we too warned about danger The Trump administration has consolidated all of the government’s information into a single searchable, AI-powered interface with the help of Palantir, a company that doesn’t have the best track record. confidentiality And human rights.
Now we have the first evidence that our worries have become reality.
“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that generates a map with potential deportation targets, pulls up a dossier on each person, and assigns a “trust score” to the person’s current address,” 404 media reports today. “ICE is using it to find locations where multiple people can be detained.”
The tool – called Enhanced Leads Identification and Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – obtains people’s addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, in addition to 404 media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents.
This revelation comes as ICE – which is running A surveillance technology shopping spree – Minneapolis is flooded with agents, who are violently attacking the civil rights of immigrants and American citizens; President Trump has Threatened to use the Rebellion Act of 1807 Deploying military troops against the protesters there. Other areas are also preparing for the possibility of similar increases.
Various government agencies collect information as necessary to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger arises when the government starts collecting that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose for which it was collected.
This type of consolidation of government records provides enormous government power that can be abused. Various government agencies collect information as necessary to provide essential services or collect taxes, but the danger arises when the government starts collecting that data and using it for reasons unrelated to the purpose for which it was collected.
As EFF Executive Director Cindy Cohn writes Mercury News op-ed last August“Despite couched in benign language about eliminating government ‘data silos,’ this plan adversely impacts your privacy and security. This is a throwback to the rightly derided ‘total information awareness’ plans of the early 2000s, which were shut down, at least publicly, after massive opposition from the public and key members of Congress. It’s time to cry foul again.”
In addition to the amicus brief we co-wrote challenging ICE’s hold on Medicaid data, EFF has successfully DOGE agents who grabbed personal data from the US Office of Personnel Management suedfiled an amicus brief In suit challenging ICE’s hold taxpayer dataAnd Sued the Department of State and Homeland Security Stopping a mass surveillance program to monitor constitutionally protected speech by non-citizens legally present in the US
But litigation is not enough. People need to continue raising concerns through public discussion and Congress must take immediate action to put the brakes on this runaway train that threatens to crush the privacy and security of every person in America.
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