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mass surveillance
Rights and Tech Coalition Calls On Congress to End Warrantless Mass Surveillance
"The American people do not want the government to bypass the courts and buy our private information in bulk from data brokers."
Mar 19, 2026
With Republican leadership in the US House of Representatives aiming for "a straightforward extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, next week," a diverse coalition on Thursday renewed calls for Congress to impose "much-needed privacy protections against government agencies' warrantless mass surveillance of people in the United States."
Section 702 empowers the US government to spy on electronic communications of noncitizens located outside the United States to acquire foreign intelligence information, without a warrant. However, Americans' data is also collected, and advocates and lawmakers have long demanded reforms to the abused authority, which is set to expire next month unless reauthorized.
As President Donald Trump's White House—including Stephen Miller, his pro-spying deputy chief of staff—pushes for a "clean" reauthorization, 133 artificial intelligence, civil rights, and other progressive groups convened by Demand Progress and the Project On Government Oversight sent a Thursday letter to Republican and Democratic leaders in both chambers of Congress.
The coalition's letter argues that "FISA's sunsets were designed to prompt Congress to consider privacy protections" and calls for "closing the data broker loophole" that intelligence and law enforcement agencies use to buy their way around the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution, which is supposed to protect Americans against unreasonable searches and seizures.
"Data brokers sell private information about all Americans, often surreptitiously obtaining that data from our phones and other internet-connected devices," the letter explains. "This information paints a mosaic of each and every American's life, which exposes where we sleep, what we believe, whom we vote for, and a staggering amount more."
The loophole "facilitates mass surveillance and circumvents FISA reforms Congress enacted in 2015 to prohibit domestic bulk data collection," the missive continues. Closing it "would ensure government agencies obtain judicial approval before buying information about people in the United States from data brokers if it would otherwise require a court order to seize."
"This would establish a critical legal process to protect privacy before such warrantlessly acquired information is fed into artificial intelligence surveillance systems, and help avert looming and unprecedented threats to Americans' civil liberties," it adds, citing a poll that shows 80% of Americans think the government should have to obtain a warrant before being able to buy such data.
The letter also highlights recent reporting from The New York Times that the US Department of Defense wants AI companies to "allow for the collection and analysis of unclassified, commercial bulk data on Americans, such as geolocation and web browsing data," and appears to have already secured one agreement that could permit any use the government deems lawful.
Demand Progress executive director Sean Vitka warned in a Thursday statement that "by rushing to renew FISA without any reforms, Congress is poised to allow AI companies and government agencies to supercharge mass domestic surveillance systems with our location and web browsing data—all without a warrant or any involvement from the courts."
"The American people do not want the government to bypass the courts and buy our private information in bulk from data brokers," Vitka stressed. "To protect Americans' privacy, our Fourth Amendment rights and the fundamental liberties that privacy protects, Congress must close the data broker loophole before renewing the government's surveillance power."
The letter—whose other signatories include the ACLU, Amnesty International US, Center for Democracy & Technology, Consumer Action, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Fight for the Future, Friends of the Earth US, MoveOn, No Tech for Apartheid, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Reporters Without Borders, and more—points out that "several already introduced pieces of legislation both reauthorize Section 702 and effectively close the data broker loophole."
Among them is the bipartisan Security and Freedom Enhancement (SAFE) Act, introduced last month by Sens. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Mike Lee (R-Utah), and backed by organizations including Demand Progress.
"Section 702 is a valuable tool to help keep our nation safe," Durbin said at the time. "However, it's being used to conduct thousands of warrantless searches of Americans' private communications. That's unacceptable. Our bipartisan SAFE Act is a commonsense solution to continue protecting our country from foreign threats—while safeguarding Americans' civil liberties and privacy."
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Palantir Is Leading a New Age of Empire
Palantir has merged American empire, Zionist military infrastructure, surveillance capitalism, and technofascist ideology into a single architecture of control.
Mar 18, 2026
A former Palantir executive recently confirmed what many have long suspected. In a public statement, the whistleblower said it plainly: Palantir intended to take over the US government, and many of his former colleagues are now installed inside the federal apparatus. He called it an occupied nation. He is not alone. Thirteen former Palantir employees—engineers, managers, and a member of the company's own privacy team—signed a letter shared with NPR warning that guardrails meant to prevent discrimination, disinformation, and abuse of power have been violated and are being rapidly dismantled.
What Palantir represents is something unprecedented: the convergence of American imperialism, Zionism, technofascism, and surveillance capitalism into a single instrument of control. Understanding how we got here requires looking at the machine Palantir has built, who built it, and what they believe.
Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. Its first major investor was In-Q-Tel, the CIA's venture capital arm, which seeded the company with millions and opened the door to every major intelligence and defense agency. The logic was deliberate: The American ruling class recognized decades ago that the state's coercive power—surveillance, targeting, data harvesting—could be run more effectively and more profitably through private contractors. When a government agency surveils its own citizens, there are hearings, FOIA requests, oversight committees. When a private company does it, it is a trade secret.
