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technology
Dems Press Palantir on Trump-Era Contracts for 'Mega-Database' of Americans' Info
"We are concerned that Palantir's software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans' rights."
Jun 17, 2025
A group of Democratic lawmakers on Monday pressed the CEO of Palantir Technologies about the company's hundreds of millions of dollars in recent federal contracts and reporting that the big data analytics specialist is helping the government build a "mega-database" of Americans' private information in likely violation of multiple laws.
Citing New York Times reporting from late last month examining the Colorado-based tech giant's hundreds of millions of dollars in new government contracts during the second term of U.S. President Donald Trump, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) led a letter to Palantir CEO Alex Karp demanding answers regarding reports that the company "is amassing troves of data on Americans to create a government-wide, searchable 'mega-database' containing the sensitive taxpayer data of American citizens."
NEW: It looks like Palantir is helping Trump build a mega-database of Americans' private information so he can target and spy on his enemies, or anyone. @aoc.bsky.social and I are demanding answers directly from Palantir.
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— Senator Ron Wyden (@wyden.senate.gov) June 17, 2025 at 7:10 AM
The letter continues:
According to press reports, Palantir employees have reportedly been installed at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), where they are helping the agency use Palantir's software to create a "single, searchable database" of taxpayer records. The sensitive taxpayer data compiled into this Palantir database will likely be shared throughout the government regardless of whether access to this information will be related to tax administration or enforcement, which is generally a violation of federal law. Palantir's products and services were reportedly selected for this brazenly illegal project by Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).
Several DOGE members are former Palantir employees.
The lawmakers called the prospect of Americans' data being shared across federal agencies "a surveillance nightmare that raises a host of legal concerns, not least that it will make it significantly easier for Donald Trump's administration to spy on and target his growing list of enemies and other Americans."
"We are concerned that Palantir's software could be used to enable domestic operations that violate Americans' rights," the letter states. "Donald Trump has personally threatened to arrest the governor of California, federalized National Guard troops without the consent of the governor for immigration raids, deployed active-duty Marines to Los Angeles against the wishes of local and state officials, condoned violence against peaceful protestors, called the independent press 'the enemy of the people,' and abused the power of the federal government in unprecedented ways to punish people and institutions he dislikes."
"Palantir's troubling assistance to the Trump administration is not limited to its work for the IRS," the letter notes, highlighting the company's role in Immigration and Customs Enforcement's mass deportation efforts and deadly U.S. and allied military operations.
The letter does not mention Palantir's involvement in Project Nimbus, a cloud computing collaboration between Israel's military and tech titans Amazon and Google targeted by the No Tech for Apartheid movement over alleged human rights violations. But the lawmakers did note that companies including IBM, Cisco, Honeywell, and others have been complicit in human rights crimes in countries including Nazi Germany, apartheid South Africa, China, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.
The lawmakers asked Karp to provide a list of all contracts awarded to Palantir, their dollar amount, the federal agencies involved, whether the company has any "red line" regarding human rights violations, and other information.
In addition to Wyden and Ocasio-Cortez, the letter is signed by Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Reps. Summer Lee (D-Pa.), Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), Sara Jacobs (D-Calif.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and Paul Tonko (D-N.Y.).
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Watchdog Warns Against 'Reckless and Dangerous' Partnership Between Toy and AI Giants
"This should be obvious but apparently we have to say it: Keep AI out of children's toys," said one advocacy group.
Jun 17, 2025
The watchdog group Public Citizen on Tuesday denounced a recently unveiled "strategic collaboration" between the toy company Mattel and the artificial intelligence firm OpenAI, maker of ChatGPT, alleging that the partnership is "reckless and dangerous."
Last week, the two companies said that they have entered into an agreement to "support AI-powered products and experiences based on Mattel's brands."
"By using OpenAI's technology, Mattel will bring the magic of AI to age-appropriate play experiences with an emphasis on innovation, privacy, and safety," according to the statement. They expect to announce their first shared product later this year.
