“We built Palantir to ensure America’s future, not to tinker at the margins,” is self-important bluster from one of the more divisive technology billionaires, Palantir. That assertion, and its increasing entanglement in United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations, has fueled intense debate over privacy, human rights, and the moral parameters of artificial intelligence.
On top of all that melodrama is a $96 million contract Department of Homeland Security contract between Palantir and ongoing work by Palantir to continue developing ICE’s Investigative Case Management system (ICM) with an upgrade in mind that it will give to it. The system, which is a so-called robust tracking system, enables ICE agents to search individuals against hundreds of different parameters, from physical characteristics such as tattoos and eye color to administrative data such as social security number and visa status. The database gathers information from agencies including the FBI, CIA, and DEA and builds one gigantic web of interconnected information to be tracked in real time.
Palantir’s work does not end there. The firm is building a new platform, ImmigrationOS, to give ICE “near real-time visibility” into self-deportation and target enforcement on “visa overstays.” In ICE bookkeeping, the technology serves as the glue that holds together targeting gang members like MS-13 and ramping up executive order deportations. But its detractors feel that the form of tool exhibited by this and other Palantir products threatens to extend surveillance into industrial forms and in doing so devour civil liberties. The scale of the extent of the implications of this merger is gargantuan.
First of all, ICE has been criticized for running programs that result in the “disappearance” of individuals, including 48 New Mexico residents recently apprehended without revealing their identities and locations. ACLU of New Mexico senior staff attorney Rebecca Sheff condemned the action as “serious human rights violations,” referring to the agony of the families whose fate remains uncertain. It is not an isolated occurrence.
Doctoral student visa recipient recipients like Rumeysa Öztürk and permanent residents like Mahmoud Khalil have been arrested for what was found “at odds” with U.S. foreign policy. Öztürk’s arrest, along with undercover transfers from state to state, has been highly criticized by civil rights groups and attorneys. The government admits that from the time ICE agents arrested Ms. Öztürk to the time she arrived at the Louisiana detention facility, it was keeping her location a secret, her attorneys maintained. Overall, the case is one of an alarming trend.
Artificial intelligence-driven technology, including Palantir tools, is increasingly in the hands of government agencies. A Brookings report describes how scalability and the ability of AI to process huge amounts of information make the tool applicable to monitoring behavior and policy enforcement. Although the technology is beneficial, it can be applied in a misguided manner to invade privacy and discriminate, especially against marginalized communities. The use of AI to monitor has been a point of ethics for decades.
ACLU already criticized tech companies for collaborating with ICE and CBP, as it allegedly enables unconstitutional policy and victimizes vulnerable communities. Thomson Reuters and RELX, for instance, grant ICE access to intimate private information through the likes of CLEAR and LexisNexis, which allows the agency to circumvent legal safeguards. “This personal information is easily misused to harm marginalized communities,” the ACLU cautioned, referring to cases where spy technology had been used to prosecute American Muslims and LGBT citizens. The price is astronomical. As the AI tools become established in government processes, the accountability and transparency deficit yells the red flag. The NSA, another behemoth AI spender, was sued as a means to push the agency to come clean about how the technologies are being used. “The government’s secrecy flies in the face of its own public commitments to transparency,” ACLU stated, referring to threats of uncontrolled surveillance.
Palantir’s noblesse oblige on America’s behalf for securing its future will ring true for some, but to privacy activists and human rights campaigners, it is a plea for moral obligation. Where surveillance meets AI and immigration enforcement is a fight on a battlefield on which technological progress is being traded against plain freedom. How this line of argument is going to turn out will decide on the balance between liberty and security in the age of the internet.