That strategy has paid off enormously. Palantir now holds contracts worth over $10 billion with the US Army alone. The Trump regime tapped Palantir to build a master database on American citizens. The Pentagon expanded its Maven Smart System contract by $795 million to deploy AI-powered battlefield intelligence across the empire. In June, the military swore in four tech executives as Army Reserve lieutenant colonels—including Palantir's CTO—in a program that embeds Silicon Valley directly into military planning. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) signed a $30 million contract for Palantir's ImmigrationOS platform, which provides near real-time tracking of people targeted for deportation. Thousands of American police departments use Palantir's Gotham platform for domestic surveillance.
When academics define technofascism—what happens when tech executives encode their political beliefs into the architecture of technology and infrastructure to suppress dissent—they are describing Palantir with precision.
Abroad, the consequences are even more devastating. Palantir's AI platforms have been deployed by Israel's military to systematically prosecute the assault on Gaza. AI targeting systems built on Palantir's architecture—known by names like Lavender, The Gospel, and Where's Daddy—have enabled the kind of automated killing that produces mass civilian casualties at scale. Palantir's own executives have been recorded discussing how bombing densely populated areas generates the movement data their algorithms need to train on. When people flee, make phone calls, search for loved ones, rush to hospitals that no longer exist—that movement becomes fuel for the machine. Palantir’s platforms were deployed in the illegal capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, Israel’s terrorist pager attack against Lebanon, and the US carpet bombing of Iran at the behest of Israel—the same campaign that destroyed a girls' elementary school in Minab.
The genocide in Gaza was also a business windfall. Palantir's valuation surged hundreds of billions of dollars, making it o best-performing stock of 2024 and among the top in 2025. That financial momentum funded the next phase: political capture. Former Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wisc.), the congressman who introduced the bill forcing TikTok's sale, resigned from Congress and joined Palantir as head of defense. He later acknowledged that the legislation gained momentum not because of any Chinese national security threat, but because of pro-Palestinian content on the platform. Palantir's senior adviser Jacob Helberg was instrumental in pushing the sale through Congress. The app was handed to Oracle's Larry Ellison—one of Israel's most prominent private benefactors. Silence the platform most critical of your technology enabling mass death, and the profits keep flowing.
Then there is the Jeffrey Epstein connection. Department of Justice-released emails reveal hundreds of messages between Epstein and Thiel spanning years. Epstein invested approximately $40 million into Thiel's Valar Ventures. He brokered introductions between Palantir and Israeli officials, including former Prime Minister Ehud Barak, in meetings where surveillance technology, AI warfare, and Israeli national security policy were all on the table.
All of this is dangerous enough on its own. It becomes existential when you understand the ideology driving it. Thiel wrote in a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute that he no longer believes freedom and democracy are compatible. He is a devoted patron of Curtis Yarvin, the political theorist who argues democracy should be replaced by corporate monarchy—a CEO-king with absolute authority. Yarvin is not a fringe blogger anymore. He was a guest of honor at Trump's inauguration ball. Vice President JD Vance—bankrolled and politically launched by Thiel—has cited Yarvin by name. Project 2025 follows Yarvin’s technofascist vision almost to the letter.
When academics define technofascism—what happens when tech executives encode their political beliefs into the architecture of technology and infrastructure to suppress dissent—they are describing Palantir with precision. This is a project whose founders believe democracy was a mistake, whose software hunts human beings across borders, and whose executives now hold military rank and sit inside the federal government while enriching themselves. They are no longer serving the empire who created them. They have become the empire.
This is the new age of empire—American imperialism, Zionism, technofascism, and surveillance capitalism fused into one architecture, operated by one class of people, accountable to no one.
And that is the part that should terrify you more than anything else—because this isn't a warning about some future to come. This already happened. The merger is complete. The executives are installed. The kill chains are running. The surveillance is live. The dissenters are being tracked. The media that exposed it has been silenced or sold.
There is no cavalry coming for us.
So the question is not whether Palantir is dangerous. The whistleblowers have answered that. The dead children in Gaza have answered that. The families ripped apart by ICE have answered that.
The question is what are we going to do about it—because every day we stay silent, every day we scroll past this, is another day they use to dig in deeper, build more kill chains, harvest more data, and make themselves harder to remove.
They are betting that you won't act. That you'll feel too small, too overwhelmed, too paralyzed—because that is the fear they designed this system to produce.
Prove them wrong.
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Trump Cuts Off Anthropic, AI Firm That Stood Against Killer Robots and Mass Surveillance
"Demanding security guardrails for how AI is used by the Department of Defense isn't radical—it's protecting the constitutional rights of the American people," said New Jersey's Democratic governor.
Feb 27, 2026
US President Donald Trump "is throwing this tantrum and calling Anthropic 'radical left' because they refuse to have their AI be used for illegal mass surveillance and murder. That's literally it."
That's how progressive commentator Kyle Kulinski described Trump's Friday social media post "directing EVERY Federal Agency in the United States Government to IMMEDIATELY CEASE all use" of the artificial intelligence firm's technology—including its chatbot Claude.
As Kulinski's podcast co-host and wife Krystal Ball summarized, "According to the president, objecting to autonomous killer robots and mass surveillance is 'radical left.'"
