Big Brother
2003
2003-05-06 Palantir was founded by Peter Thiel after 9/11 for defense intelligence agencies. It is a data mining and surveillance company. On the upside, it is a very powerful tool for security. On the other hand, nearly anyone could potentially pay to misuse its technology for things like AI-driven warfare, predictive policing, beta-testing on civilians, and warfare. In 2025 alone, the Department of Defense paid a $113M contract for defense on top of the existing $795M it had, and ICE paid $30M to get real-time data on tracking immigrants.
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/3124/2020/en/
https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/amr51/0211/2025/en/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/03/israel-gaza-ai-database-hamas-airstrikes
https://www.wired.com/story/ice-palantir-immigrationos/
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/30/technology/trump-palantir-data-americans.html
https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-government-contracting-push/
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/palantir-secures-795m-us-army-180040461.html
2016
2016-01-01 A Cambridge Analytica whistleblower uncovered that data was harvested for political advertising, and the Trump 2016 campaign used that harvested data to build psychographic profiles of users’ personality traits based on Facebook activity. In the oral evidence transcript dated February 27, 2018, Trump comes up 24 times and Cruz comes up 17 times when I did a search.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Analytica_data_scandal
2017
2017-04-01 Project Mavin is a Palantir-run system which helps the Pentagon pick bomb targets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Maven
https://www.democracynow.org/2026/3/31/project_maven_manson_bloomberg_ai_warfare
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsZH6ZNV1CY&list=WL&index=3&t=17s
2021
2021-06-04 Legislation was passed to require new automobiles to have a “kill switch”. It was implemented under the HALT Drunk Driving Act. In its most extreme form, it would allow government officials to remotely activate cars in the case of drunk drivers. Ron DeSantis posted to X, “The idea that the federal government would require auto manufacturers to equip cars with a ‘kill switch’ that can be controlled by the government is something you’d expect in Orwell’s 1984”. Rumors and controversies have spread, with many consumers worried that the function would be used for other purposes outside of safety or infringes upon privacy.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/3684
https://x.com/RonDeSantis/status/2014500133971296434
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/explaining-the-car-kill-switch-controversy/
https://cei.org/news_releases/house-vote-today-could-help-end-vehicle-kill-switch-mandate/
https://pickuptrucktalk.com/2025/06/kill-switches-in-new-2026-vehicles-still-up-in-the-air/
https://www.congress.gov/bill/118th-congress/house-bill/6563
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1137
2023
2023-11-01 Following the October 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, U.S. lawmakers called for a TikTok ban, claiming the platform had an anti-Israel bias. One article cites a series of posts by tech venture capitalist Jeff Morris about a “TikTok War”.
https://x.com/jmj/status/1717404573214671068
https://x.com/jmj/status/1717404589262025031
2024 May
2024-05-06 According to a few articles, lawmakers allegedly admitted the reason they wanted TikTok banned was over pro-Palestinian content.
https://www.commondreams.org/news/mitt-romney-tiktok
https://x.com/NathanJRobinson/status/1787176314023092727
2024 December
2024-12-27 Algorithms are designed to survey our behavior. Why do you think Trump plays buddy-buddy with all our tech giants?
https://thehill.com/business/5054083-trump-embrace-ceos-friends/
2025 January
2025-01-18 The U.S. banned TikTok for about 15 hours, claiming it was a security risk. Then the Trump administration strong-armed ByteDance to sell to a US-based company on January 22, 2026. According to an article with CNN, “there is no public evidence that Beijing has actually harvested TikTok’s commercial data for intelligence or other purposes”.
https://www.npr.org/2025/01/18/nx-s1-5266146/tiktok-offline-supreme-court-ban
https://hls.harvard.edu/today/is-the-new-us-tiktok-safer/
https://www.wired.com/story/trump-executive-order-tiktok-ban/
https://edition.cnn.com/2023/03/21/tech/tiktok-national-security-concerns/index.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scVV1SscRWg
https://www.timesunion.com/news/article/bytedance-s-agreement-to-sell-tiktok-puts-21251979.php
2025 February
2025-02-01 DOGE was given unbridled access to payroll and coding.
https://apnews.com/article/donald-trump-elon-musk-doge-treasury-5e26cc80fcb766981cea56afd57ae759
2025-02-02 Office of Personnel Management employees were locked out of their computer systems.
2025 June
2025-06-02 Leaked emails exposed DHS use of mobile app Mobile Fortify, which used face scanning technology to put protestors in an ICE database.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/jan/27/ice-facial-recognition-minnesota
2025 September
2025-09-26 Trump quipped that he would make the TikTok algorithm 100% MAGA if he could.
