This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss companies’ responses to being monitored by an ICE contractor, caring about the little things, weight loss drug ads, and how our SXSW shindig went.
JOSEPH: This week I reported on the more than 200 sites, services, and apps that ShadowDragon, a contractor for ICE and other U.S. government agencies, is monitoring. By monitoring I mean, built the capability for its tool to scrape data from them. This isn’t necessarily straightforward: if you’re selling a capability to a government, I imagine they expect near flawless uptime and for the tool to grab whatever data is available.
The 200+ Sites an ICE Surveillance Contractor is Monitoring
404 Media has obtained the list of sites and services that ICE contractor ShadowDragon pulls data from. ShadowDragon sources data from all over the web and lets government analysts easily search it and draw connections between people.
I contacted a bunch of the companies mentioned. Not all of them, because I don’t think including statements from more than 200 is feasible, but a lot. Just for those who are interested in the story, below I’ve pasted some statements that didn’t get into the story, either because I didn’t name the company, I found their statement could be confusing for readers, or I paraphrased it in the piece and am including the fuller version here. These were all via email.
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