Palantir’s tools constitute the invisible danger we’re just beginning to understand | Juan Sebastian Pinto

“ICE is just around the corner. My friend said, looking up from his phone. New York Cities, schools and churches supported the thriving immigrant community before the United States existed. Now, the agents of this rogue federal agency are recognized for civil rights violations, unlawful detention, medical neglect and inhumane detention – just walking, shaking our neighbors in their homes and across the street.

A day ago, I met with foreign journalists from the United Nations to explain the AI ​​surveillance architecture ICE uses in the United States. Law enforcement agencies use targeted technology from one of my past employers Palantir Technologies are both groundbreaking and proliferating—I have been accused of taking notes from graphic designers and writers, but I am just beginning to understand the consequences. Although largely invisible, technologies like Palantir play a major role in world events, from wars in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine to the detention of immigrants in the United States and dissident students. But despite its ubiquity, legislators, technicians and media have not protected people from this particular weaponized AI and its consequences, in part because they did not recognize it by name.

These tools are built by several companies and are called intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition and reconnaissance (ISTAR) systems that allow users to Track, detain and kill people in the context of war with the help of AI. They detect patterns by combining large amounts of public and private sources of data, provide targets for operators, and are particularly useful for mass surveillance, forced immigration and urban warfare. Also known as “AI Kill Chains,” they draw us all into a network of invisible tracking mechanisms we’re just beginning to understand, but as these systems swing these systems around ice houses, churches, parks and schools begin to experience the visceral experience in the United States.

The intangible nature of these monitoring structures and how they affect our lives – is part of the public’s understanding of what these tools do is so vague. But that also attracted me to work for Palantir as an architecture writer. This is a digital space with the opportunity to learn about most of the life of many people today. Using cloud software in the office, driving a new car on commuter, doom rolling on social media at home – we all feed a lot of data to monitor and target programs created for Big Tech until it’s too late, we usually don’t recognize it. That’s why I continue to try to convey and illustrate how these ISTAR applications violate our civil rights and autonomy in increasingly unfair and violent ways.

On the ISTAR Tech Induce Trawl Network, connect with immigrants and combatants as well as their families and more. They seem to have violated the rights of the First and Fourth Amendments: First, large and invisible surveillance networks were established that restrict what people share in public, including those they meet or where they travel; second, by enabling Unwarranted searches and seizures without knowledge or consent. They quickly deprived some of the most vulnerable people in the world – Political dissidents, immigrantsor Residents of Gaza -Their human rights.

There was a time when I wrote about boating houses nearby, iron studs with gorgeous windows and star-shaped shaped bodies, and how they welcome immigrants seeking hard work and opportunities in the United States. With shared walls and affordable rents, they created tolerant and thriving communities and accelerated the rise of the largest middle class in history. Now a new type of building greets immigrants and visitors to the United States and determines their future – not made of bricks, mortar and wood, but includes these invisible and invasive digital surveillance systems.

The big data platforms Palantir provides for the Department of Homeland Security, such as Investigation Case Management (ICM) and immigration library, are fundamentally composed of four shared elements: basic data integrated into the system, explanations and models of analysis and non-person involvement in analyses. In each layer of the architecture, there are major ethical issues regarding civil rights, data collection, data quality, bias, discrimination, accuracy, automation and, most importantly, accountability.

But ultimately, these platforms generate and track targets by leveraging incredible data sets. This can include deep personal information, such as biometrics and medical data, social media data involving friends and family, precise location data derived from license plate readers, SIM card data, and surveillance drone data. They can also process data purchased from the thriving ecosystem of private data brokers, or make subpoena from companies like Waymo and Meta. The lack of transparency in the datasets exploited in these applications, and how they are shared in the system, further distorting the picture. This is why it is important to focus on the victims.

Soon, Trump’s massive resettlement Congress (from targeting and tracking to managing arrests and evacuation of immigrants from the country) could be coordinated seamlessly using ISTAR tools. Ice recently paid tens of millions of Palantiel To achieve a “complete target analysis of known populations”, the Trump administration’s deportation efforts have been strengthened. In Gaza, Palantir provides the IDF with a critical data infrastructure Missions related to war. Meanwhile, the Israeli armed forces have developed Your own iStar tool Like Where’s Daddy, the goal is executed by cheap, non-guided “stupid bombs” to point to their family homes.

Palantir has Controversial Report It conducted extensive surveillance on Americans and said it wasCommitted to defending human rights”. For all the reasons above, I reject those claims. It is time to embrace the cause of privacy again, or we will witness the unbridled proliferation of these targeting tools in our commercial and public lives. As AI targeting technologies become more normalized in the United States, they are also increasingly incorporated into the private sector as companies build their own dragnets of data with platforms like Palantir to target their customers and employees – not to kill or deport them, but to shape their behavior and add further control systems.

Unfortunately, the civil rights struggle in the face of AI is struggling at the federal and state levels. In Colorado, the country’s first consumer protection law on AI, designed to protect state residents from discrimination, is now under threat. That’s why last month I went to the streets of Denverand about 40 activists, headed to Palantire’s headquarters in the state capitol. Protesters join us From coast to coastin Washington, DC, New York, Palo Alto and Seattle, they drove in loose links but shared careers, also corrected the offices of Palantier in the city. Four people were arrested in New York, and in Denver, our group met one Impressive and coordinated power. During our two-mile journey we faced almost as many protesters as protesters, where they closed many streets and followed our convoys with drones.

Riding on the truck lathe, I yelled to free the neighbors from the ice custody Eric Sanchez Goitia,,,,, Jeanette Vizguerraand Nixon and Dickson Perez – People like me have built their lives in Colorado, and they are immigrants who contribute, study and work to this country. The fact that they are imprisoned and driven by technology made by their own country (payment with taxpayers’ money) is a huge stain on our state’s history. As we approached the Capitol on our return, I beg Denver Mayor, Colorado Governor Mike Johnston, Jared Polis and our representatives to focus on the indigenous technology that harms our neighbors, to stop Trying to prevent the country’s first AI consumer protection measures from being implemented Ignore the federal government When it tries to build more detention centers in our state.

The Colorado Senate is now holding a special budget meeting, with AI Consumer Protection, the state’s first international institution, facing the risk of being flooded, delayed, or demolished by venture capital interests. So this week our protests will be directed at not only the Palantir headquarters, but also at the state Capitol as a representative. They will support the new AI Sunshine Act, a simplified version of the Consumer Protection Act, And oppose bills supported by large enterprises That would deprive them of the right to sue the AI ​​business. Our sports have grown Plan over 40 This weekend is a nationwide fight against Big Tech and Palantir.

These days, I’m more worried about when, if not, I’ll be the target. I am a freelance journalist, I am an immigrant, and I have proven that people who support Palestinians – these technologies have been used to target all three categories of people. Nevertheless, my fears are not comparable to those of IDF or ICE targets using ISTAR tools – including journalists attacked with needles in the Gaza Strip, or suffering inhumane conditions in prison cells every night. If anything, I am the kind of person who should try to understand the real-world consequences of this technology, who have participated in its dissemination. I just hope more tech workers and policy makers can do the same.

• Juan Sebastian Pinto is a writer, designer and civil rights organizer Denver and New York City