Also, "Mattel will incorporate OpenAI's advanced AI tools like ChatGPT Enterprise into its business operations to enhance product development and creative ideation, drive innovation, and deepen engagement with its audience," according to the statement.
Mattel's brands include several household names, such as Barbie, Hot Wheels, and Polly Pocket.
"This should be obvious but apparently we have to say it: Keep AI out of children's toys. Our kids should not be used as a social experiment. This partnership is reckless and dangerous. Mattel should announce immediately that it will NOT sell toys that use AI," wrote Public Citizen on X on Tuesday.
In a related but separate statement, Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen, wrote on Tuesday that "endowing toys with human-seeming voices that are able to engage in human-like conversations risks inflicting real damage on children."
"It may undermine social development, interfere with children's ability to form peer relationships, pull children away from playtime with peers, and possibly inflict long-term harm," he added.
The statement from Public Citizen is not the only instance where AI products for children have received pushback recently.
Last month, The New York Times reported that Google is rolling out its Gemini artificial intelligence chatbot for kids who have parent-managed Google accounts and are under 13. In response, a coalition led by Fairplay, a children's media and marketing industry watchdog, and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) launched a campaign to stop the rollout.
"This decision poses serious privacy and online safety risks to young children and likely violates the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)," according to a statement from Fairplay and EPIC.
Citing the "substantial harm that AI chatbots like Gemini pose to children, and the absence of evidence that these products are safe for kids," the coalition sent a letter to Google CEO Sundar Pichai requesting the company suspend the rollout, and a second letter to the Federal Trade Commission requesting the FTC investigate whether Google has violated COPPA in rolling out Gemini to children under the age of 13.
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Imagine a World Without Your iPhone—I Dare You
Will turning off our smart phones—even for a few minutes or (gasp!) hours per day—make the future any different or better? We won't know unless we try.
Jun 08, 2025
Recently, I’ve been turning off my iPhone — all the way off! — for 10 to 30 minutes at a time. I leave it somewhere in the house, while I try to live IRL (“in real life”), washing dishes, hanging up laundry, or even going for a walk, phoneless.
In this hyper-connected world of ours, doing so, even for such a short time, often feels like an enormous act of self-deprivation — no podcasts, no long-distance communication with those I’m closest to, no social media, no para-social relationships, no steps of mine being counted, or micro-health-tracking going on. So much, in other words, missing in action. I’m not a digital native. In fact, I am what they call a late adopter. I didn’t get a cell phone until the fall of 2003. So I remember when it was normal to go about your business without a powerful computer attached to your person. Even with that perspective — recalling the not-so-long-agos of answering machines and public phones with grubby buttons and Internet cafes — I feel unsettled when I’m untethered from my digital leash and experiencing what might pass for freedom, even for a few minutes.
But as unsettling as it is, I also want to start new patterns. Lawyer friends tell me that activists often turn their phones off for the first (and maybe only) time as they commit acts of political property destruction. It’s almost a rite of passage for the newly politicized, and it’s as incriminating as the massive data trails that other activists might leave.
Did you hear about the Tesla saboteur? Home from college in Boston for spring break, the 19-year-old wanted to express his rage at billionaire Elon Musk’s government takeover. He went to a Kansas City Tesla dealership in the middle of the night and used a homemade Molotov cocktail to set a Cybertruck on fire. The fire spread, destroying charging stations and setting a second truck aflame, causing more than $200,000 in damage. He was caught in the act — at least in data terms. The cameras at Tesla (and inside Tesla vehicles themselves) pinpointed the time of the property destruction, while images of someone who looked like him were caught on multiple cameras in the vicinity.
As for new patterns, turning off my cellphone for a period of time every day means a small window of datalessness that offers a twenty-first-century version of rebellion. It dams up the stream of free data that flows from my device with every tap-tap and swipe. By doing so, I create a tiny space for surprise, for rebellion, for precious secrecy.
