Organizers from Our Revolution coordinated a demonstration outside Palantir’s office on 100 Hamilton Avenue in Palo Alto on Feb. 5, where roughly 100 protesters gathered outside the office during the morning to disrupt work. This is part of a growing series of tech-linked activism throughout the Bay Area.
According to activist and Paly junior Brian J. Miller, he is against Palantir in Palo Alto.
“Having Palantir in Palo Alto, especially downtown where there are a lot of people, is an invasion of community privacy,” Miller said. “It makes me feel unsafe and we should not be subjected to the surveillance that the plaintiff is trying to roll out.”
Local organizers have intensified criticism of Palantir Technologies over its contracts with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). One way they have done this is by staging protests that connect corporate influence with federal enforcement practices.
“Recently there have been talks of policies between the U.S. Government and Palantir that if we do not pay attention can be a severe infringement on our personal privacy,” Miller said. “Only we can actively limit their involvement in our daily lives.”
In the broader Bay Area, protesters have focused on Palantir locations and affiliated locations. In protest against Palantir, groups have often blocked streets outside of Palantir locations. Organizations also looked outside of Palantir, targeting Founders Fund, a venture capital firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, and its office location in San Francisco.
In response, Palantir CEO Alex Karp said protesters demonstrating against ICE should support the use of his company’s tools in the government, arguing, “Our product actually, in its core, requires people to conform with Fourth Amendment data protections,” Karp said. Nevertheless, protests continue throughout the Bay Area.