At the heart of American democracy lies a fundamental promise: power belongs to the people, and government serves them, not over them. That promise is now under siege.
Palantir Technologies, a private tech contractor with deep ties to military and intelligence agencies, has reportedly partnered with the White House to implement a sweeping data integration program called Foundry. At first glance, Foundry appears to be a neutral software platform designed to unify and streamline data across government agencies. But behind its unassuming branding lies a project that is dangerously out of step with American values and smacks of authoritarianism. Foundry is not just a tool. It’s more like a factory designed to melt down the raw material of private lives and recast them into profiles, scores, and state-controlled narratives.
The United States Constitution enshrines limits on government overreach through the Fourth Amendment’s protections against unreasonable searches and seizures and the First Amendment’s guarantees of free speech, free thought, and free association. But these rights are meaningless in a state where every move, message, purchase, and expression are captured, sorted, and scored in a centralized database. Foundry does just that.
According to public sources and whistleblower accounts, the platform ingests massive datasets from disparate sources—financial records, health data, communication logs, government records like gun ownership, social security, and taxpayer records, as well as private partner datasets which could include social media messages, likes, and connections. It integrates them into real-time dashboards, often with predictive capabilities. The idea is simple: collect everything, share across agencies, and act on algorithmic insights. But who oversees control of the code and decides what data is relevant? Who ensures the conclusions drawn from it are fair, accurate, and constitutional? Alarmingly, no one. Foundry operates in the shadows of executive fiat and contracting secrecy. It lacks democratic oversight, and that should terrify every American, regardless of political affiliation.
As founder and managing partner of Clarkson, a public interest law firm that prosecutes Big Tech companies for violations of data privacy and consumer protection laws, I’ve seen firsthand how corporations mine, aggregate, and exploit personal information—often without consent or consequence. My firm is actively litigating against tech giants that pilfered copyrighted works, confidential messages, biometric data, and other sensitive information from the internet to build the large language models now powering the generative AI systems that the world’s top AI experts warn present catastrophic risks to our free society. This mass aggregation of stolen personal data was once the domain of shadowy surveillance states. Today, it is a business model. With Foundry, that business model is being nationalized. When I look at Palantir’s Foundry, I don’t see a tool for government efficiency. I see a military intelligence contractor turning inward on our civilian population and a turnkey system of permanent surveillance built by the same forces my firm works to hold accountable.
Palantir’s original business model was built on surveillance infrastructure, from battlefield tracking tools in Afghanistan to ICE deportation algorithms. Now it is at the heart of a federal effort to unify civilian data across health, education, law enforcement, immigration, and financial systems. It is the infrastructure of omniscience, which leads straight to omnipotence. This is not a theoretical risk. China’s social credit system began the same way—harmless data integration followed by scoring mechanisms—but it’s now used for behavioral control. Surveillance infrastructure does not remain neutral. It becomes a machine through which power is exercised.
Foundry does not just collect data. It corrodes the pillars of a free society. In a democracy, anonymity is a critical safeguard. It allows whistleblowers to speak. It protects journalists’ sources. It gives citizens the space to dissent without fear of reprisal. If every expression is logged, every connection mapped, and every data point cross-referenced by an unelected algorithm, dissent becomes dangerous, privacy becomes impossible, and freedom becomes imaginary. We have already seen the start of this: Protesters tracked via drones; journalists investigated for contacts; and activists labeled threats based on AI-generated risk scores. Foundry systematizes these abuses.
What’s most disturbing about this surveillance architecture is the absence of consent. No American voted for this system, nor has there been meaningful public debate about its implications. Ordinary citizens whose data fuels the system—“We the People”—have no clear way to inspect our profiles, challenge inaccuracies, or opt out. That is not governance. That is control. And it is antithetical to the American ideal of limited government and individual sovereignty. If a private company working hand-in-hand with the executive branch can monitor, profile, and influence the population without their knowledge or consent, then the distinctions between public and private power collapse. We cease to be citizens and become subjects of an algorithmic regime.
There is still time to pull back from the edge. But it will take courage. Congress must demand transparency. Every contract with Palantir and similar entities must be disclosed, debated, and subject to strict limitations. There must be a digital bill of rights—giving every American the right to know what data the government collects, how it is used, and to demand its deletion. Any federal data-sharing platform must be opt-in, not opt-out. And no agency should be allowed to score or surveil citizens without probable cause, judicial oversight, and independent audit. We must also reaffirm a fundamental truth: just because something is technologically possible does not make it permissible. We cannot continue to barrel ahead with a “Can we?” ethos without first asking “Should we?”
We are standing at the gates of the foundry. Behind them is a world where the raw material of human freedom is liquefied and molded to serve the state. The shape of that state will not be democratic. It will be opaque and unaccountable. There is still time to choose differently. But we must reject the logic that says surveillance equals safety, that more data means more justice, and that the ends justify the means. If we fail, Foundry will become more than just a software platform. It will become a monument to our complacency and the mausoleum of American civil rights and liberties.
Ryan J. Clarkson
Managing Partner
Clarkson Law Firm, P.C.
