United States Customs and Border Safety (CBP) is asking tech firms to pitch digital forensics instruments which can be designed to course of and analyze textual content messages, photos, movies, and contacts from seized phones, laptops, and other devices at the United States border, in keeping with paperwork reviewed by WIRED.
The company said in a federal registry listing that the instruments it’s looking for should have very particular capabilities, comparable to the flexibility to discover a “hidden language” in an individual’s textual content messages; determine particular objects, “like a pink 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 knowledge from gadgets since 2008. However the company stated that it desires to “increase” and modernize its digital forensics program. Final 12 months, CBP claims, it did searches on greater than 47,000 digital gadgets—which is barely increased than the roughly 41,500 devices it searched in 2023 however a dramatic rise from 2015, when it searched just more than 8,500 devices.
The so-called request for info (RFI) comes amid a string of reports of CBP detaining people entering the US, sometimes questioning them about their travel plans or political beliefs, and at occasions collecting and searching 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 phone and alleged she was “sympathetic” to the previous Hezbollah chief Hassan Nasrallah, who was assassinated in September 2024.
Within the RFI, CBP stated 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 energetic contracts for Cellebrite software program, licenses, gear, and coaching—value greater than $1.3 million in complete—that can finish between July 2025 and April 2026. CBP seems to make use of instruments aside from Cellebrite. The company stated within the current itemizing that it makes use of “all kinds of digital knowledge 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 energetic requests for info proposals.”
Three federal contract listings point out that CBP pays for Cellebrite’s Common Forensic Extraction Machine 4PC, software program designed to research knowledge on a user’s existing PC or laptop. The itemizing for the “license renewal” doesn’t point out a particular product however could also be referring to the Investigative Digital Intelligence Platform, which is Cellebrite’s “end-to-end” suite of tools of analyzing knowledge from gadgets.
Throughout Cellebrite’s intelligence platform, customers have a variety of capabilities. It will possibly sort images primarily based on whether or not they comprise sure components, like jewellery, handwriting, or paperwork. It will possibly additionally undergo textual content messages, in addition to direct messages on apps like TikTok, and filter out messages that point out sure subjects, like proof obstruction, household, or the police. Customers may unveil photos “hidden” by a tool proprietor, make social maps of pals and contacts, and plot the locations the place an individual despatched textual content messages.
