The growing surveillance state in the U.S. is far worse than you imagined

President Donald Trump is taking decisive steps to crush administrative safeguards and preempt legal challenges, allowing his administration to rapidly consolidate a surveillance state with diminished privacy rights. Aided by recent Supreme Court decisions, Republican lawmakers, and quickly eroding due process rights, the administration is ensuring that the data and sensitive information of each person in the U.S. can be used against them.

To achieve this, the administration has been working diligently to interconnect the data hosted by all levels of government, including Democratic states and local law enforcement agencies, while also contesting lawsuits for privacy violations in courts across the country. In some instances, the administration appears to be violating federal privacy regulations, and it is already divulging sensitive data. Medicare and Medicaid handed over personal data of millions of enrollees in sanctuary states and cities—including California, Washington state, Illinois, and Washington, D.C.—to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which also struck a deal with the Internal Revenue Services (IRS) to access addresses of taxpayers, many of whom are undocumented immigrants who pay billions of dollars in taxes each year.

Additionally, through the approval of the GOP megabill, known as “One Big Beautiful Bill,” which was signed into law July 4, the Trump administration can effectively preempt any future privacy lawsuits by forcing states to share some of their most vulnerable residents’ sensitive information. The bill also earmarks $10 billion for border security initiatives.

“We are talking about fundamentally reshaping our digital infrastructure as a country in ways that will be really challenging to undo from not just the technical perspective, but [in terms of policies and procedures],” said Elizabeth Laird, director of equity in civic technology at the civil rights organization the Center for Democracy & Technology (CDT). “[T]hese changes will extend well beyond after Trump leaves office.”

The transformation of the surveillance state is having a significant immediate impact on undocumented immigrants, but also those with status. The administration is also weakening the ability of regulatory agencies to conduct oversight while relying on its ideological allies—the Supreme Court, Republican lawmakers, and a group of tech contractors led by individuals with strongly antidemocratic values—to limit the right to privacy for both citizens and noncitizens.

“It’s very clear that the current goal is to continue to grow digital surveillance and use it for whatever this current administration decides,” said Emerald Tse, an associate at the Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law. “Immigration enforcement is the stated priority, but if we look at what they’re actually doing, they’re using it [digital surveillance] as an excuse to target journalists, target activists, and target elected officials who are trying to challenge those activities.”

“Eliminating information silos”

The Trump administration’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), once overseen by billionaire Elon Musk, had largely led the changes currently underway. As of June 16, DOGE faced at least 14 lawsuits for potential violations of six federal privacy protections across eight federal agencies, according to CDT. DOGE now has access to the names, dates of birth, places of birth, citizenship status, ethnicity, race, and gender of individuals in the Social Security Administration’s (SSA) database, as well as addresses and phone numbers, parents’ names, and medical and mental health records for recipients of disability benefits.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is also key to bolstering Trump’s surveillance apparatus, as the agency has tens of millions of dollars in contracts with tech companies that can analyze and track all information generated online and as part of communications once thought of as encrypted. Facilitating this commercial exploitation, DOGE is actively dismantling the regulatory and oversight bodies that protect data privacy.

DOGE has spent the last several months working to implement Trump’s executive order mandating “full and prompt access to all unclassified agency records,” as well as “unfettered access to comprehensive data from all State programs that receive Federal funding.” This includes data in third-party databases. The purported objective is to stop “fraud, waste, and abuse by eliminating information silos.” However, Project 2025—the right-wing blueprint for consolidating executive power by mirroring authoritarian regimes—previously outlined other motives: To receive federal funds, states and localities will have to commit to “total information-sharing in the context of both federal law enforcement and immigration enforcement.” After Musk’s departure, DOGE is now run by Russell Vought, a self-described Christian nationalist and a primary architect of Project 2025.

A group of 19 Democratic attorney generals obtained an injunction in February, barring DOGE from accessing Treasury Department information, including social security numbers, bank account information, and other private data for tens of millions of U.S. residents. Additionally, the Alliance for Retired Americans, along with teachers and public workers’ unions, filed a lawsuit to prevent the SSA from sharing sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, medical histories, and banking information. The plaintiffs also obtained an injunction, but it was stayed by the Supreme Court on June 6, allowing DOGE to obtain SSA data while federal courts reconsider the case.

The Supreme Court gave “unfettered data access to DOGE regardless—despite its failure to show any need or any interest in complying with existing privacy safeguards,” wrote Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent, joined by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. Brown also warned that the Court’s decision “creates grave privacy risks for millions of Americans.”

