ICE reactivates contract with spyware maker Paragon

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a contract last year with Israeli spyware maker Paragon worth $2 million. 

Shortly after, the Biden administration put the contract under review, issuing a “stop work order,” to determine whether the contract complied with an executive order on commercial spyware, which restricts U.S. government agencies from using spyware that could violate human rights or target Americans abroad. 

Almost a year later, when it looked like the contract would just run out and never become active, ICE lifted the stop work order, according to public records.

“This contract is for a fully configured proprietary solution including license, hardware, warranty, maintenance, and training. This modification is to lift the stop work order,” read an update dated August 30 on the U.S. government’s Federal Procurement Data System, a database of government contracts. 

Independent journalist Jack Poulson was the first to report the news in his newsletter.

Paragon has for years cultivated the image of being an “ethical” and responsible spyware maker, in contrast with controversial spyware purveyors such as Hacking Team, Intellexa, and NSO Group. On its official website, Paragon claims to provide its customers with “ethically based tools, teams, and insights.”

The spyware maker faces an ethical dilemma. Now that the contract with ICE’s Information Technology Division is active, it’s up to Paragon to decide whether it wants to continue its relationship with ICE, an agency that has dramatically ramped up mass deportations and expanded its surveillance powers since Donald Trump took over the White House. 

Emily Horne, a spokesperson for Paragon, as well as executive chairman John Fleming, did not respond to a request for comment. 

In an attempt to show its good faith, in February of this year, Fleming told TechCrunch that the company only sells to the U.S. government and other unspecified allied countries. 

Paragon has already had to face a thorny ethical dilemma. In January, WhatsApp revealed that around 90 of its users, including journalists and human rights workers, had been targeted with Paragon’s spyware, called Graphite. In the following days and weeks, Italian journalist Francesco Cancellato and several local pro-immigration activists came forward saying they were among the victims. 

In response to this scandal, Paragon cut ties with the Italian government, which had in the meantime launched an inquiry to determine what happened. Then, in June, digital rights research group Citizen Lab confirmed that two other journalists, an unnamed European and a colleague of Cancellato, had been hacked with Paragon’s spyware. 

An Italian parliament committee concluded that the spying of the pro-immigration activists was legal, but it also claimed that there was no evidence that Italy’s intelligence agencies, former Paragon customers, had targeted Cancellato. 

John Scott-Railton, a senior researcher at Citizen Lab, who has investigated cases of spyware abuse for more than a decade, told TechCrunch that “these tools were designed for dictatorships, not democracies built on liberty and protection of individual rights.”

The researcher said that even spyware is “corrupting,” which is why “there’s a growing pile of spyware scandals in democracies, including with Paragon’s Graphite. Worse, Paragon is still shielding spyware abusers. Just look at the still-unexplained hacks of Italian journalists.”