A $13 million dollardata broker contract running from 2015 to 2020 between the West Publishing division of Thomson Reuters and Homeland Security Investigations/ICE has come to light. This proposed contract is an additional one that predates a September 2016 contract between Thomson Reuters and ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Thomson Reuters is a multinational corporation based in Canada. Among its products is the news wire copy service Reuters, which provides news headlines and content to most US media outlets, and Westlaw legal research products, used by most law schools and many of the nation’s attorneys and private investigators.
The contract states: “This action is to request the approval to procure database information to identify criminal suspects, businesses and assets of targets of investigations for potential arrest, seizure and forfeiture. These database services shall be obtained from West Publishing Corporation. West Publishing Corporation is the only known source capable of providing the required information. This information will be used by ICE/HSI/AFU offices located not only in Washington, D.C. but also in 26 SAC offices and multiple RAC offices throughout the United States and US territories”.
The contract goes on to state: “The Government’s requirement is that the database must be able to interface with FALCON Palantir systems. West Publishing Corporation’s CLEAR program offers a system to system (S2S) connection that merges CLEAR public and proprietary data with Palantir analytical information to narrow in and locate persons and assets of interest”.
On October 3, the Oakland City Council unanimously approved a new ordinance subjecting all local law enforcement agreements with federal partners to abide by the city’s laws and undergo civil rights and privacy reviews.
238 human rights organizations,(including Oakland Privacy), demanded that the White House rescind the latest iteration of the unconstitutional and discriminatory “Muslim ban” executive travel order. In an open letter released on September 27, 2017, the groups stated ““If you refuse to rescind this unlawful order, we commit to do all in our power to protect those communities being targeted by EO-3 and to support litigation to defeat this unconstitutional ban. History will long remember, and we will not quickly forget, this singular assault on America’s commitment to freedom of religion.”
This September 2017 article in the NYU Law Review by Elizabeth Joh gives a few shoutouts to the work of Oakland’s Privacy Advisory Commission and OP member Mike Katz-Lacabe.