ShadowDragon — Social Media Surveillance for ICE

ShadowDragon provides ICE with social media surveillance tools that aggregate user data from more than 200 websites and platforms. ICE has at least three contracts for ShadowDragon products, specifically SocialNet and OI Monitor.

Key Products

SocialNet

An online surveillance system that pulls data from 200+ websites and makes it available to government clients, allowing them to map a person’s activity, movements, and relationships. Monitored platforms include:

Major social media: Facebook, Instagram, Bluesky, Truth Social
Niche communities: furry sites, car enthusiast forums, bodybuilding sites, bibliophile communities
Dating platforms and pornographic sites
Tech forums: Y Combinator, GitHub
Marketplace and commerce sites: OnlyFans, prospective homebuyer sites

In a 2022 acquisition document, ICE confirmed that “[p]ersistent access to Facebook and Twitter provided by ShadowDragon SocialNet is of the utmost importance as they are the most prominent social media platforms.”

OI Monitor

An open-source intelligence monitoring tool used alongside SocialNet.

ICE Usage

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) division is the primary user of SocialNet. Procurement records show continued contracts as recently as February 2025.

2025-2026 Expansion Context

ICE has indicated it intends to spend $20-50 million to build and staff a 24/7 social media monitoring office with at least 30 full-time agents. ShadowDragon’s tools are central to this expansion. The EFF reported in January 2026 that ICE’s 2025 surveillance budget was 10 times the size of the agency’s total surveillance spending over the previous 13 years.

ShadowDragon operates alongside other ICE surveillance contractors including palantir-technologies (which provides the palantir-immigrationos-2025 and palantir-icm-2022 platforms), clearview-ai (facial recognition), and babel-street (location data). Together, these tools form the digital surveillance layer of the ice-contract-pipeline.

Detention Pipeline