Palantir hired to collect data on US citizens

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work with the government, spreading the company’s technology — which could easily merge data on Americans — throughout agencies, write Sheera Frenkel from San Francisco and Aaron Krolik from New York

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n March, President Trump signed an executive order calling for the federal government to share data across agencies, raising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.

Trump has not publicly talked about the effort since. But behind the scenes, officials have quietly put technological building blocks into place to enable his plan. In particular, they have turned to one company: Palantir, the data analysis and technology firm.

The Trump administration has expanded Palantir’s work across the federal government in recent months. The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)

Representatives of Palantir are also speaking to at least two other agencies — the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) — about buying its technology, according to six government officials and Palantir employees with knowledge of the discussions.

The push has put a key Palantir product called Foundry into at least four federal agencies, including DHS and the Health and Human Services Department. Widely adopting Foundry, which organises and analyses data, paves the way for Trump to easily merge information from different agencies, the government officials said.