Tracy Mumford

Today on The Daily, are the bots coming for your job next, even if you're not Brad Pitt?

Times tech columnist Kevin Roos on the next generation of AI tools.

You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

We'll be back tomorrow.

From The New York Times, it's The Headlines.

I'm Tracy Mumford.

Today's Monday, February 16th.

Here's what we're covering.

The Times has learned that in recent months, the Department of Homeland Security has been pushing social media sites to reveal the identities of people who criticize ICE online.

According to government officials and tech employees, who are not authorized to speak publicly, DHS has sent hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Reddit, Discord, and Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.

It's asked for the names, emails, phone numbers, and other identifying data behind social media accounts that criticize the agency or post about the location of agents.

According to government officials, Meta, Reddit, and Google have all complied with some of the requests.

Some of the companies say they notified the account owners first and gave them 10 to 14 days to fight the subpoena in court.

In the past, these kind of subpoenas were issued only sparingly.

Tech employees told The Times they were primarily used to uncover people behind accounts engaged in serious crimes like child trafficking.

But the Trump administration's been aggressively trying to tamp down criticism of ICE, partly by identifying Americans who've spoken out against the agency.

ICE told protesters in Minneapolis and Chicago that they were being recorded and identified with facial recognition technology.

And last month, the White House border czar said on Fox News that he was pushing to create a database of people who were arrested for, quote, interference, impeding and assaults.

In court, DHS lawyers have argued that they're seeking this information to keep ICE agents safe in the field.