If you are an academic and would like to add your name to this letter, please sign here.
On May 30-31, 2019, Berkeley Law will convene the 2019 Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC) in Berkeley, California. [1] A community of leading privacy scholars from around the world will present new work and interrogate critical questions at the intersection of technology and law. Given the importance of this work and this convening, we are troubled to see Palantir listed as a PLSC sponsor.
Palantir specializes in big data analytics. It sells technologies for tracking, profiling, and prediction to military and law enforcement agencies across the country. [2] Human rights’ advocates have raised concerns over the deployment of Palantir’s systems. [3] The company also has multiple contracts to provide the tech that allows Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to identify, track, and target immigrants, refugees, and asylum-seekers [4] for deportation. And recent reports show that Palantir’s case management systems are used to harass and even arrest family members of children crossing the border. [5]
In short, Palantir’s business involves building technologies that support federal immigration enforcement policies [6] to profile and deport [7] immigrants, detain children, [8] prosecute families, and conduct surveillance on low-income communities that suffer disparate impacts of policing. [9] At the same time, Palantir is waging a public relations campaign [10] which continually minimizes the company’s role in policing and immigration enforcement. [11]
We appreciate that the PLSC planning committee released a sponsorship agreement policy, and we know that corporate sponsorships present complex questions that may not be easily resolved. We also understand the need to secure funding. PLSC’s policy makes clear that sponsors don’t influence the programming or content. But even without direct influence, we are deeply concerned that Palantir’s sponsorship of a leading academic conference on privacy helps the company polish its image, and thus undermines efforts to resist militarized surveillance against migrants and marginalized communities.
We believe that the work being done by the PLSC is urgent and important. Palantir’s extensive involvement in military [12] and policing [13] contracts is well documented, as is their role in enabling Trump’s family separation policy. We hope that the PLSC community will take the lead and refuse affiliation with a company that builds programs and tech tools to enable surveillance and profiling of immigrants and communities that already face disparate impacts of racial profiling and marginalization.
We, the undersigned scholars, call on the convening committee and Berkeley Law to drop Palantir as a PLSC sponsor.
Signed:
Naomi Klein, Rutgers University
Simone Browne, University of Texas at Austin
Meredith Whittaker, AI Now Institute NYU
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Princeton University
Terry Winograd, Stanford University
Lucy Suchman, Lancaster University
Annie Lai, University of California Irvine School of Law
Lilly Irani. University of California San Diego
Douglas Rushkoff, Queens College, CUNY
Kendra Albert, Harvard Law School
Allie Robbins, CUNY School of Law
Mary Marsh Zulack, Columbia University School of Law
David Palumbo-Liu, Stanford University
Eric Popkin, Colorado College
William Quigley, Loyola University New Orleans
Amy Herzog, Queens College, CUNY
Shawn Marie Boyne, Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law
Eric Blumenson, Suffolk University Law School
Andrea J. Boyack, Washburn University School of Law
Athena Mutua, University at Buffalo Law School
Stephen Arons, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Sally Frank, Drake University
Lucy Ann Williams, Northeastern University School of Law
Karl Klare, Northeastern University
Zygmunt Jan Broel Plater, Boston College
Bill Ong Hing, University of San Francisco
Connie de la Vega, University of San Francisco
Tim Iglesias, University of San Francisco
Khalid Kadir, University of California Berkeley
Vincent M Bonventre, Albany Law School
James Cavallaro, Stanford Law School
Elana Zilberg, University of California San Diego
Robert S Westman, University of California San Diego
Anita Chan, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Christina Dunbar-Hester, University of Southern California
Ashwin Mathew, University of California Berkeley
Volker Wulf, University of Siegen
Mark Graham, University of Oxford
Lina Dencik, Cardiff University
Sarah Rogerson, Albany Law School
Ricardo Dominguez, University of California San Diego
Peter Asaro, The New School
Richard Maxwell, Queens College, CUNY
Carlin Meyer, New York Law School
Safiya U. Noble, University of California Los Angeles
Mary Lynch, Albany Law School
Kelly Gates, University of California San Diego
Hemanth Gundavaram, Northeastern University School of Law
Barbara Ann Bush, University of San Diego
Michael Veale, University College London
Paloma Checa-Gismero, University of California San Diego
Martha Kenney, San Francisco State University
Ned Randolph, University of California San Diego
Joseph Rosenberg, CUNY School of Law
Simeon Man, University of California San Diego
Gillian Hart, University of California Berkeley
Caren Kaplan, University of California Davis
Helen H. Kang, Golden Gate University School of Law
Katie Walkiewicz,University of California San Diego
Saiba Varma, University of California San Diego
Daniel Greene, University of Maryland
