# The Intercept — "U.S. Companies Honed Their Surveillance Tech in Israel. Now It's Coming Home." > *This April 30, 2025 investigative feature by Sophia Goodfriend (The Intercept, in partnership with Dissent) documents the concrete pipeline by which surveillance/AI systems refined in the Israeli–Palestinian context were deployed at the US border and then into domestic immigration and policing — Palantir's ICE "immigrationOS," Babel Street, IBM/Microsoft West Bank border software, and Amazon/Google cloud infrastructure. It matters to the Arkansas surveillance investigation as established journalism corroborating the backflow thesis with named US-government deployments, and because its "Related" rail links The Intercept's prior reporting on Cellebrite's spread across federal government and on Texas state police buying Israeli phone-tracking software for the border — adjacent to the wiki's own phone-extraction vendor coverage.* ## Source metadata - **Publisher:** The Intercept (theintercept.com), in partnership with Dissent magazine; author Sophia Goodfriend - **URL:** https://theintercept.com/2025/04/30/israel-palestine-us-ai-surveillance-state/ - **Archived:** 2026-06-07 via firecrawl_scrape (markdown) - **Tier:** 3 (established investigative journalism) ## Extract — verbatim (lightly cleaned) On the proving-ground dynamic and the move into domestic policing: > "The AI industry's business model hinges on unfettered access to troves of data, which makes less-then-democratic contexts, where state surveillance is unconstrained by judicial, legislative, or public oversight, particularly lucrative proving grounds for new products. The effects of these technologies have been most punitive on the borders of the U.S. or the European Union, like migrant detention centers in Texas or Greece. But now the inevitable is happening: They are becoming popular domestic policing tools." On Israel as an early test site and the US firms that supplied it: > "Israel was one early test site. As Israeli authorities expanded their surveillance powers to clamp down on rising rates of Palestinian terrorism in the early 2010s, U.S. technology firms flocked to the region. In exchange for first digital and then automated surveillance systems, Israel's security apparatus offered CEOs troves of the information economy's most prized commodity: data. IBM and Microsoft provided software used to monitor West Bank border crossings. Palantir offered predictive policing algorithms to Israeli security forces. Amazon and Google would sign over cloud computing infrastructure and AI systems." On the build-out of US capacity with the same companies: > "With time and in partnership with many of the same companies, the U.S. security state built its own surveillance capacities to scale." On Babel Street and Palantir contracting with ICE: > "Companies like Babel and Palantir entered into contracts with ICE in 2015, becoming the bread and butter of ICE's surveillance capacities by mining personal data from thousands of sources for government authorities, converting it into searchable databases, and mapping connections between individuals and organizations." On Palantir's current ICE system: > "According to recent reports, Palantir is building ICE an 'immigrationOS' that can generate reports on immigrants and visa holders — including what they look like, where they live, and where they travel — and monitor their location in real time." On the "Catch and Revoke" AI initiative repurposing the apparatus domestically: > "In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the State Department was launching an AI-powered 'Catch and Revoke' initiative to accelerate the cancellation of student visas. Algorithms would collect data from social media profiles, news outlets, and doxing sites ... The arsenal was built in concert with American tech companies over the past two decades and already deployed, in part, within the U.S. immigration system." Note — The Intercept's "Related" rail on this page links its prior reporting directly relevant to the wiki's vendors and to the Israel-to-US-border pattern: > "Texas State Police Purchased Israeli Phone-Tracking Software for 'Border Emergency'" (2023-07-26) > "Use of Controversial Phone-Cracking Tool Is Spreading Across Federal Government" (2022-02-08, on Cellebrite) > "The U.S. Border Patrol and an Israeli Military Contractor Are Putting a Native American Reservation Under 'Persistent Surveillance'" (2019-08-25, on Elbit)