I don’t have any plans to sabotage a Tesla showroom, nor am I in a current conspiracy with anyone trying to stop a shipment of U.S. weapons to the Israeli Defense Forces for its genocidal campaign against Gaza. I’m not trying to organize a workers’ strike at my kids’ school or local grocery store. To my shame, I’m not actively planning any of these actions. For those who don’t want to make rookie activist data mistakes, the Internet (and here’s a nod toward the irony) is full of crash courses on security culture and avoiding self-incrimination or entrapment through careless reliance on tech.
As I power down that ubiquitous device, I remind myself of my own power, too. Yes, I still know how to get places without a map app. I know the answers to the random trivia that comes into my mind any day. (Who sang that song? Who was president in 1954?) Or I can live with the not-knowing. Amazingly enough, I’ve discovered that I still know how to live in my own mind alone, without being distracted or entertained by a podcast. I’ve realized that just because I have the urge to reach out to so-and-so, it doesn’t actually mean that it has to happen that very second. It’s bracing and helpful to remember I can live without this device.
Dehumanizing Technology?
I’m well aware of the research on how bad the online world can be for anyone, especially young people. And believe it or not, my kids — 11 and 12 — still don’t have cellphones and don’t live online. They don’t play video games on and off all day long or have access to their own devices at home. But that doesn’t mean that they’re living some Montessori or Waldorf fantasy of Luddite delight. I kind of wish they were. But that life is for a much higher income bracket than mine. It’s worth noting that many in the tech world take great pains to shield their children from this technology. Every other kid on my daughter’s bus undoubtedly has a phone and I’m sure she’s craning to look over someone’s shoulder whenever she can. My son’s friends all have phones — no surprise in this world of ours — and play video games regularly. He’s a little left out of the chatter about this or that gaming platform, but I’m not giving in just so he can fit into a culture that I don’t think is all that healthy to begin with.
As a parent, I think a lot about the kind of world I’m preparing my kids for. And I guess there’s an argument to be made for preparing them for a world lived largely online, since that’s where we are these days. But I’m going to try and hold the line and reject that very world as much as humanly possible. (Humanly indeed!)
I want my kids running, swimming, noticing the world around them, creating art, hearing bird songs and cries of warning, reading good books (or even not-so-great ones) — almost anything but playing video games and diving into the deep end of a cyber-cesspool of bullying, eating disorders, and a fixation on looks.
I read about the connections between video games and war fighting today and in the future. And it’s strange (at least to me) to imagine war as a video game and the degradation that goes with it. After all, dehumanization is the name of the grisly game these days for the Israeli Defense Forces. Soldiers are taught that the Palestinian people — even children — are less than fully human. Technology may not make them feel that way, but it certainly does make it easier to execute orders involving collective punishment, total surveillance, technological harassment, and ethnic cleansing.
Spending Time with Jennifer Lopez
On Wednesdays, my kids walk to the library, where they can log onto public computers and watch unboxing videos or tutorials on contouring (whatever that may be!). And then they have to walk home in time for dinner. It’s a little over a mile round trip, and I figure it’s a good trade-off. I tell them that they can have a smartphone when they can pay for it themselves, but in my dreams what I’d really like would be a communications device that, in order to use, they had to power with a bicycle or a hand crank. I would want it to feel like work. Because it’s not a value-neutral object and the network it relies on is not value-neutral either. At every juncture, this technology that we take for granted has a high labor, material, and environmental cost.
My daughter Madeline is 11. I notice her putting ever more attention into her appearance, primping and carefully considering her outfits. Still, she smiles when she looks in the mirror, delighting in her strong sense of style and dancing to the beat of her own drummer. Her once-a-week plunge into YouTube hasn’t dissipated her sense of self the way daily (hourly?) immersion would. She plays softball, runs at recess, and has a healthy appetite. She isn’t isolated from the world, and she and I talk about body image, aging, and the way old-fashioned media, social media, and AI create impossible standards for women.