Jonathon Paden, University of California San Diego
Nick Srnicek, King’s College London
Steven Bender, Seattle University School of Law
Christopher Kelty, University of California Los Angeles
Kavita Philip, University of California Irvine
Marc-Tizoc González, Berkeley Law Class of ‘05, St. Thomas University
Aurélien Tabard, Université de Lyon
Linnet Taylor, Tilburg University
Andrew Clement, University of Toronto
Alison Black, University of California San Diego
Molly Hankwitz, SJSU
M Isabel Medina, Loyola University New Orleans College of Law
Martha Lampland, University of California San Diego
Stephen Lee, University of California Irvine
Song Richardson, University of California Irvine Law
Charles Lawrence, University of Hawaii Manoa
Nicole Grove, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Kenneth Lawson, University of Hawaii
Gilbert Paul Carrasco, Willamette University
Linda Hamilton Krieger, University of Hawaii
James Gray Pope, Rutgers University
Lily Chumley, New York University
Benjamin Davis, University of Toledo College of Law
Wendy Matsumura, University of California San Diego
Paul Duguid, University of California Berkeley
Lokman Tsui, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
William J. Woodward, Jr., Temple University
Gunnar Stevens , University of Siegen
Sarah T. Roberts, University of California Los Angeles
Dr Jamie Woodcock, University of Oxford
David Murakami Wood, Queen’s University
Cori Hayden, University of California Berkeley
Angelica Chazaro, University of Washington
Dean Spade, Seattle University
Chandan Reddy, University of Washington
Finn Brunton, New York University
Zahr Said, University of Washington
- Aneesh, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee
Fran Quigley, Indiana University McKinney School of Law
Elizabeth Keyes, University of Baltimore School of Law
Jennifer Terry, University of California Irvine
Tobias Smith, University of California Davis
Laura Kang, University of California Irvine
Inderpal Grewal, Yale University
Alvaro Bedoya, Georgetown Law
Jill Campbell, U. C. Berkeley B.A. ’79, Yale University
Dr James F Morrison, University of Florida
John Cooper, Bucknell University
Adriana Garriga-López , Kalamazoo College
Mneesha Gellman, Emerson College
Laura Moy, Georgetown Law
Peter L. Markowitz, Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law
Alina Das, NYU Law School
Catherine M Grosso, Michigan State University College of Law
Jacqueline Brown Scott, University of San Francisco
Mark Sanders, UNC Charlotte
Rev. Dr. Antonio Aja McCormick Theological Seminary
Rebecca Kunkel, Rutgers Law School
Evan Light Glendon, York University
Alexander Stine, San Francisco State University
Holly Cooper, University of California Davis
Ameeth Vijay, University of California San Diego
Altha Cravey, UNC Chapel Hill
Haskell Taub, University of Missouri, Columbia
Catherine Liu, University of California Irvine
Clare Sandy, San Francisco State University
Amy C Thompson, University of Texas
Lorraine Halinka Malcoe, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
Charles R. Stack, University of Illinois at Chicago
Gary Y Okihiro, Columbia University
José Gutierrez , Long Beach City College
Kalindi Vora , University of California Davis
Lucas Hilderbrand, University of California Irvine
Joanna Reed, University of California Berkeley
Dorothy Kidd, University of San Francisco
Richard Cándida Smith, University of California Berkeley
Angela P. Harris, University of California Davis
Carlos Barón, San Francisco State University
Sarolta Cump, San Francisco State University
Fatima El-Tayeb, University of California San Diego
Students and Researchers
Travis Chamberlain, University of California San Diego
Dorothy Howard, University of California San Diego
Michael Katell, University of Washington
Niels ten Oever, University of Amsterdam
Os Keyes, University of Washington
Shoghig Halajian, University of California San Diego
Rachel Fox, University of California San Diego
Marion Daniels, University of California San Diego
Viona Deconinck, University of California San Diego
Esther Choi, University of California San Diego
Işık Kaya, University of California San Diego
Kirstyn Hom, University of California San Diego
Sarah Fox, University of California Berkeley
Pei-hsuan Wu, University of San Francisco
Juan José Rojo, University of California San Diego
Kerry Keith, University of California San Diego
Nick Merrill, University of California Berkeley
Luke Stark, Microsoft Research Montreal
Lindsay Weinberg, Purdue University
Aaron Shapiro, New York University
Sarah Arveson, Yale University
Alison M Veintimilla, Brown University
Fenna M Krienen, Harvard Medical School
Mauna Dasari, University of Notre Dame; UC Berkeley Alumna ’12
Mark Verstraete,NYU
Ashley Gorham, University of Pennsylvania, NYU
Benjamin Radcliffe, University of Connecticut
Noura Howell, University of California, Berkeley
Molly Hart, University of California Berkeley
Nina Dewi Horstmann, Stanford University
Ariel Weingarten, University of California San Diego
Brynn Strader, University of Washington
Sophie Fajardo, University of Chicago
Alein Haro, University of California Berkeley
Crystal Zhang, Columbia University
Emilio Araujo, Pomona College
Abraham Shim, Yale University
Alby Chavez, North Carolina Agriclutural and Technical State University
Heather Akbarzadeh, University of California Davis
Eric Kernfeld, University of Massachusetts Medical School
Seda Gurses, Delft University of Technology
Institutions are listed for identification purposes only and do not reflect the position of the institution.
