According to WIER’s documentation, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is asking tech companies to promote digital forensic tools designed to process and analyze text messages, pictures, videos and contacts from mobile phones, laptops and other devices on the U.S. border.
The agency said in the federal registry list that the tools it seeks must have very specific features, such as the ability to find “hidden language” in people’s text messages; identify specific objects of different videos, “like a red tricycle”, access chats in encrypted messaging applications; and “find patterns” in large data sets of “Intel Generation.” The list was first released on June 20 and updated on July 1.
Since 2008, CBP has been using Cellebrite to extract and analyze data from devices. But the agency said it hopes to “scalate” and modernize its digital forensics program. CBP claims it did search on more than 47,000 electronic devices last year, which is slightly higher than the approximately 41,500 devices searched in 2023, but it rose sharply from when it searched over 8,500 devices in 2015.
The so-called request for information (RFI) appears in a series of reports of CBP detaining people into the U.S., sometimes asking them about their travel plans or political beliefs, and sometimes collecting and searching their phones. In a striking incident in March, authorities searched her phone and claimed she expressed “sympathy” for former Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah, a Lebanese professor at Brown University School of Medicine, who was assassinated in September 2024.
CBP said in RFI that its chosen digital forensics supplier will sign a contract in the third fiscal quarter of 2026, which will run from April to June. CBP has eight active contracts for Cellebrite software, licenses, equipment and training, totaling over $1.3 million – which will end between July 2025 and April 2026. CBP seems to use other tools other than Cellebrite. The agency said in its recent list that it uses “multiple digital data extraction tools” but did not name them.
CBP did not respond to a request for comment. Cellebrite spokesman Victor Cooper told Wired that the company was “unable to comment on a positive information proposal request.”
Three federal contract lists mention that CBP paid for Cellebrite’s universal forensic extraction device 4PC, a software designed to analyze data on a user’s existing PC or laptop. The list of “license updates” does not mention a specific product, but refers to an investigative digital intelligence platform, an “end-to-end” suite of Cellebrite’s “end-to-end” suite for analyzing the device’s data.
In Cellebrite’s intelligence platform, users have a wide range of functions. It can sort images based on whether they contain certain elements, such as jewelry, handwriting, or documents. It can also filter out some messages referring to certain topics through text messages, as well as direct messages from applications like Tiktok, and filter out some messages that mention certain topics, such as evidence blocking, home or police. Users can also be “hidden” by the device owner, create social maps of friends and contacts, and draw where a person sends text messages.
