Thomson Reuters is one of the world\u2019s largest data corporations, owner of Westlaw, Reuters news service, and the CLEAR investigative platform. As one of the nation\u2019s most significant data brokers, the Toronto-based company sells access to billions of personal data points, drawn from thousands of sources, to insurance companies, financial institutions, and U.S. government agencies, including Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n
Scrutiny of the company is now at a peak. Next week, shareholders will vote on a resolution<\/a> asking Thomson Reuters to commission and publish an independent human rights impact assessment of how its products are used by law enforcement and immigration enforcement agencies. The proposal was filed by the BC General Employees\u2019 Union (BCGEU), a long-time shareholder that has been engaging the company on this issue since 2020, though the company\u2019s relationship with ICE predates that by years.<\/p>\n When ICE began building its \u201cExtreme Vetting\u201d program in 2017, Thomson Reuters signed on to help construct what has become the largest commercial data surveillance infrastructure in the United States. The company has entered into contracts with ICE worth tens of millions of dollars. ICE has described Thomson Reuters\u2019 data services as \u201cmission critical\u201d to its operations and has integrated the company\u2019s data into tools including Motorola\u2019s license plate readers, PenLink\u2019s live location tracking, and Palantir\u2019s software.<\/p>\n Despite this documented record \u2014 established through public contract disclosures, extensive investigative reporting, fact-checked books on immigration surveillance, and congressional testimony \u2014 Thomson Reuters maintains that it is not providing ICE with surveillance tools. Lawmakers at a congressional hearing on data brokers and the Department of Homeland Security treated the company\u2019s data-sharing arrangements with ICE as established fact. The company\u2019s response has consistently been that critics are \u201cmisunderstanding\u201d how its products work.<\/p>\n The scrutiny has not been limited to outsiders. Hundreds of Thomson Reuters employees signed a letter calling for greater transparency. Two employees who raised concerns internally were allegedly terminated, prompting a whistleblower lawsuit and an unfair labor practice complaint.<\/p>\n The company\u2019s position rests on a narrow framing: it provides access to records that are already public, not records requiring a warrant. But this argument confuses the nature of individual data points with the nature of aggregated surveillance. It is also worth asking the obvious question: if Thomson Reuters is simply repackaging freely available public records, why does ICE pay it millions of dollars for the service?<\/p>\n The answer lies in what CLEAR actually does. The platform allows users to retrieve thousands of data points about any individual: current and historical addresses, known associates and family members, vehicle information, employment history, phone numbers, financial records, and location history. It can map social networks: who someone lives with, who they call, who they are connected to. It aggregates data from social media, and according to published reporting, in some cases dating profiles; the kind of intimate personal information shared in contexts people reasonably assume are private.<\/p>\n This is not incidental to CLEAR\u2019s design. The platform was built specifically to help users locate and identify individuals. That is the functional definition of surveillance. The fact that the underlying data was gathered through commercial means rather than a wiretap or physical search does not alter what the tool produces.<\/p>\n Modern surveillance operates precisely this way; by aggregating the data traces left by ordinary life and fusing them into a profile that reveals far more than any single data point would suggest. CLEAR\u2019s power is not derived from any one piece of information, but from their combination, assembled instantly, at scale, and on demand.<\/p>\n Thomson Reuters is quick to point out that CLEAR does not include an immigration status field. That is, at best, a technically accurate but purposefully incomplete answer. ICE agents do not need a field labeled \u201cimmigration status\u201d to make immigration status determinations. The inferences available from CLEAR\u2019s data are substantial. An individual\u2019s use of an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number instead of a Social Security Number. Residence in a state where driver\u2019s licenses require proof of citizenship. Regular international wire transfers. Absence from voter rolls, military service records, or federal employment databases. An address associated with immigrant worker housing. Employment in cash-wage sectors. Prepaid phones and money orders rather than credit-based financial products. All of these data points are available through CLEAR.<\/p>\n Moreover, Thomson Reuters provides access to immigration court proceeding records, visa records, I-94 arrival and departure records, and E-Verify non-confirmation records. The platform generates \u201crisk scores,\u201d \u201cconfidence scores,\u201d and \u201cverification failure\u201d flags for individuals who cannot be fully verified through standard U.S. documentation. Its network analysis tools map connections between flagged and unflagged individuals; its geolocation and pattern analysis infers travel behavior.<\/p>\n In practice, an ICE agent entering a name or address into CLEAR can generate a profile showing that a person has no SSN-associated credit history, uses an ITIN, lives at known worker housing, is employed in agriculture, and is in regular contact with someone who has immigration court records. That profile enables the agent to decide whether to investigate further. The absence of a single labeled field does not diminish the tool\u2019s utility for immigration enforcement \u2014 it simply requires one additional inferential step.<\/p>\n Thomson Reuters employees, shareholders, and the hundreds of millions of people whose data the company monetizes deserve a candid account of what is being sold to ICE and how it is being used. The upcoming shareholder vote is an opportunity for Thomson Reuters to reiterate a commitment to trust and transparency. An independent, public human rights impact assessment would allow shareholders, employees, customers, and the public to evaluate the merit of the company\u2019s existing approach and understand if improvements are necessary.<\/p>\n As immigration enforcement actions continue to intensify, we need more than words. Tell the whole truth, Thomson Reuters.<\/p>\n (This is a guest editorial by Emma Pullman, head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment at the British Columbia General Employees\u2019 Union (BCGEU) in Canada, a minority shareholder in Thomson Reuters, and Sarah Lamdan, a lawyer and librarian who researches and writes about library vendors and service providers, and who wrote a 2019 law review […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":153572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-153571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lawsite"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/xira.com\/p\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Thomson_Reuters_Building169-plOuDI.jpg?fit=611%2C344&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153571","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xira.com\/p\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/a>Emma Pullman<\/a><\/em> is head of shareholder engagement and responsible investment at the British Columbia General Employees\u2019 Union (BCGEU) in Canada. She works with issuers and company boards to improve corporate practices and enhance long-term company value with a focus on human rights due diligence and responsible AI governance. BCGEU is a minority shareholder in Thomson Reuters and has been urging it to conduct a human rights assessment of its products.<\/em><\/p>\n
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<\/a>Sarah Lamdan<\/a> is a lawyer and librarian who researches and writes about library vendors and service providers. Her article, \u201cWhen Westlaw Fuels ICE Surveillance: Legal Ethics in the Era of Big Data Policing,\u201d<\/a> was published in the N.Y.U. Review of Law & Social Change in 2019.\u00a0The views and opinions expressed in this article are her own and do not represent the views and opinions of her employer, organization, committee, or any other affiliated group. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"