
When you open a new credit card, you necessarily give the credit card company your address. You probably expect that information to remain with your bank.
But when you open a new credit card or change your address on file, your address leaves your credit card provider, travels through a web of middlemen companies, and ends up with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which can then search, analyze, or pair that data with other pieces of information about your life without a warrant.
404 Media has mapped out this supply of data by reviewing U.S. government procurement records and internal documents from companies providing the information. It highlights the sometimes unexpected ways ICE is gaining access to peoples’ personal information as the agency continues to acquire and leverage all sorts of data.
The agency is buying information not just for immigration enforcement but to also investigate what the administration describes as ‘voter fraud.’ ICE officials have also repeatedly attempted to intimidate legal observers of ICE activity.
“No one signing up for a credit card thinks they're giving data brokers a thumbs-up to sell their personal information to ICE. Not only is it an outrageous violation of our privacy, it's impossible for Americans to opt out,” Senator Ron Wyden told 404 Media in a statement.
Here’s how that data supply chain works:
Whenever you open a credit card, or update your personal information, the credit card company provides your data to credit bureaus.
This is the personal data included at the top of your credit report. While the credit report itself has stronger legal protections, the credit header data does not.
These companies are tasked with tracking peoples' credit. Experian and Equifax are mentioned in the documents 404 Media obtained. TransUnion is another credit bureau, but it has its own data selling product.
The credit bureaus provide the credit header data to Thomson Reuters, which incorporates it into CLEAR. CLEAR is the company's investigative data product. It brings together all sorts of data from different sources so customers can locate individuals. Thomson Reuters sells access to CLEAR to law enforcement agencies.
ICE buys access to CLEAR and is able to query its data without a warrant. CLEAR is also integrated with tools that ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to raid, including ELITE, a system worked on by Palantir. ELITE gives ICE a "confidence score" of a person's current address.
Laura Rivera, an attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media “Most people are shocked to learn that anytime they open a credit card or phone account, their home address and other personal information is exposed to anyone willing to pay for it on the data broker market. Anytime we update our home address on these accounts, credit bureaus get the updates within 24 hours and share it broadly with other data brokers, thanks to legal loopholes that leave our personal information open to misuse and abuse.”
“The unregulated trade of credit header data hurts all of us, but it especially harms communities that are overpoliced, like Black and Brown people, immigrants, and people seeking reproductive care, enabling stalking, harassment, and even arrest and deportation. In our current climate, militarized immigration forces leverage credit header data to locate community members without a warrant. This is a blatant abuse of our personal data and lawmakers need to step in to rein it in,” she added.
Credit header is the information at the top of your credit report, including your name, address, and contact information. You give this information to financial institutions, who in turn give it to the country’s credit bureaus that keep track of everyone’s credit.
Those bureaus then repurpose the data and sell it or provide it to other companies. In this case, that includes Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters is known for the Reuters news service, but it is also a data broker and sells an investigative tool called CLEAR to private and government clients.
404 Media obtained an internal list of the data suppliers that feed into CLEAR. It included “Equifax Credit Header Records” and “Experian Credit Header Records,” indicating that CLEAR gets its credit header data from those two credit bureaus. 404 Media verified this data supply chain with a Thomson Reuters employee familiar with CLEAR. 404 Media granted multiple sources in this article anonymity to protect them from retaliation.
Thomson Reuters then sells access to CLEAR to various government agencies, including ICE. This month 404 Media reported ICE plans to pay Thomson Reuters $125 million for access to CLEAR to investigate immigration fraud and what the agency describes as “voters fraud.” 404 Media’s report on this sale came a day after President Trump held a conspiracy-laden press conference about election and voting security. Commentators widely believe this is Trump laying the groundwork for undermining the legitimacy of the upcoming midterm elections.
Armed with this and other data, ICE is then able to use it to find where people the agency is interested in may live. An internal ICE user guide for ELITE — a Palantir-made app ICE uses to find which neighborhoods to raid — lists CLEAR as a source for its address “confidence score.”
