DHS Opens a Billion-Dollar Tab With Palantir

The Department of Homeland Security struck a $1 cardinal purchasing statement with Palantir past week, further reinforcing the bundle company’s relation successful the national bureau that oversees the nation’s migration enforcement.

According to contracting documents published past week, the broad acquisition statement (BPA) awarded “is to supply Palantir commercialized bundle licenses, maintenance, and implementation services section wide.” The statement simplifies however DHS buys bundle from Palantir, allowing DHS agencies similar Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to fundamentally skip the competitory bidding process for caller purchases of up to $1 cardinal successful products and services from the company.

Palantir did not instantly respond to a petition for comment.

Palantir announced the statement internally connected Friday. It comes arsenic the institution is struggling to code increasing tensions among unit implicit its narration with DHS and ICE. After Minneapolis caregiver Alex Pretti was changeable and killed successful January, Palantir staffers flooded institution Slack channels demanding accusation connected however the tech they physique empowers US migration enforcement. Since then, the institution has updated its interior wiki, offering fewer unreported details astir its enactment with ICE, and Palantir CEO Alex Karp recorded a video for employees wherever helium attempted to warrant the company’s migration work, arsenic WIRED reported past week. Throughout a astir hourlong speech with Courtney Bowman, Palantir’s planetary manager of privateness and civilian liberties engineering, Karp failed to code nonstop questions astir however the company’s tech powers ICE. Instead, helium said workers could motion nondisclosure agreements for much elaborate information.

Akash Jain, Palantir’s main exertion serviceman and president of Palantir US authorities partners, which works with US authorities agencies, acknowledged these concerns successful the email announcing the company’s caller statement with DHS. “I admit that this comes astatine a clip of accrued concern, some externally and internally, astir our existing enactment with ICE,” Jain wrote. “While we don’t usually nonstop retired updates connected caller declaration vehicles, successful this infinitesimal it felt particularly important to supply discourse to assistance pass your knowing of what this means - and what it doesn’t. There volition beryllium opportunities we tally toward, and others we diminution - that subject is portion of what has earned america DHS’s trust.”

In the Friday email, Jain suggests that the five-year statement could let the institution to grow its scope crossed DHS into agencies similar the US Secret Service (USSS), Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA), Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).

Jain besides argued that Palantir’s bundle could fortify protections for US citizens. “These protections assistance alteration accountability done strict controls and auditing capabilities, and enactment adherence to law protections, particularly the Fourth Amendment,” Jain wrote. (Palantir’s critics person argued that the company’s tools make a monolithic surveillance dragnet, which could yet harm civilian liberties.)

Over the past year, Palantir’s enactment with ICE has grown tremendously. Last April, WIRED reported that ICE paid Palantir $30 cardinal to physique “ImmigrationOS,” which would supply “near real-time visibility” connected immigrants self-deporting from the US. Since then, it’s been reported that the institution has besides developed a caller instrumentality called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) which creates maps of imaginable deportation targets, pulling information from DHS and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Closing his Friday email to staff, Jain suggested that staffers funny astir the caller DHS statement travel enactment connected it themselves. “As Palantirians, the champion mode to recognize the enactment is to prosecute connected the enactment directly. If you are funny successful helping signifier and present the adjacent section of Palantir’s enactment crossed DHS, delight scope out,” Jain wrote to employees, who are sometimes referred to internally arsenic fictional creatures from The Lord of the Rings. “There volition beryllium a monolithic request for committed hobbits to crook this momentum into ngo outcomes.”