“IMy friend looked up from the phone and said, We were writing at a coffee shop in one of New York City's oldest neighborhoods. Schools and churches support thriving immigrant communities long before the US existed. Neighbors in the park across from their homes and the street.
A day ago I was meeting with a foreign correspondent at the United Nations to explain the AI surveillance architecture ICE uses across the US. Law enforcement uses technology targeted at both pioneering and proliferation by one of my past employers, Palantir Technologies. I was once accused of explaining as a graphic designer and writer, but this is the result of my understanding. From wars in Iran, Gaza and Ukraine to detention of immigrants and the US opposition students, technologies like Palantiers play a major role in global events. But despite its ubiquity, lawmakers, engineers and the media have failed to protect people from this particular kind of weaponized AI and the resulting threat.
Known as Intelligence, Surveillance, Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) systems, these tools are built by several companies and allow users to track, detain, and kill large-scale people with the help of AI. They provide targets to operators by combining vast amounts of public and personal data to detect patterns, particularly useful for projects in mass surveillance, forced relocation and urban warfare. Also known as “AI Kill Chains,” they all drag us into a web of invisible pursuit mechanisms that we just begin to understand, but we are beginning to experience the viscerality in the United States as ice wields these systems near our homes, churches, parks and schools.
The invisible nature of these monitoring structures – and how they affect our lives is part of the reason why we generally understand what these tools do. But it also attracted me to work for Palantier as an architectural writer. It was an opportunity for many to learn about the digital space where most of their lives today. Operate cloud software in the office, drive a new car on the commute, and doom scroll on social media at home. This is why these ISTAR applications continue to try to communicate and explain how they infringe our civil rights and autonomy in increasingly negative and violent ways.
Powered by ISTAR technology, dragnets chase more than immigrants, combatants, and their families and connections. They appear to be in violation of their rights to the first and fourth amendments. First, by establishing a vast, invisible surveillance network that limits people's feelings of public sharing, including where they meet and travel. Second, by allowing for unsurprising search and seizure of people's data without knowledge or consent. They are rapidly depriving human rights of the world's most vulnerable groups (political dissidents, migrants, or Gaza residents).
There was a time when I wrote about a house in my neighborhood with ornate windows and star-shaped iron studs. Shared walls and affordable rents created a tolerant and thriving community, accelerating the rise of the largest middle class in history. Now, a new kind of architecture greets immigrants and visitors to America and determines their future. It is not made of brick, mortar or wood, but includes these invisible, invasive digital surveillance systems.
In names such as Investigative Case Management (ICM) and Immigration, the big data platform that Palantir provides to the Department of Homeland Security is made up of four shared elements, similar to the one that provides IDF. There is no underlying data integrated into the system, interpretation and modeling of data through analysis, and the execution of automated actions, or no human involvement. Every layer of this architecture has important ethical questions about civil rights, data collection, data quality, bias, discrimination, accuracy, automation and most importantly accountability.
Ultimately, however, these platforms generate and track targets by leveraging datasets that are heart-warming. This includes deep personal information such as biometric and medical data, social media data involving friends and family, accurate location data derived from license plate readers, SIM card data, and surveillance drone data. They can also process data purchased from a thriving ecosystem of private data brokers, or data summoned from companies like Waymo and Meta. The lack of transparency regarding the datasets exploited in these applications, and how they are shared between systems, further distorts the photos. That's why it's important to focus on the victims.
Soon, Trump's mass resettlement agenda can be seamlessly adjusted using ISTAR tools, from targeting and pursuing to arresting and elimination of immigrants from the country. ICE recently paid tens of millions to enable a “full target analysis of known groups” and bolstered the Trump administration's deportation efforts. In Gaza, Palantir provides IDF with a critical data infrastructure for war-related missions. Meanwhile, the Israeli military has developed its own Istal tools, such as “Where's Daddy.”
Palantir has said he is “committed to defending human rights” in dispute over reports of widespread surveillance of Americans. For all the reasons mentioned above, I reject those claims. It's time to accept the cause of privacy again. Otherwise, we will witness the unlimited spread of these targeting tools in commercial and public life. As AI targeting technologies become more normalized in the US, companies are building their own data on platforms like Palantir to target customers and employees, increasingly being embedded in the private sector to kill them, deport them, shape actions, maximize revenue, and increase further management systems.
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Unfortunately, the fight for civil rights in the face of AI is struggling at the federal and state levels. Colorado is currently under threat with the country's first consumer protection law on AI, which aims to protect national residents from discrimination. This is why I took me to the streets of Denver last month and marched from the state Capitol to Palantier's headquarters, along with about 40 other activists. We joined us from coast to coast, in Washington, DC, New York, Palo Alto and Seattle. Four people were arrested in New York, and in Denver our small group met an impressive and coordinated show of forces. We faced as many police officers as protesters throughout our two-mile journey, where they closed many streets and followed our fleets by drones.
On his truck bed, he cried out the release of his neighbors from ice custody, including Eric Sanchez Gaicia, Janet Vizguera, and Nixon and Dixon Perez. The fact that they are imprisoned and expelled by the technology created in their hometown, paid by taxpayer money, is a huge stain on the history of our state. When I approached the Capitol on my return, I begged the mayor of Denver, Colorado Governor Mike Johnston, Jared Police and our representatives.
The Colorado Senate is currently holding a special budget session meeting. There, there is a risk that the state's first AI consumer protection will be watered down, delayed or dismantled by venture capital interests. Therefore, our protest this week will target the Capitol, not just Palantir headquarters, but representatives will deliberate on the measures. They support the new AI Sunshine bill, a streamlined version of the consumer protection bill, and oppose the supported bills of large corporations that strip individuals of their right to sue AI businesses. Our movement is growing too, with over 40 marches planned for Big Tech and Palantia across the country this weekend.
These days, I'm always worried about not being the target. I am a freelance journalist and I am an immigrant and demonstrate that I support Palestine. These technologies are used to target people in all three categories. Nonetheless, my fears have not compared to the experiences of people targeted by IDF or ICE using the ISTAR tool. There are journalists killed in airstrikes targeted by journalists killed in Gaza, and immigrants who suffered inhumane conditions every night on prison cell phones. If anything, I am the person who should work hard to understand the real-world consequences of this technology. I hope more tech workers and policy makers can do the same.
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Juan Sebastian Pinto is a writer, designer and civil sovereignty organizer based in Denver and New York City
