The business of deportation has been transformed by the power of big data. There are 10.5 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States, but there are only about 6,100 officers in ICE’s E.R.O. So ICE tries to find efficiencies where it can, & it uses technology, some built for consumers, some of it built for spies or the police, to do more with less. What may be most unusual about Washington State is not what it collects & not what it has shared but the degree to which it has been forced to become transparent about the vast quantity of personal data that courses through its bureaucracy. For decades, the overriding objective of American business and government has been to remove friction from the tracking system, by linking networks, by speeding connections, by eliminating barriers. But friction is the only thing that has ever made privacy, let alone obscurity, possible.
At www.nytimes.com