The data in CLEAR may not always be accurate though, potentially leading to ICE targeting the wrong location. “The data quality is way worse than people expect,” the Thomson Reuters employee familiar with CLEAR told 404 Media. “Combining disparate data sources into singular profiles is fundamentally a difficult problem, and a lot of superfluous stuff comes along. Stuff like the data we get from other sources might be bad, like your name showing up on a relative’s address because of a shared bill and suddenly you live there.”
“There is a ton of data out there about everyone, but organizing it is very much not a solved problem,” the source added.
When reporting about Thomson Reuters’ sale of CLEAR access to ICE, a Thomson Reuters spokesperson originally told 404 Media “It’s inaccurate to connect CLEAR to ICE and its deportation and enforcement operations.” After we asked for comment on the more recent $125 million contract, the spokesperson said, “We prohibit the use of CLEAR for the purpose of identifying and locating noncriminal immigrants or undocumented individuals with the intention of deportation solely on the basis of the individual’s immigration status. We take this restriction seriously, and we enforce it. We continue to work with our customers to provide technology and services that support investigations into areas of national security and public safety, such as child exploitation, human trafficking, narcotics and weapons trafficking, and fraud/financial crime.”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) was taking steps to close the sale of this sort of credit header data, but the Trump administration gutted the agency. “President Biden's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau proposed a rule to close this loophole, but Trump killed it, along with the rest of the bureau, last year. There’s growing agreement in Congress that it’s time to close this loophole,” Senator Wyden, who has long tried to close this data buying avenue, added.
Neither Experian nor Equifax responded to a request for comment. When contacted recently about its investigative capabilities, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said, “Like other law enforcement agencies, ICE employs various forms of technology to investigate criminal activity and support law enforcement efforts.”
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Burgemeester Carola Schouten van Rotterdam is geschrokken van de botsing tussen twee trams op de Erasmusbrug. Vanaf het stadhuis hoorde ze veel ambulances en even later kreeg ze beelden van het ongeluk doorgestuurd. "Dan slaat de schrik je om het hart. Zeker in de wetenschap dat er mensen in de tram zitten. Het is een enorme klap geweest", zei Schouten, die enkele uren na het tramongeluk een bezoek bracht aan de Erasmusbrug. Hoe de botsing heeft kunnen gebeuren is nog niet bekend, het onderzoek loopt nog.
Het ongeluk vond rond 11.10 uur plaats. Op beelden van een webcam aan de noordkant van de Erasmusbrug is te zien hoe een tram stil staat te wachten voor de brug, die op dat moment open is. Een andere tram rijdt daar ogenschijnlijk zonder vaart te minderen achterop. Vijftien mensen zijn daarbij gewond geraakt, van wie een ernstig. De veiligheidsregio sprak eerder over achttien gewonden, van wie twee zwaargewonden, maar dat aantal is naar beneden bijgesteld. Schouten zegt dat de mensen in de trams "natuurlijk ook mentaal een klap hebben gekregen".
Het onderzoek is volgens Schouten bijna afgerond. Daarna begint de berging van de trams. Die moeten voorzichtig uit elkaar gehaald worden en daarna geborgen. "Dat moet voorzichtig gebeuren, want de tram staat onder spanning", zegt Schouten.
De Erasmusbrug blijft de komende uren afgesloten voor verkeer, zegt een woordvoerder van de veiligheidsregio.
LINGEN (ANP/AFP/RTR) - De Duitse autoriteiten hebben toestemming gegeven voor een Frans-Russisch kernenergieproject. Het project tussen het Franse Framatome en het Russische Rosatom zou worden gevestigd in de assemblagefabriek van Framatome in het Duitse Lingen.
