AMY GOODMAN: I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González. This is Democracy Now!

Human rights activists demonstrated in front of the offices of the technology and data company Palantir in multiple cities yesterday, from Seattle to Palo Alto, from Denver to here in New York, where the NYPD arrested at least four people who called out the tech giant for, quote, “turbocharging ICE deportations, complicity in the genocide of Palestinians, and expanding surveillance of every U.S. resident,” unquote. Democracy Now! was at the “Purge Palantir” protest in New York and recorded and spoke to some of the protesters.

LIV SENGHOR: [echoed by the people’s mic] Across the country, activists shut down Palantir. We want Palantir out of New York City.

SAWSAN SAMARA: My name is Sawsan Samara, and I’m Palestinian American. … Over the weekend, we watched a lot of children being targeted, 13 of which were bombed while they were lining up to get food. And the level of inhumanity is obscene. So we are out here to try to stop it. Companies like Palantir are enabling these crimes. And unfortunately, this company doesn’t work on its own. They make profit by contracts with other institutions. There are institutions — I actually know Palantir because I used to work for the INGO system in the past. And —

AMY GOODMAN: ”INGO” meaning?

SAWSAN SAMARA: International organizations. And we actually started using Palantir 20 years — in 2014, when it started, 10 years ago. Today, there are also international organizations that use Palantir, like the World Food Programme, UNICEF, Team Rubicon and then the CDC Foundation. These contracts need to break, because the company is making profit out of the crimes.

SAIMA AKHTER: So, I was fired from Meta for organizing with my colleagues in protesting a lot of the ethical concerns that Meta creates in this world. … I had this vision of an internal tech uprising. I felt that these tech workers, that know the most about how this technology works, these tech workers, like me, that develop a conscience when they become aware, when they gain the knowledge of how much destruction these companies are causing, would stand up and rebel against their companies from the inside. …

This is my appeal to Palantir workers. I know it’s difficult inside, but I urge you to educate yourself, to listen to all of these mass protests that are happening outside of your doors, that are being talked about in major spaces, about the destruction that Palantir is causing. Our governments and Palantir should not be working side by side.

DANIEL KOH: My name is Daniel. … I am a member of the New York Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. … The tools that Palantir developed using NYPD data are part of their pitch to other law enforcement and federal agencies. That means that that $30 million contract that ICE got, that was because they refined those tools here in New York. Those tools they’re deploying in the apartheid state of Israel, those are tools they developed here in New York. They are more than complicit in genocide, apartheid and racial violence. …

We know that state violence is the bread and butter of companies like Palantir. And as we’ve heard before, tactics and technology that are deployed abroad eventually come home to roost. The same data mining, surveillance and AI-powered targeting technologies that are used in Gaza and across the world are now already at work in our movements, our workplaces, our homes and our communities.

LIV SENGHOR: [echoed by the people’s mic] Palantir also announced a strategic partnership with the Israeli Defense Ministry in 2024, a year into the genocide. They said this partnership was for war-related missions. In reality, their technologies have been used to surveil Palestinians to gather their personal information and to strategically target innocent people for a genocide, for airstrikes, for rockets. Palantir is not only complicit. They’re an active part of the genocide.

AMY GOODMAN: Liv Senghor with Planet Over People. Some of the voices in New York outside of Palantir offices.

For more on Palantir, we’re joined by Makena Kelly, a senior writer at Wired focused on the intersection of politics, power and technology. Her recent piece, “This Is DOGE 2.0.”

We last spoke to you about your piece, ”DOGE Is Building a Master Database to Surveil and Track Immigrants.” The main focuses of these protests were Palantir working with the Israeli military and Palantir working with ICE. In these last few minutes, can you talk about the significance of this? Founded by Trump ally Peter Thiel. CEO is Alex Karp. One of the points they made at the New York protest is he’s a major supporter of Governor Cuomo to be mayor of New York.

MAKENA KELLY: Sure. So, these technologies — after DOGE first started working in government in January, I think we’re all aware of the chaos that it’s wrought. Federal workers have lost their jobs, services — like, the Social Security Administration, trying to access benefits have been made increasingly difficult. But out of that chaos — right? — we’ve seen Silicon Valley tech companies, or, you know, Peter Thiel-aligned companies like Palantir or Anduril, and other tech giants trying to find opportunity in this chaos. And in what we’ve seen happening at the Department of Homeland Security, these immigration raids, it’s created a lot of opportunity for a tech contractor like Palantir to find a new client and use their very powerful software, that is fully capable of mass surveillance in this country, in order to find, to be able to utilize and make a lot of money in government contracts.

JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And, Makena, we only have about 30 seconds left, but the significance of Gregory Barbaccia, the longtime Palantir employee, now being the chief information officer of the entire federal government as of January?

MAKENA KELLY: Yes. So, something that is coming out of the second phase of DOGE is, sure, Elon Musk may be leaving, but Musk-aligned — people from Musk-aligned companies and things like Palantir are finding very — finding themselves in very powerful roles in government. The chief information officer was not a very sexy title prior to this administration, but it gives — people in these positions have a lot of power over who has access to what data at agencies all across government, whether that is SSA, which has bulks of data on all of us — right? — but also the Department of Homeland Security or just, you know, the federal CIO, like Barbaccia.

AMY GOODMAN: Makena Kelly, we want to thank you so much for being with us, senior writer at Wired. We’ll link to your coverage of Palantir and other tech companies at democracynow.org.

That does it for our show. We’re hiring for a number of positions. Find out more at democracynow.org/jobs. Democracy Now! produced with Mike Burke, Renée Feltz, Deena Guzder, Messiah Rhodes, Nermeen Shaikh, María Taracena, Tami Woronoff, Charina Nadura, Sam Alcoff, Tey-Marie Astudillo, John Hamilton, Robby Karran, Hany Massoud. Special thanks to Safwat Nazzal. Our executive director is Julie Crosby. I’m Amy Goodman, with Juan González.