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[1] Annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference, Berkeley Law. https://www.law.berkeley.edu/research/bclt/bcltevents/2019annual-privacy-law-scholars-conference/.
[2] Peter Waldman, Lizette Chapman, and Jordan Robertson, “Palantir Knows Everything About You,” Bloomberg Business Week (April 19, 2018), https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/.
[3] April Glaser and Will Oremus, “ Critics Warn of Trusting Palantir to Work with the United Nations,” Slate, (Feb. 20, 2019), https://slate.com/technology/2019/02/critics-warn-of-trusting-palantir-to-work-with-the-united-nations.html. Emily Birnbaum, “Tech Activists Protest Palantir’s Work with ICE,” The Hill (May 13, 2019), https://thehill.com/policy/technology/443418-tech-activists-protest-palantirs-work-with-ice. Sue Dremann, “Protesters Demand Palantir end ICE contract,” Palo Alto Weekly (July 31, 2018), https://www.paloaltoonline.com/news/2018/07/31/protesters-demand-palantir-end-ice-contracts.
[4] A report commissioned by Mijente, Immigrant Defense Project and National Immigration Project of the NLG to research contracts by technology companies related to immigration enforcement technologies. “Who’s Behind ICE? The Tech and Data Companies Fueling Deportations,” Empower LLC, Mijente, IDP, NIPNLG (October 2018), p. 31-35, 38, 43-45. https://mijente.net/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/WHO’S-BEHIND-ICE_-The-Tech-and-Data-Companies-Fueling-Deportations_v3-.pdf. Manish Singh, Palantir’s Software Was Used for Deportation,” TechCrunch (May 2019), https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/palantirs-software-was-used-for-deportations-documents-show/.
[5] April Glaser, “Palantir Said It Had Nothing to Do With ICE Deportations. New Documents Seem to Tell a Different Story,” Slate, (May 2, 2019), https://slate.com/technology/2019/05/documents-reveal-palantir-software-is-used-for-ice-deportations.html.
[6] Spencer Woodman, “Palantir Provides the Engine for Trump’s Deportation Machine, The Intercept (Mar. 2, 2017), https://theintercept.com/2017/03/02/palantir-provides-the-engine-for-donald-trumps-deportation-machine/
[7] Karen Hao, “Amazon is the invisible backbone behind ICE’s immigration crackdown,” MIT Technology Review (Oct. 22, 2018), https://www.technologyreview.com/s/612335/amazon-is-the-invisible-backbone-behind-ices-immigration-crackdown/.
[8] Id. at 5.
[9] Mark Harris, “If you drive in Los Angeles, the cops can track your every move,” Wired.com (Nov. 13,, 2018), https://www.wired.com/story/drive-los-angeles-police-track-every-move/.
[10] Kate Fazzini, Peter Thiel’s stealth start-up Palantir has unlocked a new opportunity to sell to the US military as revenue tops $1 billion, CNBC.com, (May 16, 2019), https://www.cnbc.com/2019/05/15/palantir-unlocks-a-new-opportunity-to-sell-to-us-military-ahead-of-ipo.html.
[11] New York Times Dealbook, Business and Policy, Palantir renews a border security contract, (Dec. 11, 2018), “https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/business/dealbook/investor-bias-discrimination.html.
[12] Shane Harris, Palantir wins competition to build Army intelligence system, Washington Post (Mar. 26, 2019), https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/palantir-wins-competition-to-build-army-intelligence-system/2019/03/26/c6d62bf0-3927-11e9-aaae-69364b2ed137_story.html?utm_term=.786997626ab0
[13] Shane Harris, How Peter Thiel’s Secretive Data Company Pushed into Policing, Wired.com, (Aug. 9, 2017), https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-secretive-data-company-pushed-into-policing/.