Even temporary wins based on court injunctions are now more difficult to achieve. On June 27, the Supreme Court ruled that district courts can no longer issue nationwide injunctions, while allowing the administration to halt the right of citizenship by birth in some states. Injunctions previously prevented DOGE from accessing sensitive information from the Treasury Department or the SSA. Now, injunctions are mostly unlikely unless filed as class-action lawsuits. The three liberal Justices dissented. “No right is safe in the new legal regime the Court creates,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote, calling the ruling “an attack on our system of law.”

Congress is also working to tear down privacy protections. The data-sharing regulations for Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) in the reconciliation bill will delegitimize legal arguments against forcing states to provide private information. A section of the bill mandates the establishment of a system to centralize sensitive information of Medicaid and CHIP enrollees, claiming that it aims to spot individuals unlawfully receiving benefits in two states—a rarity occurring in less than 0.5% of cases. The bill allocates $10 million in funding to establish the system for fiscal year 2026 and $20 million to maintain it through fiscal year 2029.

The Privacy Act—passed in 1974 partly as a response to the infamous Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) COINTELPRO surveillance program—restricts the sharing of personal information between government agencies. However, “the options for challenging the changes the bill makes to Medicaid’s data sharing setup would be limited, especially in terms of litigation,” said Nicole Schneidman, technology policy strategist at the advocacy group Protect Democracy. It makes “any effort to push back on this quite aggressive collecting of information much, much more challenging.”

Even before Congress’ actions, the Associated Press revealed in June that Health and Human Services (HHS) officials had already provided DHS the data of millions of Medicaid enrollees—including their immigration status—and even from states that do not receive federal funds for enrolling immigrants in the program. According to California Gov. Gavin Newsom, the data transfer is “potentially unlawful, particularly given numerous headlines highlighting potential improper federal use of personal information and federal actions to target the personal information of Americans.”

Construction of the master database

Trump’s order to eliminate information silos is consistent with DOGE’s mission to “promote inter-operability between agency networks and systems.” DOGE’s ultimate goal is to build a “master database” of sensitive information held by agencies such as the SSA, HHS, and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), according to whistleblowers. Ultimately, DOGE engineers are attempting to create computers that provide simultaneous, full access to networks and databases across different agencies.

DHS—ICE’s parent agency—would host the master database to track and surveil undocumented immigrants, agency officials confirmed to Wired. However, the database won’t delineate between citizens and noncitizens, violating the Privacy Act, the Federal Information Security Modernization Act, and other congressionally enacted data protection safeguards, according to advocates.

“There’s really no indication about why this master database would exist unless it was for surveillance purposes, basically to compile as much information about people as possible, across various agencies, to then figure out what they want to do with that,” said Saira Hussain, senior attorney at the digital rights group, Electronic Frontier Foundation. “That is very, very troubling in this moment.”

In the first several months of his administration, Trump has violated the due process rights of immigrants who are lawfully in the United States, enshrined in the Constitution for all individuals in the country. In one case, the administration expelled Venezuelans to a notoriously cruel prison in El Salvador without hearings, based on a 1798 bill meant for wartime threats. In another instance, immigrant Kilmar Abrego García was banished to El Salvador for almost three months without notice or a hearing, despite a court order prohibiting his deportation. Moreover, masked ICE officers have detained multiple students for their First Amendment-protected speech and, over the years, reportedly deported dozens of U.S. citizens.

The master database will likely be hosted on Foundry, software developed by Palantir, a company cofounded by Peter Thiel, a major funder of Vice President JD Vance’s political career, a former business partner of Musk, and who has been described by some as a eugenicist who believes in a “cognitive elite” who are “genetically superior.” The project would enable different software systems to exchange data, accessible from a central point. Palantir, which has been awarded $1.6 billion in federal contracts since 2007, secured contracts worth $673 million in the fiscal year 2025. The human rights organization Amnesty International accused Palantir of having “a high risk” of contributing to human rights violations for its work with ICE.

Still, Palantir obtained a $30 million contract in April to create “Immigration OS,” a system that would provide ICE with “near real-time visibility” on individuals self-deporting from the United States. This technology builds on the existing “Investigative Case Management” system, which “serves as the core law enforcement case management tool for ICE Homeland Security Investigations,” according to a privacy impact assessment.

Stephen Miller, widely described in media reports as the architect of Trump’s xenophobic immigration policy, and characterized by some critics as a “true ideologue” and a “hatemonger,” directly profits from Palantir. On June 24, the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) revealed that Miller owns between $100,001 and $250,000 worth of the company’s stock, which has nearly doubled in value since the start of the current administration.

