Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and members of the committee. My name is Jeramie Scott, and I am senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center, also known as EPIC.
EPIC is a public interest research centre in Washington, D.C. It was established in 1994 to focus public attention on emerging privacy and civil liberties issues and to protect privacy, freedom of expression and democratic values in the information age.
As part of EPIC's open government work, EPIC makes frequent use of the Freedom of Information Act to obtain information from the United States government about surveillance programs. Public disclosure of this information improves government oversight and accountability. It also helps ensure the public is fully informed about the activities of the government.
EPIC routinely files lawsuits to force disclosure of agency records, and it is my understanding that the committee is interested in EPIC's Freedom of Information Act lawsuits related to the U.S. government's use of Palantir software.
EPIC has litigated two Freedom of Information Act cases that might be of interest to the committee. The first was a case against U.S. Customs and Border Protection to obtain records related to the analytical framework for intelligence, which is used to assign risk assessments to travellers.
The more recent lawsuit was against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and it sought records pertaining to systems built on Palantir software. That system is the Falcon system, and the Falcon systems are built on Palantir's Gotham platform, a proprietary software product that allows users to search, visualize and analyze complex datasets. Falcon serves as Immigration and Customs Enforcement's primary data storage and analysis system.
The Falcon system pulls data from several government databases and contains numerous categories of sensitive information, including biographical information like dates of birth, places of birth and social security numbers, and financial data such as bank account numbers and transaction numbers. The Falcon systems also contain data from commercial databases and open-source information publicly available on the Internet, including information from social media sites.
According to the documents obtained by EPIC through the Freedom of Information Act, Falcon systems also contain call record data and GPS data, and, through the use of Palantir software, the Falcon systems are capable of linking together this and other data through social network analysis. The Falcon system uses the massive amount of data it contains and analyzes that data with Palantir's software to locate undocumented immigrants to apprehend and deport. Reports indicate that the Falcon system was used in a raid last year in Mississippi that resulted in 680 arrests. The raid was one of the largest in U.S. history. It terrorized the immigrant community in Mississippi and separated hundreds of individuals from their families.
There is an ongoing campaign against tech companies like Palantir that provide the technical tools for ICE to conduct raids like the one that occurred in Mississippi.
Palantir is also linked to the United States Customs and Border Protection's analytical framework for intelligence. It was the documents obtained by EPIC that confirmed Palantir's involvement in Customs and Border Protection's analytical framework for intelligence system. This system uses information from federal, state and local law enforcement databases as well as commercial databases. This information is often sensitive personal information and includes biographical information, personal associations, travel itineraries, immigration records, and home and work addresses. The information is used to generate risk assessments of travellers and to generate intelligence reports. The capabilities of the analytical framework for intelligence include the ability to perform geospatial, link, and temporal analysis of the data.
In addition to Palantir's controversial work with the U.S. government and particularly Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Palantir has been scrutinized for the predictive policing service the company has provided to various law enforcement agencies within the United States. Palantir's predictive policing services include identifying potential offenders and their networks.
Palantir compiles a target list of likely offenders and victims based on an analysis of mass datasets from a variety of sources, including social media, criminal databases, probation and parole information, jailhouse phone calls, automated licence plate reader systems and law enforcement case management systems, among other sources.
Palantir's predictive policing product performs social network analysis to build webs of social connections to identify potential offenders or victims without prior police contacts.
These tools sweep in vast numbers of people who do not have a strong connection to any criminal activity.
A couple of years ago, Palantir's work in predictive policing was scrutinized after it was revealed that the company had been secretly using the city of New Orleans to test its predictive policing technology. Palantir had a pro bono relationship with the New Orleans police that was only known to the mayor and the city attorney. The city council members were unaware of the program until it was made public by news reporting. After the story broke about Palantir's work in New Orleans, the city ended the partnership.
In almost every case, Palantir has sought to implement predictive policing without community knowledge or consent. In general, Palantir has tried to keep secret its capabilities and how the company's services are used by government entities.
With that, I would be happy to answer any questions the committee may have.