CBP Needs New Tech to Seek for Hidden Knowledge on Seized Telephones
United States Customs and Border Safety (CBP) is asking tech corporations to pitch digital forensics instruments which might be designed to course of and analyze textual content messages, footage, movies, and contacts from seized telephones, laptops, and different gadgets at the USA border, in keeping with paperwork reviewed by WIRED.
The company mentioned in a federal registry itemizing that the instruments it’s in search of will need to have very particular capabilities, akin to the flexibility to discover a “hidden language” in an individual’s textual content messages; determine particular objects, “like a pink tricycle,” throughout completely different movies; entry chats in encrypted messaging apps; and “discover patterns” in giant datasets for “intel technology.” The itemizing was first posted on June 20 and up to date on July 1.
CBP has been utilizing Cellebrite to extract and analyze knowledge from gadgets since 2008. However the company mentioned that it needs to “develop” and modernize its digital forensics program. Final yr, CBP claims, it did searches on greater than 47,000 digital gadgets—which is barely greater than the roughly 41,500 gadgets it searched in 2023 however a dramatic rise from 2015, when it searched simply greater than 8,500 gadgets.
The so-called request for data (RFI) comes amid a string of reviews of CBP detaining individuals getting into the US, generally questioning them about their journey plans or political views, and at instances gathering and looking their telephones. In a single high-profile incident in March, a Lebanese professor at Brown College’s medical faculty was despatched again to Lebanon after authorities searched her cellphone and alleged she was “sympathetic” to the previous Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in September 2024.
Within the RFI, CBP mentioned that the digital forensics vendor it chooses will signal a contract within the third fiscal quarter of 2026, which runs from April by June. CBP has eight energetic contracts for Cellebrite software program, licenses, tools, and coaching—price greater than $1.3 million in whole—that may finish between July 2025 and April 2026. CBP seems to make use of instruments aside from Cellebrite. The company mentioned within the current itemizing that it makes use of “all kinds of digital knowledge extraction instruments,” however it doesn’t identify these instruments.
CBP didn’t reply to requests for remark. Cellebrite spokesperson Victor Cooper tells WIRED that the corporate is “unable to touch upon energetic requests for data proposals.”
Three federal contract listings point out that CBP pays for Cellebrite’s Common Forensic Extraction System 4PC, software program designed to investigate knowledge on a person’s current PC or laptop computer. The itemizing for the “license renewal” doesn’t point out a particular product however could also be referring to the Investigative Digital Intelligence Platform, which is Cellebrite’s “end-to-end” suite of instruments of analyzing knowledge from gadgets.
Throughout Cellebrite’s intelligence platform, customers have a variety of capabilities. It will possibly kind photos based mostly on whether or not they comprise sure components, like jewellery, handwriting, or paperwork. It will possibly additionally undergo textual content messages, in addition to direct messages on apps like TikTok, and filter out messages that point out sure subjects, like proof obstruction, household, or the police. Customers may also unveil images “hidden” by a tool proprietor, make social maps of associates and contacts, and plot the areas the place an individual despatched textual content messages.