Has Big Brother arrived? Inside the secretive Trump effort to centralize government data on millions of Americans

Yahoo

a day ago

The Trump administration is reportedly leaning on an Elon Musk-allied tech company to build wide-ranging data tools pooling government information on millions of Americans and immigrants alike.
The campaign has raised alarms from critics that the company could be furthering Musk's DOGE effort to vacuum up and potentially weaponize – or sell – mass amounts of sensitive personal data, particularly against vulnerable groups like immigrants and political dissidents.
In March, the president signed an executive order dedicated to 'stopping waste, fraud, and abuse by eliminating information silos,' a euphemism for pooling vast stores of data on Americans under the federal government.
To carry out the data effort, the administration has deepened the federal government's longstanding partnership with Palantir, a tech firm specializing in building big data applications, which was co-founded by Silicon Valley investor, GOP donor, and JD Vance mentor Peter Thiel.
Since Trump took office, the administration has reportedly spent more than $113 million with Palantir through new and existing contracts, while the company is slated to begin work on a new $795 million deal with the Defense Department.
Palantir is reportedly working with the administration in the Pentagon, the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Internal Revenue Service, according to The New York Times.
Within these agencies, the firm is reportedly building tools to track the movement of migrants in real time and streamline all tax data.
The company is also reportedly in talks about deploying its technology at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Education, both of which have been targets of DOGE, and which store sensitive information about Americans' identities and finances.
'We act as a data processor, not a data controller,' the company insisted in response to the Times report. 'Our software and services are used under direction from the organizations that license our products. These organizations define what can and cannot be done with their data; they control the Palantir accounts in which analysis is conducted.'
The Trump administration has reportedly pursued a variety of efforts to use big data to support its priorities, including social media surveillance of immigrants to detect alleged pro-terror views, and American activists who disagree wit Donal Trump's views..
Earlier this month, a group of former Palantir employees warned in an open letter that the company was 'normalizing authoritarianism under the guise of a 'revolution' led by oligarchs.'
'By supporting Trump's administration, Elon Musk's DOGE initiative, and dangerous expansions of executive power, they have abandoned their responsibility and are in violation of Palantir's Code of Conduct,' the employees wrote.
Previous reporting from CNN and WIRED has described efforts at the Department of Homeland Security to build mass data tools to support tracking and surveilling undocumented immigrants, a key priority for the White House as deportations still aren't reaching levels necessary to meet Trump's promise of rapidly removing millions of people from the country.
The effort has involved merging data from outside agencies like Social Security and the IRS, according to WIRED.
'They are trying to amass a huge amount of data,' a senior DHS official told the magazine. 'It has nothing to do with finding fraud or wasteful spending … They are already cross-referencing immigration with SSA and IRS, as well as voter data.'
Since Trump took office, DOGE operatives, many of whom are unknown to the public nor have been vetted, have rapidly sought access to data at key agencies, including the Departments of Education and the Treasury, as well as the Social Security Administration, often over the objections of senior staff.
The efforts have prompted scores of lawsuits against DOGE.
At Social Security, the administration also moved thousands of living, mostly Latino undocumented immigrants into the agency's 'Death Master File' in an attempt to pressure them to leave the country.
DOGE itself is reportedly under audit for its action by the Government Accountability Office, a federal watchdog.
An April letter from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee warned of DOGE's 'extreme negligence and an alarmingly cavalier attitude' toward sensitive data. It claimed a whistleblower had described how 'DOGE engineers have tried to create specialized computers for themselves that simultaneously give full access to networks and databases across different agencies.'
The 'whistleblower information obtained by the Committee, combined with public reporting, paints a picture of chaos at SSA [Social Security Administration] as DOGE is rapidly, haphazardly, and unlawfully working to implement changes that could disrupt Social Security payments and expose Americans' sensitive data,' the letter reads.'