Biden stopped ICE from buying Israeli spyware, but Trump admin allows it to proceed

Privacy advocates don't care if Paragon is based in the US now - they still don't want ICE armed with spyware

ICE may soon have a new weapon in its arsenal. The White House has reversed a Biden-era decision to suspend the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s purchase of software from commercial spyware maker Paragon Solutions.

Israel-based Paragon Solutions' contract with ICE was signed in September of 2024, but quickly placed under review by the Biden administration for noncompliance with the former President's 2023 executive order that barred the US government from purchasing or using commercial spyware. That order included a number of exceptions - including allowing the purchase of commercial spyware owned and operated by a US-based company. 

Journalist Jack Poulson first reported the Saturday contract modification that lifted Biden's stop work order. The contract was likely reinstated due to some rather major changes at Paragon since the contract was frozen in October of 2024. It's an American company now, Paulson noted, so there's no more conflict with that Biden order.

Paragon was founded in Israel in 2019 by former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and ex-signals intelligence Unit 8200 commander Ehud Schneorson, billing itself as an ethical alternative to spyware like NSO Group's Pegasus. Instead of full-device takeover, it's reportedly only able to snoop silently with the included ability to decrypt messages from apps like WhatsApp. Paragon software is still able to reportedly be installed covertly without user interaction, though, so its more restrained functionality likely isn't very comforting to targets. 

According to University of Toronto's Citizen Lab, which reported earlier this year that Paragon's flagship spyware Graphite had been used against journalists, activists, and other political targets in Italy, all shares in Paragon's Israeli operations were transferred to a US parent company last December for $500 million. Paragon was acquired by Virginia-based cybersecurity firm Red Lattice, but still operates inside of Israel as well as in the US. 

In June, Apple closed at least one ingress route for Paragon spyware in response to Citizen Lab's report. 

Restored deal reignites domestic spying worries

Civil rights advocates at the Center for Democracy and Technology penned a multi-group open letter to the Department of Homeland Security last year expressing their concerns over the then-paused Paragon deal. Speaking to The Register today, CDT security and surveillance project policy counsel Tom Bowman said that he doesn't much care who owns Graphite or any other spyware; he's still just as concerned as he was when the letter was written last year.

"Commercial spyware is an extraordinarily invasive tool," Bowman told us during a phone interview. "Just because Paragon was purchased by an American company doesn't mean those concerns go away."

Bowman is also worried that ICE, which he described as having a "troubling track record of stretching its surveillance authority," would be unlikely to stop at whatever the Trump administration's official use cases for commercial spyware would be. 

"ICE is constantly seeking to expand its surveillance arsenal," Bowman said, pointing to prior deals the Homeland Security subsidiary struck with data brokers, facial recognition software makers, counter-drone equipment producers, and social media monitoring firms as examples of prior expansions of its surveillance capabilities. 

"Spyware is a logical and deeply alarming next step - especially for an agency that has shown so little restraint," Bowman said. 

Information on the ICE/Paragon contract available from the government makes no mention of what specific software ICE plans to buy from the company, but Bowman told us he has little reason to believe it's anything but Graphite. 

"ICE specifically wants tools that can bypass encryption and operate covertly without the safeguards that come with warrants or wiretaps," Bowman asserted. 

President Trump has made no secret of his desire to go after political enemies using the government, and ICE was seen as a massive domestic surveillance operation before Trump even took office for the second time. We reached out to ICE, DHS, and Paragon for some assurances, but didn't hear back from anyone. ®