.

You guys try to stay away from that language these days?

'Nicole Cleland has been a legal observer, a so-called ice watcher, in the Minneapolis suburb of Richfield since mid-December, even before Renee Goode and Alex Pretti were killed by federal agents. But she says on January 10th, a vehicle she was following had stopped with a group of other vehicles that were blocking a main road, so she stopped as well.

I did not record what happened. I learned right then and there when you're on signal, you can't also use your camera. One of the ICE agents approached the car in front of me and another agent came towards my vehicle. And when he got close enough to be able to talk with me, I rolled out my window a couple of inches just so I could hear him. And he said, are you Nicole? Use your name. Like, okay, that is my name. I'm like, yep, I am. And he says, I'm using facial recognition. I have my body cam on and I know that you've been following me. And I said, you know, this is my neighborhood. I'm commuting. I'm just out driving around, making sure my neighbors are safe. And he said, well, we're not going to have an argument about this. I'm pretty confident that you're following me and that means you're interfering with my job. Um, and I'm giving you a verbal warning. And the next time we see you, you'll be arrested. So I'm going to get back in my vehicle. I'm gonna take a right. I really strongly advise you not to follow me.

Did you follow?

I did not.

'Experts say what Nicole is describing is becoming more and more common. Federal agents using facial recognition technology, sometimes right from their cell phones, to identify people. Not just undocumented immigrants, but also U.S. Citizens who may be out on the street protesting or observing. Now, Nicole says the agent who told her he was using facial-recognition was from Border Patrol. She did not see him using a cell phone. I asked the Department of Homeland Security about the incident. They referred me to a statement from a CPP spokesperson. Quote. Body-worn cameras are utilized to document encounters and are not equipped with CPB's facial comparison technology. Regardless, Nicole says the whole experience left her deeply freaked out.

'I feel extremely vulnerable. You know, I don't go by my name on Signal anymore. And that's one of the-.

Even on the encrypted app Signal, you use a different name.

'Absolutely. And that name changes. You know, you use one name for a day or two or a week, and then you change it to something else. I have removed facial recognition or fingerprint recognition from my phone so that I have to use an eight-digit pen to be able to get in. I have made sure to go and look at all my security settings, whether it's on my phone, Facebook, any other social media, to ensure that it's not open. So yeah, I've been much more where.

It's just so striking to me that obviously there's physical dangers of following federal agents getting involved in scuffles, but it seems like there's a sense of danger even just from being on the computer or using our name in certain forums.

'There is this aspect of, like, just... How deep can they go? How broad is their ability to just mess with you? And there is the spectrum, right? How much of it is paranoia? And how much of is, oh crap, they really could be doing this stuff. It's like you're in the middle of a conspiracy novel. And so when I woke up three days after this event and realized that I no longer had. Global entry or pre-check that my status had been revoked, that got me to think maybe they can do more.

That's right, Nicole says just days after a federal agent approached her car, she got an email saying her days of sailing through airport security were over. No reason was given. Now again, I asked DHS why her status was revoked. The same CPP spokesperson said there had been no new directive from the agency on global entry revocations. But Nicole says to her, the message is obvious.

'It's just too much for it to be a coincidence. I've been with Global Entry since 2014. I have never had any issues. Nothing in regards to my status of eligibility has changed in all of that time so it just seems to be pretty safe assumption that that is what happened. I think the one thing that I am hopeful for is that the technology component of what is happening opens awareness to individuals that might not think that there are awful things going on here. We're all at risk. No matter what color your skin is, we are all at-risk if the federal government has to identify people and take action. Because they believe you are doing something that you shouldn't be doing. That's not okay.

But is that really what's going on here? What exactly is this technology being used for and how could it factor into congressional debates over how to reform ICE? Let's bring in Juliette Kayyem. She's a CNN senior national security analyst and a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security. So Juliette, we just heard from someone in Minneapolis who says they were recorded with facial recognition by ICE. We've heard some similar stories in recent weeks. So can you just explain what kind of facial recognition technology ICE is using and kind of how it works?

Yeah, so it's a full range of what we would call biometric, which is through pictures of fingerprinting is biometric. But through pictures, they're taking essentially a visual of your unique information. And then the most important thing, and then they're overlaying it against other biometric information to determine that David is actually David. So this technology has been out there for a long time. It's, I mean, we've been going through airports. Doing this for a long time. So people shouldn't think like the technology is new. What's new, there's two new things, is the technology's capacity because of AI, because of these large database sets that local, state, federal, international, private sector, everyone's dumping data into, combined with what ICE is doing now, which is linking it to social media. So they know you're David. They see you're in database and now they're looking at your Twitter postings and they are creating a narrative about you. So one is the scope has changed. The other is something I've never seen before which is the use of this technology in a sweeping way without notice. To the population. And why do I say that? When I go to the Super Bowl, I know someone's watching me, right? Because I'm and it's in my ticket, right. When I'm on the mass turnpike, I know that there's information about me being there. How fast am I going? Where, you know, if there's an investigation, when did I get off the turnpke? What is new here in terms of ICE, I believe, and certainly your anecdotes are telling you, that your reporting is telling you, is. The sweeping use of biometric information into a population that has not consented to it. They're not in an airport, they're not at a football game.

