ICE Gave New Hires Access to Restricted Info on Palantir App Before They Passed Background Checks
Palantir created ELITE, a powerful new app for ICE to target immigrants. The feds never published a legally required privacy assessment for it. The post ICE Gave New Hires Access to Restricted Info on Palantir App Before They Passed Background Checks appeared first on The Intercept .
During the height of President Donald Trump’s winter immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) began issuing new hires access to restricted information on the ELITE app, a Palantir-developed AI tool, before they had completed background checks. Created by Palantir, a CIA-backed firm known for data mining and predictive policing, ELITE targets immigrants and provides a "confidence score" for the accuracy of the information on a target.
The app analyzes data from government agencies and other sources, compiling dossiers on targets and mapping their locations. In the midst of ICE's recent hiring surge, which added over 12,000 employees, newly hired deportation officers were allowed to use ELITE despite not having completed background checks. Former Homeland Security officials and legal experts have raised concerns about the potential civil liberties nightmares and threats to national security posed by the rapid hiring and access to sensitive databases.
The Department of Homeland Security privacy office has not published a privacy impact assessment for ELITE, despite a 2002 law requiring such assessments for new technology collecting, maintaining, or disseminating personally identifiable information (PII).
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