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Of all the things that give me pause about ICE's draft ERO ONE statement of work, a section titled "Network, Link, and Relationship Analysis" is the most eyebrow-raising. I spent close to 20 years as an intel analyst. Here's what section 4.6 says and means, paragraph by paragraph.

"Network analysis" is intel parlance for mapping how people connect. Who someone lives with, works with, travels with, and talks to. Paragraph 1 tasks contractors with assessing relationships among "individuals, organizations, locations, events, activities, data points, and other entities."

Paragraph 4 lists the products an ERO ONE analyst would prepare: link charts, network diagrams, timelines. That is a picture of when a subject is likely to be somewhere, and who is likely to be there too. An ops planner could use it to maximize the number of people arrested at once.

What information are they working from? The statement of work never says. It refers only to "authorized sources." It does say the work environment may involve "classified national security information." That's a strange line to find in a law enforcement contract.

Remember, ERO is not part of the intelligence community, though ICE has lobbied for years to join. Meanwhile it's been buying up the inputs. Our reporting over the past year has tracked ICE purchases of Palantir systems, trucks that can spoof a cell signal and pull data off phones, and more.