Tech workers are protesting Palantir’s involvement with immigration data, 13 Jan. 2016

Due in part to a Verge report from last month, a group of tech workers in Silicon Valley has announced that it will hold a demonstration outside the headquarters of Palantir Technologies in Palo Alto next Wednesday to protest the company’s involvement in intelligence systems used by federal immigration authorities. Since Donald Trump’s upset victory in November, Palantir has made headlines both for its close relationship with the incoming Republican administration and its involvement in government data platforms that could be used to support Trump’s planned mass deportations and what he calls “extreme vetting” of immigrants seeking to enter the country.

“We want to make it clear that the overall tech community is watching what Palantir does,” says Jason Prado, a software engineer at Facebook and member of the Tech Workers Coalition, the group organizing the Palantir demonstration...

 Prado’s group has created an online campaign to collect petition signatures to press Palantir — a company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel — to separate itself from any involvement with mass deportations. The group is also demanding Palantir announce steps it has or will take to ensure its systems are protected from abuse by federal authorities, and for the company to dismantle the system if disclosable safeguards can’t be put in place.

This week, both Thiel and Palantir’s CEO, Alex Karp, separately pledged that Palantir will not be used to build a Muslim registry... “We think that’s fantastic,” says Prado, “but we’re also interested in their possible involvement in what we see as mass deportation and we plan to continue pushing on that.”