Skip to main content

To: Rice University Community

Insist Rice University Cut Ties with Palantir

Sign below to urge the Rice Department of Computer Science to cancel the Palantir CS mixer happening October 10, 2019 from 6:30pm - 9:00pm in Duncan Hall.

Sign below to urge the Rice administration to cut all ties with Palantir and urge Palantir to drop its FALCON contract with ICE on November 27th.

Sign below to tell Palantir you will not work with them while they build tools that enable human rights abuses.

Through recruitment, seminars, and other events, we are funneled into tech companies that facilitate the detention and deportation of immigrants in the United States. Many students choose to work at tech companies immediately after graduation, and are thus either directly responsible or complicit in the violence tech companies facilitate on immigrants and refugees.

Why is this important?

Palantir sells two tools to ICE. The first, Investigative Case Management (ICM), is “mission critical” to ICE’s efforts, according to government documents, and was used at the border to investigate the families and sponsors of children who crossed the border alone. The operation, designed specifically to dissuade children from joining family in the United States, resulted in the arrests of at least 443 people over 90 days.

Its second tool, FALCON, is used by agents leading workplace raids, which increased by 650% during President Trump’s first year in office and arrest thousands of people every year just for being undocumented. During a raid in which ICE agents hit 7-11s nationwide, all agents were told to download Palantir’s FALCON mobile app for use during the raid. FALCON is used by agents who lead raids like those in Mississippi in early August, when almost 700 people were arrested en masse during the first day of school for many, leaving some children without either parent when they came home; at least two children were left alone for eight days because both of their parents were arrested and detained by ICE.

There are no reports that Palantir cancelled its ICM contract, which was up for renewal on September 20, but its FALCON contract is up on November 27. We know Palantir workers, academics, and a wide coalition of ordinary citizens from Latinx and Jewish groups have called for the company to drop its contracts, but executives have ignored these calls, calculating that it’s better business for the company to stay close to the government than to follow ethical considerations.

We hope they reconsider. There are dozens of schools represented by the students who have signed this pledge. All of us are committed to pursuing Palantir across our campuses. We will kick recruiters out of career fairs, protest company speakers on campus, and urge university administrators to drop the company’s sponsorship at every turn.

We are not alone. Earlier this year, hundreds of academics pressured U.C. Berkeley to drop Palantir as a sponsor of a privacy scholars conference. In late August, Lesbians Who Tech dropped Palantir as a sponsor of its annual conference, citing its work for immigration enforcement. Just two days later, the Grace Hopper Celebration, the largest conference for female tech workers worldwide, dropped Palantir as a sponsor just hours after learning of its role in human rights abuses.

As more of us learn about Palantir’s work and refuse complicity in human rights abuses, the company’s recruitment will decline and its business will suffer. Palantir will become a pariah, shut off from academia and computer science talent unless it decides to change tack.

Rice University, Main St, Houston, TX, USA

Maps © Stamen; Data © OSM and contributors, ODbL

Category

Updates

2019-10-06 21:19:58 -0400

100 signatures reached

2019-10-06 18:14:08 -0400

50 signatures reached

2019-10-06 16:25:50 -0400

25 signatures reached

2019-10-06 11:32:14 -0400

10 signatures reached