De geplande samenwerking tussen een dochteronderneming van Framatome en het Russische staatsbedrijf is gericht op de productie van splijtstofstaven voor door Rusland ontworpen reactoren. Critici vrezen spionage en sabotage vanuit Moskou, maar het ministerie van Milieu van de Duitse deelstaat Nedersaksen, waar Lingen deel van uitmaakt, keurt het project goed.
Rosatom is vrijgesteld van EU-sancties die tegen Rusland zijn ingesteld na de invasie in Oekraïne in februari 2022.
De Duitse politicus Roderich Kiesewetter van CDU wil dat de federale regering ingrijpt. Tegenover Politico noemt hij het project "gevaarlijk voor de veiligheid".
What does a grownup mermaid look like? It starts with the silhouette …
Before wild swimming was even a twinkle in the eye of the culture, and before ice plunging went viral on TikTok, there were mermaids. Mermaids are the original summer It girls. Who doesn’t want hair that looks great when it’s wet and salty, shell jewellery, killer sex appeal and a life of sun, sea and winding up sailors for kicks? These chicks know how to live.
Mermaidcore is this summer’s hottest style vibe. It is beach chic with a hot-sauce dash of brat energy. Every summer has its own off-duty avatar – tomato girl summer, anyone? – and 2026 is all about mermaids. For legal reasons, please note this column is not endorsing the luring of innocents to certain death. The vibe is Daryl Hannah in Splash, not selkies and sirens.
Continue reading...Researchers listening off the Caribbean island of Dominica found variations in the mammals’ audible clicks when marine traffic was close
Sperm whales produce a specific pattern of clicking noises when they hear the noise of boats, researchers have found. The pattern is so distinct that the scientists who identified it said they can now use it to predict when ships are nearby.
Researchers from Project Ceti (the Cetacean Translation Initiative), a non-profit research organisation working to decode sperm whale communication, spent four years tuning in on the calls of 15 sperm whales off the coast of Dominica.
Continue reading...Fifty years ago, another Healey ran the Treasury. Today’s chancellor may find some things haven’t changed
Some things never change. Fifty years ago, Britain was sweltering in the long hot summer of 1976. The Labour government was acutely aware that the financial markets were scrutinising its every move. And a man called Healey was running the Treasury.
On the surface, the challenges facing John Healey are less severe than those Denis Healey had to grapple with half a century ago. Inflation is a lot lower and the City has reacted calmly to Andy Burnham as prime minister. And, while things could turn nasty pretty quickly, they would have to get a lot worse before Healey Mk II felt the need to ask the International Monetary Fund for an emergency loan.
Continue reading...Deemed Africa’s first Netflix success, the show’s appeal is rooted in a universal story: what people tolerate for love and money
Over the past few weeks, I have been gripped by The Polygamist, a new, record-breaking South African Netflix drama, which racked up more than 23 million views in its first month. I’ve been zealously talking about how special it is to anyone who will listen. And now it’s your turn, dear reader.
The Polygamist is by all accounts the first African smash hit of the streaming age. Released in mid June, the show has topped streaming charts in Africa, and broken into the global top five non-English series globally. It has also broken through all sorts of cultural and language barriers. African and western stars have raved about it. Its protagonists have become overnight celebrities. And its twists, turns and surrounding discourse so saturate social media that I have had to forgo Instagram and TikTok to avoid spoilers.
Continue reading...From neighbourhood scavenger to baseball mascot and Daily Show guest, the Seattle animal has become social media’s newest cult hero
Pygmy hippo Moo Deng is washed up and humiliated, having flunked all three of her football World Cup predictions. Punch the Japanese macaque orphaned in Ikea is so February . And if you can even remember Grumpy Cat, may she rest in peace.
As of today the internet belongs to Jimothy: a raccoon with a striking silhouette who has gone from a minor celebrity in Seattle to social media main character overnight. Jimothy is suddenly all over Instagram, and if you hover over the critter for so much as a nanosecond, he will be all you will ever see on your feed.
Continue reading...