They didn't check a box online to say you can scare my face.

You got it. Look at your Super Bowl ticket if neither of us can afford it, but look at your Superbowl ticket. You are given up your biometric information. And that is new too.

Does someone have to scan your face directly like with a phone for it to work or can it pick up information just by being in the vicinity?

'It can be in the vicinity, the most, okay, it's a great question. So there is technology that would allow it to be in a vicinity. So you can have like drone-based biometric devices that are picking up lots of information from, let's say, a crowd and then able, doing all the cross-referencing, you know, the collecting, the sharing, the analyzing. So you could do it. But as we know, the technology is not perfect. So a direct hit, as we see at airports, is much better. That's why ICE is approaching people and doing that. And also, look, you know, I love technology like the next person, you get lots of false positives. For certain races, it can be really, really off and including a particular African-American. Like the skin tone situation. The skin tone, right? Facial hair, things like that.

So I do want to say the main piece of technology that has really come under scrutiny is called mobile fortify and it was first kind of uncovered by this independent news outlet called 404 media and they obtained a document that kind of described how the app can be used to pick up all kinds of biographical information of individuals regardless of citizenship or immigration status and that's obviously very concerning. The DHS. The spokesperson previously told CNN that the use is governed by established legal authorities and formal privacy oversight, which sets strict limits on data access, use, and retention. It has not been blocked, restricted, or curtailed by the courts or by legal guidance. It's lawfully used nationwide in accordance with all applicable legal authorities. That's what DHS says about this app. But to you as someone who is just kind of observing how it's being used are there concerns that just the average person could be kind of swept up and the information goes who knows where.

Yeah, I don't know what privacy rules they're talking about and they have not disclosed them. In fact, one of the many problems that those of us who had worked with ICE have and seen what ICE is now is not just the masking, not just the mission. It is what guidance is being utilized for the protection and storage of personal information, not only because Julia Keim doesn't want ice to have it. But because Julia Kayam doesn't want a foreign country possibly accessing it. And I don't want it sold to the highest bidder. Like, you know, as this technology becomes more sophisticated, it is being shared and merged, you now, not just local, state, and federal, but with international intelligence agencies and as importantly, the private sector. You know, what we're seeing in a lot of what ICE is doing is that sort of... Merging of all this information, some of it guided by rules regarding privacy, but honestly, some of it not. And I think the rise of a lot of these companies that are solely in the surveillance state and their relationship with ICE or DHS generally is starting to get a lot more.

Oh, so these companies have all this data acquired through means and they're selling it to?

Or they're doing the linkages. So if you look at the RFPs, or the contract announcements for DHS, or if you'd look at where some of the money is going, and you look at some of controversies around companies, it is because of that. It is because the company is essentially a provider of intelligence, and ICE or DHS is just the consumer at that stage, right? So... Ice gets Juliette Kayam's facial recognition. I want to learn more about that woman. Oh, guess what we got on her because of we're doing X, Y or Z. No idea where this ends.

Yeah, that's what I wanted to ask. What kind of recourse does anybody have if their face is scanned without their consent or like you said, it hits a kind of a false positive, they're lumped in with some other group that they're not actually a part of.

Yeah. So generally you would have without reasonable suspicion, which is your big gaping loophole. Generally you do not have to consent to facial recognition. You, I mean, if you, if, you refuse to do it, an ICE agent comes up to you, the problem is ICE views that failure to concede as the reasonable suspicion. So I think that the recourse is going to be you know, some sweeping use of the biometric information or the facial recognition or whatever it is that leads to an erroneous detention that is not remedied and that person suffers a harm, they're gonna have a claim. But right now, until there's better oversight, we do not have a lot of transparency on what the rules of engagement are from a congressional perspective, we may have it from the judges.

We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Juliet's going to tell us why those calling for ICE reforms might need to start thinking bigger. Stick around.

It does feel like we've entered this new era of surveillance, not just the tech, but who is being surveilled. Does that jive with you?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's what I can't believe now. I know, as I was saying earlier, like I think most Americans in particular believe in some semblance of privacy still. We know we give it up when we put pictures of our kids online. We know, we give up when we go to us to an airport, we know we give it out when we want to enter a courtroom. Like we we get that right. Those are sort of the rules of engagement. What we haven't seen is. The use of biometric information without a predicate, except we just don't like the city, or we just think there's a bunch of Somalis here. Like you have no predicate that any person who has been in public safety or criminal law enforcement would view as recognizable. Right, you're not in hot pursuit. Arguably, if something horrible happened, a terror attack. You know, maybe, you know, this might be justified in the sense that you're just trying to figure out, you go to a neighborhood where the culprits may have ran and you're just trying figure out who is who.

Right, for somebody on the loose, I could see that being a tool for law enforcement.

Exactly. That's all. This isn't that.

So at this point, if someone is in the street of Minneapolis or any other city and they're kind of converging around ice, whether they're actively kind of being on these watchdog missions or just happen to notice some kind of scuffle going on, should they expect that their biometric information is going to be scooped up at some point just by being there?