Tech tools provided by private contractors with close financial ties to the Trump administration are crucial to the growth of the U.S. surveillance apparatus and will also be key to expanding and deepening its scope, despite their systematic violations of laws, norms, and regulations.

“You are going to see vendors who say, ‘I can do what you need,’ no matter how antidemocratic and invasive it may end up being,” Hussain said. “I think any vendor that is engaged in surveillance right now is looking to make a buck.”

According to recent research, surveillance tools have shielded ICE from oversight because private contractors are not beholden to the same level of transparency and accountability as federal agencies. The ripple effect of this opacity is expanding beyond immigration enforcement.

Unprecedented surveillance

DOGE is already accessing several federal databases and obtaining sensitive personal information from state agencies. “In cases where there is not a preliminary injunction, DOGE is likely accessing that information as the litigation plays out,” said Kristin Woelfel, policy counsel of equity in civic technology at CDT.

States governed by Republicans are complying with the administration’s directives for data sharing or otherwise drafting data-sharing agreements. This includes Alaska, Iowa, Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, and Indiana, said Woelfel. DOGE also currently has access to information related to programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Medicaid, and unemployment insurance. In Los Angeles, immigrants living in public housing recently received notice that “there may be an increase in data sharing” between DHS and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, including information related to citizenship status, L.A. Taco reported.

The administration is collecting personal data from the nation’s most vulnerable populations, with information sharing agreements revealing mixed-status families, even while the recipients of benefits may be citizens.

As part of the breaking the silos executive order, in an unprecedented move, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) requested that states grant the agency access to the personal data of all SNAP recipients since 2020. Some states refused to comply, so USDA reached out directly to vendors processing payments to SNAP enrollees to obtain the information. Fidelity Information Services—one of the largest financial technology corporations in the world—notified states it was complying with the demand. In response, civil rights organizations warned vendors in a letter of the potential liability under state laws for unlawfully sharing individuals’ information. Fidelity and the USDA backtracked, with the federal agency stating that it did not collect any SNAP recipient data and would not proceed in the future without following laws protecting privacy and data security.

“This is a victory for tens of millions of SNAP recipients and anyone who cares about protecting our personal data against government abuse,” said John Davisson, director of litigation and senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, in a press release. At the same time, the momentary capitulation of Fidelity Information Services to USDA’s request constituted “a really important example of how effective this federal pressure campaign can be with a third-party vendor,” said Schneidman.

Some states have safeguards to protect their residents’ data. Illinois, for example, offers some of the strongest protections for immigrants, although these guardrails can be circumvented by federal agencies.

Public records obtained by 404 Media from the Danville, Illinois, police department revealed that for 11 months, local and state police around the country conducted more than 4,000 immigration-related searches on behalf of ICE using automatic license plate reader data sourced from police departments that utilize Flock Safety cameras. Through “informal requests” from ICE, law enforcement officers were able to search not only from Danville’s plate-reader cameras—a technology that may violate the Fourth Amendment, which protects individuals from unreasonable searches and seizures—but also from data across the vast Flock network.

Amid this assault on privacy, the immediate task is to protect the rule of law, Tse said. For the long term, a broader culture of privacy is needed, which would include means to ensure collective safety. “Historically, privacy rights have been considered an individual right,” she said. “But it becomes more and more salient how your safety and privacy can affect the person next to you.”

“Allowing abuses to happen”

To build its gigantic surveillance apparatus, ICE has relied on commercial tech tools, data brokers, and data mining companies, which allow the agency to systematically bypass laws and regulations. Data brokers sell people’s addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, social security numbers, date of birth, purchase history, spending habits, credit card information, income, website visits, browsing history, online searches, social media activity, and location data. They also proffer medical and family history, court records, property records, and motor vehicle records.

To obtain this information, ICE would otherwise require a judicial warrant, but the agency purchases directly from data brokers such as LexisNexis, which consults over 10,000 data sources. This is known as the data broker loophole, which enables federal agencies to circumvent the Fourth Amendment and violate sanctuary ordinances that limit state and local cooperation in immigration enforcement.

Absent a law that would close this loophole, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule in December that would subject data brokers to stricter oversight, including restrictions on the sale of consumers’ sensitive personal information. In May, the Trump administration withdrew the rule. The administration also fired the two Democratic members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC), which in December announced landmark settlements with data brokers—Mobilewalla and Gravy Analytics, including its subsidiary Venntel—after the agency accused the companies of unlawfully collecting, storing, and selling the location data of millions of U.S. residents. Experts do not expect to see similar actions by the FTC during this administration.

