Palantir Hosted a Hack Week to Add New Controls to Software Used by ICE

['Palantir, a data analytics company, recently hosted a hack week to address internal concerns over its work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The event brought together engineers from across the company to develop new tools that provide clearer oversight of how users interact with Palantir software. The new tools allow organizations, including DHS and ICE, to monitor user behavior and set up alerts for suspicious activity, such as exfiltrating datasets.

They also enable organizations to search individual user session logs and track which users have accessed specific information. According to an email reviewed by WIRED, some of these tools have already been deployed, with others set to roll out later this year. Palantir regularly hosts hack weeks, which challenge engineers to experiment with and solve problems in its products.

This year\'s event focused on Palantir\'s work with DHS and ICE, which has faced criticism from external critics and some employees who fear the company\'s tools are empowering the Trump administration\'s immigration crackdown. In an email to staff, Ted Mabrey, head of Palantir\'s commercial business, wrote that the effort reflected the company\'s culture of innovation and engagement. The hack week comes as Palantir\'s work with ICE has grown significantly over the past year.

In 2022, ICE paid the company $30 million to build a product called "ImmigrationOS," which provides "near real-time visibility" on self-deportations out of the US. Palantir has also built a separate tool called Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE), which creates maps of individuals targeted for deportation. The internal backlash against Palantir\'s involvement with ICE intensified earlier this year after Minneapolis nurse Alex Pretti was shot and killed by federal agents.

Internal Slack chats reviewed by WIRED showed employees questioning the ethics of the work and demanding more transparency. In one message, a worker asked if Palantir could pressure ICE to change its practices, citing concerns about asylum seekers being rounded up without justification. The company says that the new tools developed during the hack week demonstrate its commitment to converting internal attention into concrete safeguards.

"Rather than turning away from challenging work, commercial FDEs [forward deployed engineers] across the company wanted to jump into the breach," a team lead wrote in an email. ']