A hacker working for the identified an FBI assistant legal attaché in Mexico City. According to Reuters covering a Justice Department inspector general report released in June 2025, the hacker used the official’s phone number to obtain call records and location data. The hacker then used Mexico City’s camera network to follow the official around the capital and identify the people they met. The report says the cartel used that information to intimidate potential sources and cooperating witnesses and, in some cases, to kill them.
The deadly lesson was clear: our adversaries no longer need to physically surveil their targets. The commercial data economy does much of the work for them.
In an updated audit released last week, the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General highlighted that this threat â ubiquitous technical surveillance or UTS â “continue[s] to affect the Department” and determined that “DOJ had no common definition of UTS and was not otherwise well-coordinated on the issue, few of the Department’s components had taken action to mitigate the UTS threat, and UTS-specific training was lacking.”
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The conclusion should concern every and law enforcement official: “deficiencies identified in this audit place the Department and its employees, investigations, operations, sources, and witnesses at increased risk to UTS threats.”
As a federal law enforcement and Homeland Security official for the past 25 years, I have seen how quickly technology can change the threat environment facing our personnel. The proliferation of inexpensive, commercially available information creates an unacceptable risk that requires a comprehensive solution.
As the acting director for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, I saw these threats firsthand. My family and I know the dangers too well.
In October 2025, for example, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) reported that cartels had put bounties on ICE and Customs and Border Protection officers in Chicago. The reported figures were $2,000 for doxxing or gathering intelligence on agents and as much as $50,000 for killing high-ranking officials.
Especially for officers working cartel cases, the risk can follow them home.
THE SURVEILLANCE CAMERA ON YOUR STREET CORNER: LAWFUL SPYING OR CONSTITUTIONALLY PROBLEMATIC?
Consider a task-force officer who raids a cartel stash house in the morning and drives home that evening to the same community where the arrest occurred. The officer’s children attend school there. The family goes to church there. The officer coaches a youth sports team there on Saturdays.
Individually, those pieces may appear insignificant. Combined, they can reconstruct a person’s life. And that creates a new vulnerability for federal law enforcement.
