ICE Has Been Dumping Protester Photos Into a Palantir Database
A newly unsealed court filing alleges that DHS agents built dossiers on ICE observers in Maine, storing photos, license plate numbers, and other data in a Palantir-built system called the Investigative Case Management database. The filing describes agents running facial recognition searches, pulling personal records, and warning one observer that she could be added to a domestic terrorism watchlist. DHS calls the case meritless.
The government is treating people who exercise their First Amendment rights and seek to hold it accountable as criminal suspects, and that's what we're asking the court to stop.
- cdrnsf
Dissolve ICE. Anyone who works at the agency should be barred from future public service of any kind.
- hedora
I wonder if Palantir keeps a database of ICE activity.
If so, I wonder how much it will cost for the next democratic DOJ to purchase it, or if the courts will simply compel Palantir to hand it over.
- CircuitSeuss
> According to the legal filing, that afternoon, J.C. [an ICE agent] called [the spouse of an individual who had lawfully recorded an ICE detainment] on her cell phone, identifying himself only as "the Department of Homeland Security." According to [the call recipient], he told her she "should encourage" her spouse, [the observer], "not to do anything like that in the future because people who are doing things like that might get added to a domestic terrorism watchlist." J.C. testified in a deposition that he warned [the observer’s spouse] she would be arrested if she “continue[d] to do this.”
This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone following US news, but we should be angry about it. Textbook intimidation.
> Government attorneys asserted in a court filing that [agent J.C.] denied referencing a “domestic terrorism watchlist.”
And then they lied about it!
- sans_souse
> A spokesperson for DHS calls the case “meritless” and says that “the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that there is a database of ‘domestic terrorists’ run by DHS.”
Wait, wouldn't you want/ expect DHS to maintain a database of domestic terrorists? That wasn't even the question!
- spl757
When congress flips there are going to be investigations, subpoenas, warrants, arrests, and convictions of thousands of people who did things under trump that they should not have done. Accountability is coming.