© Thomas Fuller/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
When people complain about Big Tech, they tend to mean companies like Meta, Google, and X — entities providing free tools and platforms that we can choose whether to use. Much less attention is directed at the tech companies helping the federal government consolidate and analyze data on all of us. Companies like the data analytics firm Palantir, created by Paypal co-founder and Donald Trump supporter Peter Thiel.
Palantir has long been connected to government surveillance. It was founded in part with CIA money, it has served as an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contractor since 2011, and it's been used for everything from local law enforcement to COVID-19 efforts. But the prominence of Palantir tools in federal agencies seems to be growing under President Trump. "The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon," reports The New York Times, noting that this figure "does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent."
Enabling the Panopticon
Palantir technology has largely been used by the military, the intelligence agencies, the immigration enforcers, and the police. But its uses could be expanding.
"Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions," reports the Times.
Along with the Trump administration's efforts to share more data across federal agencies, this signals that Palantir's huge data analysis capabilities could wind up being wielded against all Americans.
This won't allow the authorities watch us more so much as it helps them make use of all the data it's already got on us. But that's unsettling too.
"The ultimate concern is a panopticon of a single federal database with everything that the government knows about every single person in this country," Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union, told Wired in April. "What we are seeing is likely the first step in creating that centralized dossier on everyone in this country."
From Dream to (Nightmare) Reality
"Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream," notes the Times.
"The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status."Washington already has a ton of data on all of us, but it's often separated across systems and agencies. By linking it all together, the government could create much more detailed profiles on all of us.
More efficient? Probably. But also more dangerous.
"No previous database system has ever centralized this much personal info across various federal agencies," Jason Bassler of the Free Thought Project posted to X.
Even some former Palantir employees object. "Data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses," former Palantir engineer Linda Xia told the Times. "Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse."
As of now, it's unclear how much merging has actually been done. According to the Times, the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service are only in talks about using Palantir products. "The implication that taxpayer information is being inappropriately shared across government agencies is not only incorrect but dangerous," the Treasury Department told Wired.
For now, what we know is that Palantir tools are being used heavily in immigration enforcement.
Tracking Immigrants
In April, Palantir was awarded a $30 million ICE contract to help track people in the country illegally. Palantir's new Immigration Lifecycle Operating System (ImmigrationOS), to be delivered to the government by September, will "help the agency track and manage deportations, monitor visa overstays and target transnational criminal organizations," according to Axios.
"Palantir has deep institutional knowledge of ICE operations," according to an ICE acquisitions document from April 11. ImmigrationOS will help ICE in "streamlining selection and apprehension operations of illegal aliens" and provide "near real-time visibility into instances of self-deportation," says that April document.
The ImmigrationOS system will build on the existing Investigative Case Management (ICM) system Palantir provides to immigration authorities. "ICM enables users to make connections between subject records across various systems, conduct target telephone and address searches, link to seizures made in other jurisdictions, and connect various cases and organizations through reports of investigations," says the acquisitions document.
ICM was built under a contract from the Obama administration. "As originally conceived, its purpose was to give the Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) unit in the Department of Homeland Security the means to investigate serious cross-border criminal activity ranging from money laundering and commercial fraud to human smuggling," Matthew Feeney reported in Reason back in 2017.
"But the Trump administration may well turn it into a general tool to assist ICE deportations" and "also go after other Americans in the future," Feeney predicted then. It looks like he was right about the deportations part, and he could be right about the rest.
Tracking American Citizens
Even if surveilling American citizens is not necessarily the end game, collecting data of the sort required by these immigration enforcement systems inevitably tracks Americans.
The ICM includes data from various police departments, financial institutions, and federal agencies, including information pulled on drivers. Some of it was compiled because people were charged with crimes, but some of it is not.
And it doesn't just include information on immigrants, legal or illegal.
"ICE uses ICM not only to collect information about its targets but also people who come in contact with them such as their associates and employers, citizen and non-citizen alike," wrote Feeney. "Is a strict immigration enforcement regime worth intrusive government surveillance that would make ever-more Americans vulnerable to Big Brother scrutiny?" he asked.
Right now, the Trump administration is using Palantir tools for immigration enforcement, but those tools could easily be applied to other administration targets, including immigration protesters, pro-Palestinian protestors, and so on. And of course, a future Democratic administration could use them to track people for its own ends too.
Once we've got giant data troves on every American that can easily be analyzed and shared across agencies, it seems unlikely that any administration will say No thanks, shut it down, we don't need total information on everyone.
Perhaps when we worry about Big Tech, we should spend less time focused on what people can say on social media and more time focused on the companies actively helping to expand the surveillance state.
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