Palantir Technologies is a US data integration and analytics company founded in 2003 by Peter Thiel, Alex Karp, and others, headquartered in Denver, Colorado, and publicly listed on the New York Stock Exchange since 2020. Palantir’s two flagship platforms are Gotham, originally designed for the CIA and US Department of Defence, and Foundry, designed for commercial customers. Palantir’s US government customer base includes the CIA, FBI, ICE, US Army, US Air Force, and many other agencies. Gotham deployments are also documented at US state and municipal law enforcement levels, including the LAPD and the NYPD.
What it means in practice
Gotham is a data integration and analysis platform that brings together records from many different sources, including law enforcement databases, intelligence reports, social media data, geolocation data, financial records, and OSINT collection, into a unified analytical environment. Investigators use Gotham to map relationships between individuals, identify patterns in large datasets, and visualise the social and operational structure of investigative targets. The platform has been used in counter-terrorism work, narcotics investigations, ICE enforcement actions, and child exploitation cases.
Specific things to know
Palantir’s role in US Immigration and Customs Enforcement has been the most publicly contentious aspect of the company’s customer base. Internal Palantir documents disclosed through whistleblower channels and FOIA requests have documented Gotham’s role in supporting ICE workplace enforcement actions and family separation operations during the Trump administration. The company has consistently defended these contracts on the basis that ICE is a legitimate law enforcement agency, while acknowledging the political controversy. Palantir’s commercial business through Foundry has grown substantially since the IPO, with customers including major financial institutions, healthcare systems, and manufacturers.
Change today
If you are within the operational scope of a Palantir Gotham deployment (which, for US residents, includes multiple federal and many state and municipal contexts), the operational answer is that data minimisation is the primary defence. The platform’s analytical power comes from data aggregation, and the marginal cost of including any individual data point is low. Limiting the data you produce, particularly in social media and commercial transactions, reduces the surface available to any Gotham-class platform.
Related articles
See our coverage of the Palantir ICE contract controversy, the broader role of data integration platforms in US law enforcement, and the operational defences for individuals seeking to minimise their data footprint.