ICE dumping protester photos into a Palantir database

Court filings just unsealed. What they show is plain enough.

DHS agents in Maine tracked people watching ICE operations. Then they fed those people into a Palantir-built database. Not a public records system. A Palantir system.

The photos aren't just sitting there. The filings say agents used the database to intimidate observers. That's not data collection. That's a threat.

Palantir builds the kind of systems that connect your face to your location, your car, your phone, your friends. ICE was dumping protester photos into one. The database was built by a company that sells surveillance tech to the military and border patrol.

The filings don't say how long the data has been stored. They don't say who else has access. They don't say if the photos were shared with other agencies. They just say it happened.

This isn't a glitch. This isn't a "misunderstanding." This is a system being used to make people who are watching government operations feel watched back. That's the point.

The people in Maine were doing what communities do — watching what the government does. And the government built a database to remember them.

Why this matters for us: la gente who shows up to watch ICE — the family, the students, the abuela on her porch — shouldn't need to worry that a Palantir database is already keeping their photos. This is how surveillance gets into the community, one photo at a time.