The US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) is set to resume business with a controversial hacking company behind the spyware tool Graphite, designed to hack phones and read private messages.
The $2 million contract between Ice and the spyware vendor Paragon Solutions has been re-enabled, according to an official US government public procurement notice that now reads "lift the stop work order".
The Department of Homeland Security had signed a $2 million deal with Paragon last September under the Biden administration, but it was put on hold to ensure the deal adhered to a 2023 executive order that restricts spyware use. The US private equity firm AE Industrial Partners acquired Tel Aviv’s Paragon, with Ehud Barak, a former Israeli Prime Minister, as a co-founder, in a deal worth up to $900 million, according to Bloomberg. AE Industrial Partners also has a "significant stake" in cyber intelligence company REDLattice, which has several former CIA officials on its management board.
There is a lack of clarity on the services Ice intends to have Paragon provide under the agreement. But the reversal in status of the contract comes at a time when the Trump administration has undertaken the task of deportation of unauthorised immigrants, a cornerstone of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
In August, an analysis of census data by the nonpartisan Pew Research Centre reported that for the first time in decades, more immigrants are leaving the US than arriving.
If Graphite is planted on a phone, it can take control of one’s phone, allowing the user, in this case Ice, to track whereabouts, read messages, check photographs, and can be used to turn the phone into a listening device by changing settings on the recorder app.
The capabilities Graphite hold are comparable to NSO Group’s Pegasus spyware. In 2021, reports surfaced of Pegasus being used on some Indian mobile numbers, including Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi, several journalists, and activists. According to The Guardian, the technology has the potential to secretly record messages sent using encrypted apps such as Signal and WhatsApp.
Earlier, an official with Meta Platforms’ WhatsApp chat service said it had identified an effort from Paragon to target 90-odd users, including journalists and members of civil society, in Europe. It led to two media organisations in Italy filing a criminal complaint to seek who was responsible for the hacking.
Last month, Britain dropped its demand for access to Apple customers' encrypted data, which had attracted an outcry from privacy experts and could have affected American users of the tech giant’s cloud services, the director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard had said.