CBP Needs New Tech to Seek for Hidden Information on Seized Telephones

United States Customs and Border Safety (CBP) is asking tech firms to pitch digital forensics instruments which might be designed to course of and analyze textual content messages, photos, movies, and contacts from seized telephones, laptops, and different gadgets at america border, based on 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, corresponding to the flexibility to discover a “hidden language” in an individual’s textual content messages; establish particular objects, “like a purple tricycle,” throughout totally different movies; entry chats in encrypted messaging apps; and “discover patterns” in giant datasets for “intel era.” The itemizing was first posted on June 20 and up to date on July 1.

CBP has been utilizing Cellebrite to extract and analyze information from gadgets since 2008. However the company mentioned that it needs to “develop” and modernize its digital forensics program. Final 12 months, 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 experiences of CBP detaining folks getting into the US, generally questioning them about their journey plans or political views, and at occasions amassing 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 lively contracts for Cellebrite software program, licenses, gear, and coaching—value greater than $1.3 million in whole—that may finish between July 2025 and April 2026. CBP seems to make use of instruments apart from Cellebrite. The company mentioned within the latest itemizing that it makes use of “all kinds of digital information extraction instruments,” however it doesn’t title these instruments.

CBP didn’t reply to requests for remark. Cellebrite spokesperson Victor Cooper tells WIRED that the corporate is “unable to touch upon lively requests for data proposals.”

Three federal contract listings point out that CBP pays for Cellebrite’s Common Forensic Extraction Gadget 4PC, software program designed to investigate information on a consumer’s current PC or laptop computer. The itemizing for the “license renewal” doesn’t point out a selected product however could also be referring to the Investigative Digital Intelligence Platform, which is Cellebrite’s “end-to-end” suite of instruments of analyzing information from gadgets.

Throughout Cellebrite’s intelligence platform, customers have a variety of capabilities. It may possibly type pictures primarily based on whether or not they comprise sure components, like jewellery, handwriting, or paperwork. It may possibly additionally undergo textual content messages, in addition to direct messages on apps like TikTok, and filter out messages that point out sure matters, like proof obstruction, household, or the police. Customers also can 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.