Recently, we watched an ad featuring the multi-hyphenate Jennifer Lopez who, at the age of 55, is acting, singing, dancing, and representing high-end brands like a full-time mogul model. “Gosh, Mom. I can’t believe she is older than you,” Madeline said with the unalloyed frankness of the young. She didn’t have to mention my wrinkles and rolls and masses of white hair. It was all implied in her incredulous tone.
“Well, my Love, it’s not my job to look a certain way,” I replied.
Jennifer Lopez is, of course, a knockout. I have loved her since Out of Sight and Jenny From the Block. As a public figure and a professional beauty, she’s in a position to maintain her looks, no matter what the cost. She undoubtedly spares no expense when it comes to trainers, treatments, makeup, and clothes to keep that look (or at least something close to it), and then computers and lighting do the rest.
Believe me, it’s good to have these conversations with my kid, to have her understand the effort and cost that go into looking like Jennifer Lopez, or any other celebrity. As I pointed out to Madeline, I don’t have a deal with a face-cream company or a clothing line or a perfume outfit or some kind of alcohol company that requires me to devote myself to my persona. And in her own fashion, she heard me.
As I reflect now, I realize that, without such conversations, she might think she’s supposed to look that way, too, and that there’s something wrong with her if she doesn’t. That degraded sense of self is easy pickings for our consumerist culture which sends unrelenting messages that this or that product will fill the hole.
Making the Future Different?
All my yellow thumbs up, all my mindless clicks and swipes, the time traps I fall into — full disclosure: it’s videos of thrifters on the hunt for deals and the posts of the hauls they buy to resell that grab me every time! That’s my weak spot. But every minute online is captured in a huge data profile of ME that I can’t contest or contrive or unravel. But I can turn away. Turn off the iPhone. Turn away from the screen. Disconnect the stream of data. This pervasive technology and its promises of ease and a frictionless existence are a downright lie. After all, the same technological framework powers DoorDash and the weaponized drones that are now raining terror down on children just like mine in Gaza.
I live far enough away from Gaza (in so many senses) that I could mindlessly embrace DoorDash while rejecting killer drones. But now that I’ve made the connection, I can’t un-make it. So I am going to say as big a NO as possible to both.
As the world gets more networked and more automated, the basic knowledge of how to survive in it gets lost, commodified, or controlled. How to find and purify water, how to grow and prepare food — lost! The “cloud” won’t bring rain to end drought conditions. The Internet is not going to feed us in a supply chain collapse. These are the things that keep me up at night, so without freaking out too much, my kids and I work on life skills together. Eye contact, stamina for walking, tolerance of discomfort, strategic decision-making, map-reading, determining threat levels, and assessing someone’s trustworthiness. These are all skills that will help my kids in a distinctly precarious future.
A few years ago, an artist named Simon Weckert borrowed a few dozen iPhones from friends, put them in a red wagon and took a walk through the streets of Berlin. With just an hour or so of lag time, Google Maps showed all the streets and roads he had walked on bottlenecked in traffic jams. Video of his mobile art piece shows him strolling down the center of empty roads. It’s absorbing to watch that video, a split screen of him in a yellow jacket with the jaunty gait of a wagon puller and those red-lined Google Maps. Weckert’s performance demonstrates how our sense of reality is mediated by, filtered through, and dependent on a technology we simply don’t fully grasp or understand.
What we see isn’t what is real. In these dystopian Trumpy days, deep in our bones, we know that. Trump rants about White genocide and radical-left judicial monsters and tweets out AI-constructed images of himself as the Pope, a Jedi master, a golden statue in a renovated Gaza resort. What we see isn’t what’s real. And yes, I am in awe of it. I am afraid of it. I know it cannot feed me. I know it is trying to cleave my attention from the question of how we survive this violent present and make a different and far better future.
Peter Maurin, who co-founded the Catholic Worker movement with Dorothy Day, was fond of saying that we make the future different by making the present different.
So, I am turning my iPhone off. It makes my present different. Will it make the future any different?
It won’t hurt to try!
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