EMERGENCY MASS MOBILIZATION. THE COALITION TO CLOSE THE CONCENTRATION CAMPS BAY AREA IS CALLING ON ALL THOSE THAT DENOUNCE AND REBUKE PALANTIR’S SHAMELESS ESCALATION TO IMMEDIATELY MOBILIZE THIS FRIDAY AT PALANTIR HQ IN PALO ALTO AT 4 PM FOR AN EMERGENCY ACTION. Palantir has renewed its ICE Investigative Case Management contract that allows ICE, the CIA, and more to track individuals’ every move — even yours — until 2022. After activists have fought for months to #DROPICECONTRACTS, putting bodies on the line, this is a slap in the face of the families affected that risked arrest to come forward and a direct escalation of the fascist state’s attack on immigrants. STOP THIS FASCIST VIOLENCE NOW! SHUT IT DOWN! STOP ICE TERROR!
READ ON FOR MORE, SEE POSTS IN EVENT FOR DETAILS.
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On Tuesday morning, it was revealed that ICE’s Gotham Investigative Case Management contract with Palantir, originally set to expire on Sept 25, has been renewed through 2022. Activists and immigrants have been putting their bodies on the line nationwide to pressure Palantir to drop its contracts with ICE, yet Palantir continues to prop up the deportation and detention machine. We cannot stand by to watch ANY LONGER.
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Despite the willingness of Palantir executives to lie and deny responsibility, we know that this tech is part of all ICE operations. Palantir is complicit in the the dehumanization, terrorization, mass detention, and sometimes even murder of immigrants. Though the immigrant deportation and detention is just one part of its reign of terror, Palantir earns millions of dollars through its contracts with ICE. Through its facilitation of state surveillance, Palantir is enabling fascism.
According to research published by The Intercept, “ICM specifically allows ICE agents to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them. The system provides its users access to intelligence platforms maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and an array of other federal and private law enforcement entities. It can provide ICE agents access to information on a subject’s schooling, family relationships, employment information, phone records, immigration history, foreign exchange program status, personal connections, biometric traits, criminal records, and home and work addresses.” By the DHS’s own admission, ICM is proprietary to Palantir: “Palantir owns and maintains the code and info tech necessary to support the system.”
Activists, academics, and even Palantir employees themselves have begged executives to drop its contracts with ICE. But Palantir continues to profit off of terror and the separation of families. Palantir is actively destroying our communities. We cannot wait for a new president to reform an inherently fascistic and white supremacist institution. ICE is holding our communities in unlivable conditions, leaving even children vulnerable to sexual abuse and even death. It’s on us to act NOW to disarm and abolish ICE and all forms of oppression.
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The company has faced frequent protests and direct actions calling to shut down operations and drop ICE contracts at its headquarters this past year—from Palo Alto to New York—and internal worker demands that it stop facilitating ICE’s deportation machine.
None of this has impacted Palantir’s moral calculus. Palantir’s decision to continue funding ICE operations after repeated community pressure outlining the direct harms of its software is a direct escalation in Palantir’s attack on immigrants and a slap in the face of the thousands of immigrants stolen for deportation throughout the country.
Everyone should be worried about this expansion. Palantir’s state surveillance tools allow any racist agency they contract with to track individuals in real time through unfiltered access to their every movement associated with a vehicle, each purchase, every family relationship, and more with no oversight. According to research published by The Intercept, “ICM specifically allows ICE agents to access a vast “ecosystem” of data to facilitate immigration officials in both discovering targets and then creating and administering cases against them. The system provides its users access to intelligence platforms maintained by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, and an array of other federal and private law enforcement entities. It can provide ICE agents access to information on a subject’s schooling, family relationships, employment information, phone records, immigration history, foreign exchange program status, personal connections, biometric traits, criminal records, and home and work addresses.” By the DHS’s own admission, ICM is proprietary to Palantir: “Palantir owns and maintains the code and info tech necessary to support the system.”
In sum, Palantir has helped create the fascist state surveillance network many have feared would come. This technology in the hands of an increasingly fascist and racist state should alarm everyone with incessant urgency.
Palantir will continue to make hundreds of millions of dollars collaborating with the military-industrial-intelligence complex as families live in fear. This escalation by Palantir and refusal to cease collaborating with state terror should be seen as the escalation of fascist tendencies within the United States. Palantir would not exist without the Department of Defense and CIA funding — this plan to subject immigrants and asylum seekers to three more years of terror and explicit violence is as an escalation of the state’s attack on immigrants.
The Coalition to Close the Concentration Camps-Bay Area condemns the renewal of the contract between Palantir and ICE for the use of the Gotham Investigative Case Management system. Our coalition of over 20 migrant rights and activists organizations have united for the goal of abolishing ICE and freeing communities impacted by the surveillance state that entities like Palantir have helped create.
Evidence gathered by Mijente about Palantir’s work and the willingness of Palantir executives to lie about the extent of their relationship with ICE has made it clear that the way forward is the immediate resignation of those responsible for ICE contracts and an end to any involvement with ICE and similar government agencies.
This year, Palantir was revealed to be involved in the arrests of at least 443 people—mothers, fathers, cousins, and other family members and sponsors who were arrested when ICE investigated children who crossed the border alone.
Palantir was kicked out of a prestigious academic conference when hundreds of academics said they would not be associated with a company that enables human rights abuses. Aside from fueling the deportation and detention machine, Palantir also provides software for racist predictive policing programs that assign points to how likely an individual is to commit crime and builds tools for the Pentagon used in wars that create the refugee crisis in the first place.
Palantir was shown to be intimately involved in workplace raids, like the raids led by ICE this month that arrested almost 700 people in Mississippi—the largest such raid in a decade. These raids have increased by 650% under President Trump, targeting thousands of people annually for arrest and deportation.
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We fight against “pre-crime” and “thought-crime,” spy drones, facial recognition, police body camera secrecy, anti-transparency laws and requirements for “backdoors” to cellphones, to list just a few invasions of our privacy by all levels of Government, and attempts to hide what government officials, employees and agencies are doing.