2025 October
2025-10-13 California passed bipartisan bill AB 1043 forcing Linux and Windows to require users to verify their age before using their platforms.
https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260AB1043
2026 January
2026-01-13 The White House ordered the FBI to search and seize journalist material from the home of a Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson. Project 2025 page 214 specifically mandates this action. The reporter’s role was specifically to cover the federal government. After over a thousand federal employees reached out to confidentially share their stories with Hannah about the job cuts from DOGE, the FBI showed up to seize her computers and her phone. The warrant also authorized the FBI to force Hannah to unlock the devices with biometrics.
https://www.npr.org/2026/01/15/g-s1-106103/fbi-search-washington-post-reporter-home
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/01/14/washington-post-reporter-search/
2026-01-27 After TikTok was forced to sell to a US company, users began noticing any material mentioning anti-Trump, ICE or Epstein files were being censored and shadow-banned.
https://www.cnn.com/2026/01/27/media/tiktok-trump-ice-epstein-censorship-tech-issues
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2026/jan/30/tiktok-us-takeover-new-type-of-censorship
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ckgjedpn8p8o
2026 February
2026-02-03 DHS submitted an administrative subpoena against a 67-year-old man from Pennsylvania after he wrote an email to them asking to “apply principles of common sense and decency” in their treatment of a man seeking asylum from Afghanistan. DHS issued the subpoena to Google just hours after the man sent the email so they could access the man’s computer and Gmail. Two weeks later, they showed up to his front door for questioning. The ACLU had to get involved to challenge the subpoena and the violation of his First Amendment rights.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/2026/02/03/homeland-security-administrative-subpoena/
https://newrepublic.com/post/206088/homeland-security-67-year-old-us-citizen-criticized-email
2026-02-09 Discord and other platforms announced plans to roll out teen-by-default settings globally, forcing users to upload an ID or face scan to verify they are over 18.
https://discord.com/press-releases/discord-launches-teen-by-default-settings-globally
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c1d67vdlk1ko
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-68161632
2026-02-10 After Amazon revealed the capabilities of their Ring camera tracking and surveillance systems, some consumers opted out of the system over concerns of persistent surveillance.
https://www.404media.co/with-ring-american-consumers-built-a-surveillance-dragnet/
2026-02-14 DHS requested personal information of online users who have been critical of ICE, including names, email addresses, phone numbers and other identifying data.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/dhs-anti-ice-social-media.html
https://www.thedailybeast.com/dhs-orders-tech-giants-to-unmask-anti-ice-accounts/
2026-02-26 Senator Slotkin questioned Mr. Ditlevson about the Pentagon’s use of mass surveillance of Americans.
2026-02-27 The Pentagon gave Anthropic a deadline to agree to the Pentagon’s terms for widespread domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons, saying if Anthropic didn’t agree to all those terms then they would label the company as a “supply chain risk” as an ultimatum. The CEO of Anthropic stated they could not – in good conscience – agree to the terms the Pentagon was asking for.
https://www.axios.com/2026/02/26/anthropic-pentagon-ultamatim-congress-deadline
2026 March
2026-03-01 OpenAI took the place of Anthropic for the Pentagon deal.
https://techcrunch.com/2026/03/01/openai-shares-more-details-about-its-agreement-with-the-pentagon/
https://openai.com/index/our-agreement-with-the-department-of-war/
2026-03-06 Following Anthropic’s ethical refusal to allow their AI to hold unchecked power over weapons systems, the Trump administration followed through on a retaliatory threat to designate the company a supply chain risk. On March 25th 2026 Anthropic sued the Pentagon for the stigmatizing AI supply-chain risk label.
https://www.npr.org/2026/03/06/g-s1-112713/pentagon-labels-ai-company-anthropic-a-supply-chain-risk
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ISY16GtwLI&list=WL&index=8
2026-03-18 The White House signed an executive order to eliminate fraud. The new task force will be chaired by JD Vance. The executive order claims immigration fraud, “staggering fraud and waste in Minnesota alone”, and assistance programs. One section of the order reads, “Making matters worse, the previous administration adopted policies that weakened the Federal Government’s oversight of State administration and distribution of Federal funds…”. It also states the Task Force would coordinate directly with Homeland Security. Not only does it specifically target the administration’s perceived threats; it outlines more Federal oversight and control. This executive order was signed by a President who had committed fraud and pardoned multiple fraudsters.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYOqdjApDtI&list=WL&index=6
2026-03-26 In the case of Anthropic refusing to allow unchecked use of their AI tools for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, District Court Judge Rita Lin wrote, “Nothing in the governing statute supports the Orwellian notion that an American company may be branded a potential adversary and saboteur of the U.S. for expressing disagreement with the government”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGFkuH7GRX8&list=WL&index=1&t=388s