Palantir Had a Breakthrough Week to Add New Controls to Software Used by ICE

Palantir received a Hacking this week spring to try to convert internal disturbance for the company’s work and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to be surveillance tools used in immigration enforcement by Trump, according to data reviewed by WIRED.

The new tools provide agencies, including DHS and ICE, with information about how their employees are using Palantir software. Organizations can implement “behavioral” information, such as extracting datasets, and searching user records. They also allow organizations to see which users have viewed specific information.

Palantir declined to comment.

Palantir always they have hack weekschallenging engineers from across the industry to test and troubleshoot its products. This fraud week has focused on Palantir’s work with DHS and ICE, which has been criticized by foreign critics and employees. who fear the company’s weapons advocates for the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

“This effort embodies the Palantir culture in which I choose to work,” Ted Mabrey, Palantir’s chief business officer, wrote in an email to employees in early May. “You have the opportunity to reject derisive emojis, distrust your friends, and choose to think that outsiders who lie about Palantir’s work are more honest than those who come to work on this work every day.

Bringing together employees from across the Palantir community, this year’s briefing week is focused on developing new tools to help manage user behavior on platforms like Foundry, the company’s flagship product. data integration and analysis tool.

Palantir’s work with ICE has grown significantly over the past year. Last year, WIRED reported that ICE paid the company $30 million to develop the product it’s called “ImmigrationOS” which would provide “real-time visibility” into US deportations. It is again it has been said that the company developed a special tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) that creates maps of people who have been there. the purpose of the chase.

Some of the new devices developed during the week of the hack have already been deployed, and others are set to be launched later this year, according to an email reviewed by WIRED. (“These tools expand the use of Audit logs and audit trails,” wrote one team leader, “not just at (the DHS Palantir contract), but wherever Foundry works in critical environments.”)

“This Hackweek has shown that Palantir can turn the internal focus around operations (on the DHS contract) into additional security on the platform,” a team leader wrote in a May email. “Instead of leaving a difficult job, the commercial FDEs (forward-deployed experts) at the company wanted to jump on the breach.”

Palantir’s involvement with ICE faced internal challenges earlier this year after Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by law enforcement. Internal Slack chat reviewed by WIRED showed employees questioning what works and wanted it to be made clear.

“Can Palantir enforce ICE at all?” one employee wrote at the time. “I have read stories of people who were rounded up seeking asylum without permission to leave the country, with no record of breaking the law, and they always went to the authorities.