CIVIL liberties and immigration rights groups worry Donald Trump's incoming administration could use powerful law enforcement surveillance and big data technology to press ahead with some key policies, risking infringing on privacy rights.
Republican Trump has repeatedly said he would "militarise" certain law enforcement activities, which could involve using the military for domestic law enforcement, though he has not provided any specifics.
A victorious Trump could use surveillance systems and artificial intelligence to supercharge his plan to carry out a mass deportation of illegal immigrants.
When the former president returns to the White House in January, he will have across-the-board powers backed by a Republican-controlled Senate and Congress, and a conservative majority in the Supreme Court.
Against this backdrop, experts worry that an emboldened and more powerful and organised second Trump administration could exploit advances in technology and surveillance to forge ahead with policies ranging from immigration to policing.
"He is likely to further empower law enforcement to invest in and deploy surveillance tools, with little regard for civil liberties concerns," said Andrew Ferguson, a law professor at the American University in Washington D.C.
The concerns about surveillance powers are particularly acute among immigration rights groups, which worry that a Trump administration would be able to harness data brokers, facial recognition, and other tools to create lists of immigrants it would want to deport.
Data brokers are companies that track and collect personal data and, in the United States, there are few regulations restricting what they can sell to law enforcement.
J.D. Vance, Trump's running mate, has said the Trump administration could aim to deport around one million people a year.
By comparison, the Biden administration deported around 150,000 illegal immigrants in 2023, the vast majority of which were new arrivals at the border.
"These technologies will be exploited, and probably in the worst possible way," said Paromita Shah, the executive director of Just Futures Law, a legal immigration advocacy group.
In recent years, Shah and other immigrant rights advocate groups have asked regulators to restrict immigration authorities' access to big data tools, and filed lawsuits alleging data brokers who share such information violate consumers' privacy. The efforts have had little results so far.
After his victory, Trump told NBC News he would prioritise the deportation plan, adding there was "no price tag" on the operation.
It is unclear how many undocumented migrants Trump aims to deport. The US Department of Homeland Security estimated there were 11 million immigrants without legal status in 2022.
Immigration experts, however, have pointed to some bureaucratic and legal hurdles, such as insufficient immigration judges and tight budgets for hiring agents to conduct the operations.
Another concern is that Trump could exploit advances in the police's surveillance capacity to implement his vision of "restoring law and order and public safety in America".
There has been an explosion in surveillance tools in US police department in recent years, while law enforcement's access to commercial databases has also increased, allowing them to track people without a warrant.
The number of local police departments with "real time crime centres" — central hubs where surveillance from cameras, licence plate readers and other inputs flow — has almost doubled over the last four years, according to data collected by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital rights group.
More than 90 per cent of large police departments in the US currently have access to automatic licence plate readers, up from around 66 per cent in 2016, data from the Department of Justice showed.
The writer is from Reuters