I think that's right and that's why you're starting to see a pushback, a little bit of a push back on ICE on what the rules of engagement are.

I have announced effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people affected today. 700 law enforcement personnel.

It's really interesting what's happening in Minnesota. So you and I were talking the day after home and says he's gonna withdraw a certain number of troops and President Trump says we're gonna soften our tone.

I learned that maybe we can use a little bit of a softer touch, but you still have to be tough. These are criminals. We're dealing with really hard criminals.

What you're not seeing is any promises about the change of this sweeping technological deployment that is impacting every person in the jurisdiction. There's a whole theory, a doctrine, in my space in national security at MHC, which is meaningful human contact. What does that mean? It means that as in war time or national security, as a deployment of deadly technology was becoming more common, drones in particular, armed drones. There was a pushback or a sort of discussion that was led by lawyers, but even picked up by the Catholic Church of MHC, which is, are there uses of technology that are so broad and so violent, in some instances, or so dangerous, or that we should insist on having a human being in between those things. And I think about that a lot now in terms of ICE. I think just about this vast amount of information and the deployment of resources based on it. I was like, is there a human in this who's just saying, is this working? Should we do this, you know, like, like it like, and I, and I, whenever I think about it,

Somebody trying to think about the big implications.

Yeah, like, like is there like, or is are we just like, oh, the data is telling us that that this person was there and they've had posted and they hate ice and therefore let's go arrest them and you're like, is someone thinking common sense here but I do think that when we start to think about the various pushbacks on ice, you know, somewhere in between the status quo and abolish ice, I think we're going to have to have a serious conversation, not just about masking or deployment. But also on what are they doing with this biometric information and are there ways to curb it?

Well, yeah, I did want to ask about some of the reforms, because there's this standoff brewing in Congress. Democrats have a list of 10 changes they want ICE to make. And if they don't reach a deal with Republicans on this, the Department of Homeland Security could run out of funding by the end of next week. And that could impact a whole bunch of agencies even beyond ICE, which we should say is already funded to the tune of $75 billion from Trump's big domestic policy bill. But I just want to read some of these. Demands, require judicial warrants, set body camera standards, which includes language about prohibiting tracking or creating databases of people participating in First Amendment activities, which is what we've been talking about. Requiring identification of ICE agents, restrict mask wearing, except in extraordinary and unusual circumstances, and uphold use of force standards, among some other things. But from a law enforcement perspective, do any of those sound unreasonable or unworkable to you?

No. Those are the things that died most urban police departments. I mean, you know, in the reforms of police departments, judicial standards that govern when you can be deployed and what you're deploying for are common, body cams are common. No masking, as we know, is very common.

But the doxxing, though, it seems to be a big holdup with a lot, especially around the masking DHS. There's been this uptick in threats against officers, which they don't provide any data backing up the numbers. They don't. But is that not a concern that some of this, maybe even some of the same technology that facial recognition could be used against these officers?

Yeah, it is. Look, ICE has existed in some form or another for 20 plus years, and its precursor was INS without any problem. And that was because the best immigration enforcement, whether you were hardcore or not, was one that was targeted, that was the worst of the worst, as the White House has promised, that integrated state and local capacity rather than going to for watching. And I believe the White House is creating a narrative about Minnesota that is not justified in any of the data. And certainly, if you just look at per capita undocumented immigrants, we certainly should head towards Texas if we wanted to do our resources. So honestly, I don't buy that argument about masking. I think we are so focused on different technology and different rules of engagement. The reality is, is that ICE's mission right now is unclear. And when a mission is unclear, lots of really bad things happen. The problem with ICE is not that Americans inherently hate immigration enforcement. In fact, the data is pretty clear that most Americans, right, they want stronger borders and they really don't like this interior enforcement step that we're seeing through ICE.

Right, they're pulling data they think always has gone too far and we're seeing that over and over.

Yeah, exactly. And, but it's interesting because it's like the American public is more sophisticated than our political discourse. They kind of, they get like the American public wants strong borders and Trump has delivered on that, but they like, you know, they don't really like the grandmother being deported. Like Americans, you don't aren't in love with that. We want this to be successful for both immigration enforcement. But also be successful in the long run, and a law enforcement agency that does not have the confidence of the vast majority of Americans will not succeed, period.

Yeah. A lot of questions about the mission and a lot of questions about whether any reforms would actually be followed through on a quote that really jumped out to me this week was the chief judge of Minnesota's federal trial level court. He said ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence. Well, Julia, thanks so much for the perspective. I really appreciate it.

Thank you so much.

We should say again, DHS has stressed that they are using the mobile fortify app lawfully and said in a statement that claims that mobile fortified violates the fourth amendment or compromises privacy or false. The application does not access open source material, scrape social media, or rely on publicly available data. Meanwhile, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem says all officers in Minneapolis are being outfitted with body cameras and DHS will expand the program nationwide. That's all for us today. If you liked the show, make sure you leave a rating or a review wherever you listen. It helps other people find the show. We're gonna be back with another episode on Wednesday. I'll talk to you then.