\n<\/p>\n
In an exchange<\/span> this week on \u201cAll-In Podcast,\u201d Alex Karp was on the defensive. The Palantir CEO used the appearance to downplay and deny the notion that his company would engage in rights-violating in surveillance work.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are the single worst technology to use to abuse civil liberties, which is by the way the reason why we could never get the NSA or the FBI to actually buy our product,\u201d Karp said<\/a>.<\/p>\n What he didn\u2019t mention was the fact that a tranche of classified documents revealed by Edward Snowden and The Intercept in 2017 showed how Palantir software helped<\/a> the National Security Agency and its allies spy on the entire planet.<\/p>\n Palantir has attracted increased scrutiny as the pace of its business with the federal government has surged<\/a> during the second Trump administration. In May, the New York Times reported<\/a> Palantir would play a central role in a White House plan to boost data sharing between federal agencies, \u201craising questions over whether he might compile a master list of personal information on Americans that could give him untold surveillance power.\u201d Karp immediately rejected that report in a June interview on CNBC<\/a> as \u201cridiculous shit,\u201d adding that \u201cif you wanted to use the deep state to unlawfully surveil people, the last platform on the world you would pick is Palantir.\u201d<\/p>\n Karp made the same argument in this week\u2019s podcast appearance, after \u201cAll-In\u201d co-host David Sacks \u2014 the Trump administration AI and cryptocurrency czar \u2014 pressed him on matters of privacy, surveillance, and civil liberties. \u201cOne of the criticisms or concerns that I hear on the right or from civil libertarians is that Palantir has a large-scale data collection program on American citizens,\u201d Sacks said.<\/p>\n Karp replied by alleging that he had been approached by a Democratic presidential administration and asked to build a database of Muslims. \u201cWe\u2019ve never done anything like this. I\u2019ve never done anything like this,\u201d Karp said, arguing that safeguards built into Palantir would make it undesirable for signals intelligence. That\u2019s when he said the company\u2019s refusal to abuse civil liberties is \u201cthe reason why we could never get the NSA or the FBI to actually buy our product.\u201d<\/p>\n Karp later stated: \u201cTo your questions, no, we are not surveilling,\u201d taking a beat before adding<\/a>, \u201cuh, U.S. citizens.\u201d<\/p>\n In 2017, The Intercept published documents originally provided by Snowden, a whistleblower<\/a> and former NSA contractor, demonstrating how Palantir software was used in conjunction with a signals intelligence tool codenamed XKEYSCORE, one of the most explosive revelations from the NSA whistleblower\u2019s 2013 disclosures. XKEYSCORE provided the NSA and its foreign partners with a means of easily searching through immense troves of data and metadata<\/a> covertly siphoned across the entire global internet, from emails and Facebook messages to webcam footage and web browsing. A 2008 NSA presentation<\/a> describes how XKEYSCORE could be used to detect \u201cSomeone whose language is out of place for the region they are in,\u201d \u201cSomeone who is using encryption,\u201d or \u201cSomeone searching the web for suspicious stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n Later in 2017, BuzzFeed News reported<\/a> Palantir\u2019s working relationship with the NSA had ceased two years prior, citing an internal presentation delivered by Karp. Palantir did not provide comment for either The Intercept\u2019s or BuzzFeed News\u2019 reporting on its NSA work.<\/p>\n The Snowden documents describe how intelligence data queried through XKEYSCORE could be imported straight into Palantir software for further analysis. One document mentions use of Palantir tools in \u201cMastering The Internet,\u201d a joint NSA\/GCHQ mass surveillance initiative<\/a> that included pulling data directly from the global fiber optic cable network that underpins the internet. References inside HTML files from the NSA\u2019s Intellipedia, an in-house reference index, included multiple nods to the company, such as \u201cPalantir Classification Helper,\u201d \u201c[Target Knowledge Base] to Palantir PXML,\u201d and \u201cPalantirAuthService.\u201d<\/p>\n And although Karp scoffed at the idea that Palantir software would be suitable for \u201cdeep state\u201d usage, a British intelligence document note also published by The Intercept quotes<\/a> GCHQ saying the company\u2019s tools were developed \u201cthrough [an] iterative collaboration between Palantir computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Karp\u2019s carefully worded clarification that Palantir doesn\u2019t participate in the surveillance of Americans specifically would have been difficult if not impossible for the company to establish with any certainty. From the moment of its disclosure, XKEYSCORE presented immense privacy and civil liberties threats, both to Americans and noncitizens alike. But in the United States, much of the debate centered around the question of how much data on U.S. citizens is ingested \u2014 intentionally or otherwise \u2014 by the NSA\u2019s globe-spanning surveillance capabilities.<\/p>\n Even without the NSA directly targeting Americans, their online speech and other activity is swept up during the the agency\u2019s efforts to spy on foreigners: say, if a U.S. citizen were to email a noncitizen who is later targeted by the agency. Even if the public takes the NSA at its word that it does not deliberately collect and process information on Americans through tools like XKEYSCORE, it claims the legal authority under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to subsequently share<\/a> such data it \u201cincidentally\u201d collects with other U.S. agencies, including the FBI<\/a>.<\/p>\n The legality of such collection remains contested<\/a>. Legal loopholes created in the name of counterterrorism<\/a> and national security leave large gaps through which the NSA and its partner agencies can effectively bypass legal protections against spying on Americans and the 4th Amendment\u2019s guarantee against warrantless searches.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n