Recent investigative reporting by Follow the Money has revealed significant concerns regarding the Netherlands’ extensive reliance on the immoral American data analytics firm Palantir Technologies for both police and military operations since 2010.
Palantir’s software underpins the Dutch police’s “refinery” system, processing real-time data from millions of Dutch citizens through integrated access to major police databases. This includes incident reports, GPS tracking data, fingerprints, and telecommunications intercepts. The military deployment encompasses special operations command systems and NATO’s Maven Smart System implementation.
There are two main problems here:
First, how Palantir’s software is implemented and used. The majority of processed data pertains to individuals not under criminal suspicion, raising severe privacy concerns. Additionally, the police and military have gone to great lengths to keep the contracts with Palantir a secret, circumventing standard EU procurement transparency and litigating the WOO requests, and there is currently little to no independent or democratic oversight.
This unlimited data collection, secrecy, and lack of accountability is compounded by the second problem, which is that Palantir is a particularly malignant company. Its bad reputation became mainstream after its work with the US Immigration, Customs and Enforcement Agency (ICE) to track down and deport people. Further, UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese has reported that Palantir is a long-term collaborator of the Israeli military and that there are good reasons to believe it provides the technology behind the targeted AI killing systems such as “Lavender” and “Where’s Daddy”.
Beyond Palantir’s reprehensible products, the people behind the company also contribute to its bad reputation. Libertarian and democracy-sceptic Peter Thiel, Palantir’s co-founder, has, for example, mentored and financially supported current US vice-president JD Vance.
The police and military use of these types of technologies is highly problematic in and of itself. Doing so in a secret collaboration with a company as malignant as Palantir, with its close ties to the Trump administration, is indefensible.
See: Het Nederlandse leger doet al jaren in het geheim zaken met de omstreden techreus Palantir – net als de politie at Follow the Money.