“We’re in a time when regulation of the data brokers’ activities, both with respect to commercial uses of data and sales to the government, is more important than ever,” said Greg Nojeim, senior counsel and director of CDT’s security and surveillance project. “And yet we’re also in a time when the administration has hobbled virtually every independent overseer of that kind of conduct.”

DOGE also dismantled the Office for Civil Rights and Civil Liberties and terminated the positions of the three Democratic members of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, rendering the agency inoperable.

The federal government “is on a rampage to destroy oversight of its own activities, including those that threaten everyone’s privacy, in the pursuit of immigration enforcement,” said Nojeim. These activities “are being facilitated by private companies,” he added.

Consider the Israeli spyware vendor Paragon Solutions. The company’s flagship product, Graphite, can access encrypted messages on apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Signal. Founded by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and former Israeli army commander Ehud Schneorson, the company secured a $2 million contract from ICE in September. This year, WhatsApp accused Paragon Solutions of targeting about 90 of its users with spyware, including journalists and members of civil society across 24 countries. Among those targeted were Italy’s Francesco Cancellato, an investigative journalist who exposed young fascists in Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s party, and Luca Casarini, founder of an organization that aids migrants.

ICE is also encroaching on all levels of government. In May, a federal judge refused to block the IRS from providing information to immigration authorities while litigation regarding the case plays out in courts. ICE already shares a vast trove of information with federal and state databases, including those of the FBI and 80 “fusion centers” across the country, which integrate data from federal, state, local, tribal, and private partners. At the same time, DHS amasses DNA samples from thousands of people every day—including minors—with essentially no oversight, according to the Center on Privacy &Technology at Georgetown Law. Since 2020, DHS has added more than 1.5 million DNA profiles to the national law enforcement database (CODIS) for criminal policing and prosecution. Most of this DNA comes from people of color, the Center on Privacy & Technology found.

Moreover, technologies such as facial recognition and artificial intelligence (AI) will only continue to grow with almost no regulation as tools for policing and immigration enforcement. “AI is playing and likely will play an increasing role in surveillance and the collection, analysis, and sharing of data,” said Don Bell, policy counsel at POGO. “This is an extraordinarily powerful tool, and being used in immigration enforcement, or under the auspices of immigration enforcement, with no guidelines, no guardrails.”

AI is integral to the most popular facial recognition technology, Clearview AI, which currently has a contract with DHS. Clearview AI has built a massive database of billions of facial images by scraping photos from the internet—including social media, news sites, and other publicly accessible platforms—without people’s knowledge or consent. The company was founded in Silicon Valley by the Australian-born Hoan Ton-That, who is reportedly sympathetic to eugenics and obsessed with topics like race, IQ, and hierarchy.

ICE is now also using a mobile phone app, Mobile Fortify, to identify people by their fingerprints or face by pointing a smartphone camera at them, revealed 404 Media on June 26. The tool was typically used only when people entered or left the United States. Now, it is employed inside the country to identify people filming ICE raids.

Research has found that law enforcement agencies that use automated facial recognition disproportionately arrest Black people. “In large part, this administration inherited an immigration system rooted in racism and white supremacy,” said Bell. On top of that, he added, “the technologies themselves can lead to increased discrimination, which can lead to disproportionate impacts and over-policing … for historically marginalized communities.”

Even though the primary targets of law and immigration enforcement have been racialized individuals from marginalized communities, Trump’s surveillance state also targets those who politically dissent from the administration’s official talking points. In March 2025, Secretary of State Marco Rubio launched “Catch and Revoke,” a program that relies on AI to scrape people’s social media for the purpose of revoking the visa applications of immigrants who have protested Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. One month later, at least 600 people reportedly had their visas revoked because of this monitoring.

Now, the administration has a gigantic surveillance arsenal at its disposal, which is only set to grow. The reconciliation bill approved an additional $165 billion for DHS over the next decade, most of which will go to border security and immigration enforcement, the largest such allocation in history. According to the news, analysis, and research organization BiometricUpdate.com, more than $5.2 billion of ICE’s budget “is dedicated to infrastructure modernization, including $2.5 billion specifically for artificial intelligence systems, biometric data collection platforms, and digital case tracking.”

“We are talking about technologies that are trying to subvert democratic rule, trying to entrench surveillance, and about a government that uses surveillance technology against its citizens,” said Hussain. At the same time, the guardrails and future court challenges to the surveillance apparatus are being preemptively undermined. “By decimating any sort of oversight, however minimal that may be, you’re opening up not only to abuses,” she said, “but also to allowing abuses to happen.”

Editorial Team:
Tina Vasquez, Lead Editor
Carolyn Copeland, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor