PALANTIR No Ethics review completed NOT ACCEPTABLE
The short version: A UK-based channel flags that Palantir's data-mining partnerships keep advancing without proper ethics review, a warning sign for ALPR-fed databases here in the US.
Our Take
The channel Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency raises a familiar red flag: powerful data-processing contracts — in this case involving Palantir — moving forward without the ethics review the public was promised. Whether or not you track every claim in the video, the underlying pattern should sound an alarm for anyone watching the Flock Safety rollout in the US. Oversight bodies get name-checked in press releases, then quietly skipped when the actual deployment happens. That's not a bug in these systems, it's the business model.
License plate readers don't exist in a vacuum — the data they generate increasingly flows into exactly the kind of large-scale analytics infrastructure companies like Palantir specialize in. Once your plate, your location, and your travel patterns are hoovered up by a Flock camera, you have no real say in which contractor touches that data next, what algorithm gets run against it, or which agency gets a backdoor query. 'No ethics review completed' isn't a one-off scandal; it's the default condition of a surveillance industry that moves faster than the laws meant to govern it.
If this kind of unchecked buildout bothers you, don't just watch — act. Check our camera map to see what's already watching your neighborhood, and visit our take-action page for concrete steps to push back on surveillance contracts that never got the public scrutiny they deserved.
This is DeFlock The USA’s original commentary. The video above is the work of Digital ID, Mass Surveillance and Digital Currency, published on YouTube — full credit to the creator.