The data analytics firm Palantir is building a master list of personal information on Americans that could give president Donald Trump immense surveillance power.
The president signed an executive order in March calling for the federal government to share data across various agencies, and while he hasn't publicly spoken about the effort since, officials have been putting the plan into place with the help of the publicly traded tech firm Palantir, which the government has paid at least $113 million since Trump took office, reported the New York Times.
"The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including [the Department of Homeland Security] and the Health and Human Services Department," the newspaper reported. "Widely adopting Foundry, which organizes and analyzes data, paves the way for Mr. Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said. Creating detailed portraits of Americans based on government data is not just a pipe dream."
"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," the report added.
The company has received also new contracts from the Pentagon and is speaking to the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service about buying its technology, according to six government officials and knowledgable Palantir employees, and Democratic lawmakers have warned that Trump could use the personal information to target immigrants and punish his critics.
"Palantir’s selection as a chief vendor for the project was driven by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, according to the government officials," the Times reported. "At least three DOGE members formerly worked at Palantir, while two others had worked at companies funded by Peter Thiel, an investor and a founder of Palantir."
"Some current and former Palantir employees have been unnerved by the work," the report added. "The company risks becoming the face of Mr. Trump’s political agenda, four employees said, and could be vulnerable if data on Americans is breached or hacked. Several tried to distance the company from the efforts, saying any decisions about a merged database of personal information rest with Mr. Trump and not the firm."
Privacy advocates, student unions and labor rights organizations have challenged the company's data access in court, and 13 former employees signed a letter this month urging Palantir to end its work for Trump, saying that combining that private data poses a significant risk of misuse – and current employees expressed the same concerns to the Times.
"The goal of uniting data on Americans has been quietly discussed by Palantir engineers, employees said, adding that they were worried about collecting so much sensitive information in one place," the Times reported. "The company’s security practices are only as good as the people using them, they said. They characterized some DOGE employees as sloppy on security, such as not following protocols in how personal devices were used."
Linda Xia, a former Palantir engineer who signed the critical letter, said current employees are "raising questions internally" about their work for the Trump administration, while others have already left in protest, such as Brianna Katherine Martin, a former strategist who posted that she left over the data firm's work with ICE.
“For most of my time here, I found the way that Palantir grappled with the weight of our capabilities to be refreshing, transparent and conscionable,” Martin wrote. “This has changed for me over the past few months. For me, this is a red line I won’t redraw.”
