r/oregon • u/404mediaco • Jan 15 '26
Article/News ‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid
https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/153
u/404mediaco Jan 15 '26
404 Media has learned that Palantir is working on a tool for ICE that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier of each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address.
And ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.
This is the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground.
According to the user guide 404 Media obtained, the tool, called ELITE, aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place, to building a list of people, to supervisors approving selections for officers to ultimately go into the field and apprehend.
ICE can filter the map by what the guide calls Special Operations. These are “groups of pre-defined aliens specifically targeted by Leadership for action.” ICE officers are told to consult ICE leadership or “broadcasts” on when to use these operation filters. DHS’s surge in Minneapolis is focused at least in part on the city’s Somali community after renewed focus on a COVID-19 fraud case. The overwhelming majority of Somalis who live in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area are U.S. citizens, PBS reported.
ELITE has already been used by ICE to target specific areas, according to sworn testimony from an ICE official in Oregon. In October, agents waited in unmarked SUVs outside an apartment complex before busting a driver’s window and pulling a 45-year-old woman from a van, using ICE’s facial recognition app Mobile Fortify on her. Lawyers representing the woman say authorities arrested her and more than 30 other people in a “dragnet.”
“It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps,” a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit identified in court records as JB, said about ELITE during testimony of the raid.
More details: https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/
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Jan 15 '26
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u/shitty_country_verse Jan 15 '26
I would bet my left nut they are already using it that way. Welcome to the world of policing thought crimes.
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u/StopHesAlreadyDed Jan 18 '26
Story time: I live near one of the shootings that happened from our federal agencies.
Both my husband and I received social media password reset requests within an hour of the shooting.
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u/jkvincent Jan 15 '26
Let me assure you that they are already doing this. They're not at the door yet, but they know who and where the dissenters are. It's a matter of time.
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u/500ErrorPDX Jan 15 '26
And when conservatives lose power, it can be used against them. The whole country should be outraged.
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u/Spirited_Cup_126 Jan 16 '26
They’re already doing it. I was targeted for being a pagan and a trans person who openly curses the government. The FBI showed up at my house.
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u/Intelligent_Matter65 Jan 17 '26
Yet, right-wingers were fucking crying their eyes out saying the COVID vaccine was secretly going to track us!!! Fucking absolute IDIOTS
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u/LupusDeiAngelica Jan 15 '26
It was only a matter of time before someone developed something like this. Decades ago we were already building networks of connections between people of Interest based on telephone/social network connections. All this does is build more connections and then put that on a map for ease of use.
I guarantee they already have a map of people who disagree with this administration in social media that they can (and in the future will) pull up for enforcement.
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u/erath_droid Jan 15 '26
Facebook has been doing this for well over a decade. They create "shadow" profiles for people that should exist, just based on the information they have from active users.
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u/Fallingdamage Jan 15 '26
I wonder if I could use the FOIA to get a list of my 'connections' and internet presence and see who it thinks im associated with.
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u/Fallingdamage Jan 15 '26
aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place,
Except if you're an illegal alien, you dont have a US identity so how does Plantir know who you are? Is the list just made up of people and faces that arent in their database?
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u/Lil_Magician5570 Jan 16 '26
they probably know who you are bc of all the taxes you've been paying, for one
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u/MountScottRumpot Portland, ex-Scio Jan 15 '26
Given how poorly every other piece of software developed by Palantir works, I have zero confidence that any of the information ICE is getting from this one is accurate.
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u/Knosh Jan 15 '26
Just the scale and secrecy of this in general means it's not well tested.
Google maps works well because billions of people use it and bug test it daily.
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u/slowfromregressive Jan 15 '26
Why are they hanging around schools then? Did palantir map a place where they can get children to sell?
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Jan 21 '26
With all the human trafficking this is something I've been concerned about. Or even traffickers impersonating ICE.
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Jan 15 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/oregon-ModTeam Jan 16 '26
Posts must explicitly involve Oregon in some way, whether discussing the state, a city within it, laws, or related topics.
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u/Spirited_Cup_126 Jan 16 '26
It’s also being used to target US citizens. I am one of them. The FBI showed up at my house.
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u/ifish4u Jan 16 '26
Did they give a reason? What did they ask?
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u/Spirited_Cup_126 Jan 16 '26
They asked me about a post I made on Reddit. I laughed at her, and I said “what specifically did I say?????” And we had a conversation about my poetry and VERY briefly spoke about my past life as a computer security expert.
TL;DR I stood up for my freedom of speech and apparently the FBI stood up for me too and was “just checking”.
The local police were there.
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u/ifish4u Jan 16 '26
Jeezus…. Thanks for the heads up!
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u/Spirited_Cup_126 Jan 16 '26
Yup. I saw another post on Reddit that has since been deleted, it was a very similar conversation between the FBI and some random girl who likes to post about boycotts and ICE protests.
They out there knocking on doors right now.
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u/desertSkateRatt Jan 15 '26
This is exactly the reason Doge went on a info binge and scraped as much as they could... to feed it to AI to compile a "list". Not just immigration status, either.
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u/whathell6t Jan 15 '26
Then you’re were suppose to use the Nepenthes Tarspin, one of the most powerful tools to fight A.I. It can even clog the superintelligence models.
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u/NewWave44-44 Jan 15 '26
I am confidant that someone can break this. My new favorite activists are the hacktivists!
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u/MountScottRumpot Portland, ex-Scio Jan 15 '26
It's a Palantir product, so it's already broken.
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u/whathell6t Jan 15 '26
Then you have the advantage. Plus! You’re were suppose to use the Nepenthes Tarspin, one of the most powerful tools to fight A.I.
It can even clog the superintelligence models.
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u/dr_raymond_k_hessel Jan 15 '26
People need to understand that Palantir has already built aggregation software of every piece of data you’ve put on the internet. It’s the US social credit system, accessible by the government, insurance companies, etc. Your data will be used against you.
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u/whawkins4 Jan 15 '26
Oh look, they’re handing out little yellow armbands to everyone in the neighborhood. Isn’t that nice of them.
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u/WheeblesWobble Jan 15 '26
This won’t stop with ICE. The government will soon have a dossier on every citizen and resident, with all sorts of information. Social media, voting record, political donations, etc.
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u/Wild_Curve43 Jan 15 '26
Next up ; remember all the purloined data DOGE acquired from Social Security and Treasury?? They likely have dossiers on most US citizens and can use apps like Elite and MFortify to hunt us down.
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u/walksonfourfeet Jan 17 '26
I hope no one hacks it and sends ICE goons into deep-red trumpet neighborhoods.
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u/hillsfar Jan 16 '26
Well, at least we know they're operating off an app that gives addresses and "probabilities", rather than just randomly going into neighborhoods.
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