Earlier this week, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth gave Anthropic until 5:01 pm Eastern time Friday to agree to let the Pentagon use the company's AI tech however it wants. He threatened to declare Anthropic a "supply chain risk," effectively blacklisting it for military use and ending its current contract, or invoke the Defense Production Act, which would force the company to tailor the product to the Department of Defense's (DOD) needs.
After the DOD reportedly sent Anthropic its "best and final" offer Wednesday night, the company's CEO, Dario Amodei, published a blog post explaining that "we cannot in good conscience accede to their request," and reiterated opposition to enabling autonomous weapons or surveillance of US citizens.
While Anthropic employees, other tech experts, and critics of the current administration praised Amodei for "standing on principle" and choosing "war with the Department of War"—the president's preferred name for the Pentagon—Trump predictably lashed out at the company on his Truth Social platform.
"THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA WILL NEVER ALLOW A RADICAL LEFT, WOKE COMPANY TO DICTATE HOW OUR GREAT MILITARY FIGHTS AND WINS WARS! That decision belongs to YOUR COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF, and the tremendous leaders I appoint to run our Military," Trump wrote Friday afternoon.
"The Leftwing nut jobs at Anthropic have made a DISASTROUS MISTAKE trying to STRONG-ARM the Department of War, and force them to obey their Terms of Service instead of our Constitution," he continued. "Their selfishness is putting AMERICAN LIVES at risk, our Troops in danger, and our National Security in JEOPARDY."
Directing agencies to stop using Anthropic's tech, Trump added:
We don't need it, we don't want it, and will not do business with them again! There will be a Six Month phase out period for Agencies like the Department of War who are using Anthropic's products, at various levels. Anthropic better get their act together, and be helpful during this phase out period, or I will use the Full Power of the Presidency to make them comply, with major civil and criminal consequences to follow.
WE will decide the fate of our Country—NOT some out-of-control, Radical Left AI company run by people who have no idea what the real World is all about. Thank you for your attention to this matter. MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!
Amodei had notably written in his blog post that "our strong preference is to continue to serve the department and our warfighters—with our two requested safeguards in place. Should the department choose to offboard Anthropic, we will work to enable a smooth transition to another provider, avoiding any disruption to ongoing military planning, operations, or other critical missions."
While Trump's order preceded Hegseth's initial deadline, the defense secretary publicly weighed in at 5:14 pm, writing on Elon Musk's social media network X that "this week, Anthropic delivered a master class in arrogance and betrayal as well as a textbook case of how not to do business with the United States government or the Pentagon."
Hegseth described the company's terms of service as "defective altruism," and reiterated the Pentagon's position that "the Department of War must have full, unrestricted access to Anthropic's models for every LAWFUL purpose in defense of the republic."
The Pentagon chief also officially directed the DOD to designate the company a supply chain risk to national security, meaning that "effective immediately, no contractor, supplier, or partner that does business with the United States military may conduct any commercial activity with Anthropic."
"Anthropic will continue to provide the Department of War its services for a period of no more than six months to allow for a seamless transition to a better and more patriotic service," Hegseth added. "America's warfighters will never be held hostage by the ideological whims of Big Tech. This decision is final."
The New York Times noted that "the Pentagon is ready to move forward with Grok, produced by Elon Musk's xAI, on its classified system. But Grok is considered by current and former government officials to be an inferior product. And switching AI software would take time and almost certainly cause disruption."
While Anthropic hasn't publicly responded to Trump or Hegseth, critics, including congressional Democrats, have continued to praise the company and blast the administration for how they've each handled the conflict this week.
"Anthropic objected in part to the Department of Defense using its AI technology to engage in domestic mass surveillance. Do you agree that's a radical left, woke position?" asked Congressman Ted Lieu (D-Calif.). "That's actually the constitutional position, one that should be embraced by Americans regardless of party."
Replying to Trump's post specifically, Democratic New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill similarly said: "Yet another alarming attack by the president on a private company defending its principles. Standing up against mass surveillance and demanding security guardrails for how AI is used by the Department of Defense isn't radical—it's protecting the constitutional rights of the American people."
Describing himself as "one of Congress' most vocal proponents for the modernization" of DOD and US intelligence community (IC) missions with transformative technology, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Vice Chair Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) said in a statement that "the president's directive to halt the use of a leading American AI company across the federal government, combined with inflammatory rhetoric attacking that company, raises serious concerns about whether national security decisions are being driven by careful analysis or political considerations."
"President Trump and Secretary Hegseth's efforts to intimidate and disparage a leading American company—potentially as the pretext to steer contracts to a preferred vendor whose model a number of federal agencies have already identified as a reliability, safety, and security threat—pose an enormous risk to US defense readiness and the willingness of the US private sector and academia to work with the IC and DOD, consistent with their own values and legal ethics," he continued.
"Indeed," he added, "Secretary Hegseth's loud insistence on the sufficiency of an 'all lawful purposes' standard provides cold comfort against the backdrop of Pentagon leadership that has routinely sidelined career military attorneys and challenged longstanding norms and rules regarding lethal force."
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