How are ICE agents picking where to commit their next act of wanton violence? Well, Palantir has an app for that!

According to a user guide obtained by 404 Media, the app provides ICE agents with a digital map populated by potential deportation targets, each of which has their own detailed dossier, including information such as their name, date of birth, Alien Registration Number (a unique identifier assigned by the U.S. government), and a photograph of the target. The dossier also includes a “confidence score” out of 100 as to how certain the app is of the target’s address.

“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” the user guide states.

The information comes from a number of sources, including the Department of Health and Human Services, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, and something called CLEAR, which could be an investigation software from Thomson Reuters, according to 404Media.

The app’s “Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab” allows ICE agents to select targets based on a number of criteria, including “Bios & IDs,” “Criminality,” “Location,” and “Operations,” the user guide shows. Using the app, ICE agents can select individual targets or multiple targets at once by drawing a shape around a selected area. During a sworn deposition earlier this month about a “dragnet” raid in Woodburn, Oregon, an officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit said that agents used the app to find target-rich areas.

“You’re going to go to a more dense population rather than … like, if there’s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent … you’re not going to go there,” said the agent, who was identified as “JB” in the court documents obtained by 404 Media.

While the user guide does not explicitly state what company created the app, the app’s full name appears in a $29.9 million supplemental agreement with Palantir that started in September and is planned to continue for at least a year, 404Media reported.

  • Basic Glitch@sh.itjust.worksOP
    19·
    2 days ago

    I wonder what other uses Palantir might have for maps of targets in more or less densely populated areas.

    Also, can’t help but think about who the Trump administration is actually sending to the most densely populated areas to carry out these raids, and what happens to them if Trump has to kick off a civil war while they’re there…

    I knew a guy that had been arrested for property damage during the Iraq war, and had been given the option between joining the military or prison, so he joined the army. Never forgotten him telling me the Army always sent the dumbest guys to drive through dangerous areas first, because they usually wouldn’t pick up on the fact that they were being sent to clear the roads where they were most likely to be driving over IEDs…

    Super fucked up, but that was then. Under the deep state… Things are different nowadays. Surely the Trump administration would never do something like that to the people they’re sending out into the field without training or even bothering to run a background check…

    I’m sure if Trump was going to use Palantir maps to do something like that to the American people, he would be sure to give these guys in ICE (who might not even have an official paper trail) a heads up, and he definitely wouldn’t allow them to be included as part of the collateral damage Palantir software accounts for in all of its strikes on civilian areas

    The Lavender precedent: automated kill lists and the limits of International Humanitarian Law

    According to multiple sources, the IDF set pre-approved “collateral damage” thresholds for strikes on Lavender-listed targets, effectively institutionalising a certain level of civilian death as tolerable. In the early weeks of the war, commanders permitted 15 to 20 civilian deaths per airstrike for attacking a low-ranking militant (Abraham 2024) In other cases, “over 100” civilian casualties were allowed for targeting a single high-ranking Hamas commander (Wiese & Langer 2024). These astonishing numbers, disclosed by both Israeli insiders and subsequent investigations, reveal a de facto calculus where the lives of Palestinian civilians were assigned a disturbingly low weight. This may be evidentiary of the international crime of extermination, considering the violently disproportionate attacks launched by the Israeli military.

    An Israeli intelligence officer candidly confirmed that during this period “we were told: now we have to **** up Hamas, no matter what the cost. Whatever you can, you bomb” (Abraham 2024). This pressure from above to deliver results “with speed and scale” led the targeting teams to unleash an “unparalleled” wave of bombardments unencumbered by the complex assessment proportionality requires (Shehabi & Lubin).

    As a result, magnitude and not precision became the driving metric of the campaign. The practical outcome of these policies was catastrophic civilian loss. By treating every adult male in certain areas or data profiles as targetable, and by approving strikes even knowing that 10% of those targeted could be civilians, the IDF all but guaranteed the violation of distinction.

    I guess it’s important to keep in mind that even though Trump just gave Palantir a $10 billion contract and randomly gave a bunch of Palantir executives military rank for some reason nobody has ever explained, all of these strikes were carried out on foreign soil. Palantir’s AI is probably more accurate and less murder droney in 'Merica. Thank God for those baked in American values aMiRiTe?