Employers are utilizing biometric data collection methods, such as facial recognition technology, as tools for workplace surveillance and immigration enforcement including tracking noncitizen and citizen workers in the workplace.
Workplace surveillance has grown in office spaces, with MIT reporting that 80% of companies monitor remote and hybrid employees. A report from the National Employment Law Project highlights the threat to workers posed by employers’ excessive and inappropriate use of digital workplace technologies to monitor and manage their workforces. Companies are increasingly using technology to monitor workers’ actions, schedule shifts, assign tasks, set pay, and evaluate and discipline workers, but often without transparency, safeguards for accuracy, or recourse for workers who’ve been wronged.
NELP’s July 2025 report, When ‘Bossware’ Manages Workers: A Policy Agenda to Stop Digital
Surveillance and Automated-Decision-System Abuses, warns that the unchecked misuse of these
technologies jeopardizes workers’ autonomy, safety, job security, and overall well-being.
“Machines mismanaging human workers. People being surveilled and micro-managed almost as if they are robots. This is our current reality, but we have largely neglected to update our legal protections to keep pace with these changes,” said Irene Tung, NELP senior researcher and policy analyst and lead author of the report.
Last year, Governor Newsom vetoed SB 1047 that passed both houses by an overwhelming majority and was seen as a potential blueprint for national AI legislation.
The measure would have made tech companies legally liable for harms caused by AI models. In addition, the bill mandated that tech companies enable a “kill switch” for AI technology in the event the systems were misused or went rogue.
California Governor Gavin Newsom also vetoed SB 7 (the “No Robo Bosses Act”). The bill sought to restrict employer use of automated decision systems (AI) in hiring, firing, and promotion. That proposed legislation would have required stricter, direct human oversight over AI in disciplinary or termination decisions.
On February 2, 2026, Sen. Jerry McNerney (D-Pleasanton) introduced Senate Bill 947, the “No Robo Bosses Act of 2026,” a revised version of SB 7. The bill would put restrictions on how employers could use algorithms and other tech tools to make decisions about workers and includes a requirement that a natural person make a final decision on hiring and discipline. The California Labor Federation has been fighting for common-sense AI guardrails to protect workers and is a key sponsor of SB 947.
The use of technology has also exploded in the immigration sphere and is used to identify and track noncitizens and citizens’ general movement pattern, addresses, and workplaces. The administration is collecting data from agencies never previously used for immigration enforcement, including information about tax and Social Security records, Medicaid usage, and veterans’ benefits. ICE is also one of the top purchasers of data from private data
Investigations by The Guardian, Wired, and NPR reveal that ICE increasingly relies on large vendor-built platforms—such as Palantir’s comprehensive immigration system ImmigrationOS, Clearview AI’s facial recognition tools, BI2’s iris-scanning devices, and Paragon’s phone-hacking software that pull together many different forms of data and analysis in one place.
Palantir’s platforms have been used by ICE to analyze driver’s license scans, extract information from seized phones, cross-search location data, and link records from federal, state, and commercial databases. Wired reported that these tools combine social media posts, travel records, tax data, and phone extractions into unified investigative files. NPR also documented the use of mobile facial recognition apps and iris scanners in field operations.
ICE has also committed $280 million in contracts to hire private investigators and bounty hunters to confirm potential noncitizen targets’ addresses, workplaces, and general movement patterns. Field agents have been equipped with tools that allow near-instant information on a person’s legal status, including facial recognition, iris scanners, and license plate readers, which haven been reportedly used on noncitizens and citizens alike.
ID scanning that extracts address, date of birth, date of issue, expiration date, document type, full
name, gender, issuing authority, and place of birth from identification documents, now appears in field apps like Mobile Fortify; mobile device analytics continue through tools from Cellebrite and Paragon; voice, video, and text analysis feed into social-media and communication-monitoring platforms from Zignal Labs and PenLink.
Procurement documents uncovered by Wired reveal that ICE plans to hire nearly 30 contractors to monitor social media platforms—Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube—around the clock.
Artificial intelligence is extending its policing powers into America’s neighborhoods. Facial recognition, biometric scanning, and social-media monitoring are being used to identify and investigate U.S. citizens. Reporting by Minnesota Public Radio and the Guardian shows ICE acquiring and operating AI-enabled surveillance tools that surveil U.S. citizens and expand beyond the reach of immigration enforcement. In Minnesota, ICE has purchased and deployed social media monitoring and location-tracking systems that allow agents to analyze the movements of large groups of people in specific locations — capabilities that are explicitly marketed for use at protests and other gatherings protected under the First Amendment.
Civil rights groups have voiced concern about the use of artificial intelligence. A key concern
with facial recognition is the likelihood of misidentifying people of color due to nonrepresentative training data, and AI can misclassify individual criminal records. ClearView AI systems that collect and sell publicly available images have faced legal challenges in the US, France, and the Netherlands. Immigrants will likely avoid interacting with federal agencies for benefits for which they are eligible out of fear of being targeted.
The use of surveillance technology in the workplace and in immigration enforcement poses a
threat to workers, immigrants, and citizens. We need to support legislation that protects our
privacy, our safety, and our rights.
Ruth Silver Taube is the Supervising Attorney of the Workers’ Rights Practice at the Katharine & George Alexander Community Law Center at Santa Clara University School of Law, Coordinator of the Santa Clara County Wage Theft Coalition, Legal Services Provider Co-Chair of the South Bay Coalition to End Human Trafficking, a delegate to the Santa Clara County’s Human Trafficking Commission, and the Supervising Attorney of the Santa Clara County Office of Labor Standards Legal Advice Line. Before law school, she was a journeyman machinist, President of International Association of Machinists Local 547, and Senior Field Representative for SEIU Local 535. She previously taught at Njala University in Sierra Leone with CUSO, the Canadian Peace Corps.
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