Barry Goldwater, former Republican Presidential nominee, once said, “Where will it end? Will we permit all computerized systems to interlink nationwide so that every detail of our personal lives can be assembled instantly for use by a single bureaucrat or institution?” That was in 1974. Goldwater wouldn’t be able to search the World Wide Web for another 15 years. However, despite the premature timing of Goldwater’s comment, his small–government conservatism that recognizes the value of privacy is needed today.
Palantir, a software optimization company founded by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, has become astonishingly successful. Its revolutionary products, Gotham and Foundry, rely on artificial intelligence to analyze millions of data points and produce bespoke solutions for their clients. Its corporate customer list demonstrates the vast range of productive applications for the technology. It has worked with Morgan Stanley, Airbus, Fiat Chrysler, PG&E, among others.
Nevertheless, Palantir’s increased collaboration with the US government should concern us. In August, the Army announced a 10-year, $10 billion contract with the company, “ensuring Soldiers have rapid access to cutting-edge data integration, analytics, and AI tools.” According to the New York Times, Palantir received over $1 billion in ICE contracts and several hundred million dollars worth of agreements with the Treasury Department and CDC. Earlier this year, President Trump laid out the motivation for these deals in an executive order titled “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos.” As part of DOGE efforts, the order instructs agency leaders to centralize all agency information, including information stored by individual states and third parties, to limit waste and fraud. Has DOGE successfully achieved this objective? The agency currently stands far short of its original goal to eliminate $2 trillion in spending and has not convicted a single person for fraud relating to the misuse of government funds.
Even though DOGE no longer plays a prominent role in US politics, the Palantir contracts remain. Palantir singlehandedly analyzes and stores unprecedented levels of sensitive information. Through their ImmigrationOS platform, the company compiles ordinary American citizens’ criminal records, social media profiles, and license plate camera footage to flag and track illegal immigrants. A New York Times investigation found that Palantir’s data centralization plan will allow the US government to access through one source 314 different categories of data on any given individual, including their IP address, debt records, medical tests, and legal residence status. Previously, local, state, and federal agencies collected this information, and they rarely shared whatever personal data they collected. A private corporation has never before held so much information on the American people.
This system threatens the privacy and liberty of every American citizen, no matter how law-abiding. Before Palantir, the incompatibility of different government systems produced information silos. Consequently, the federal government did not hold personal data in one place, making it more difficult for potential bad actors to discover and exploit sensitive information. Here is a litmus test for evaluating the desirability of this change: does the marginal improvement in immigration enforcement, which will result from this massive data centralization effort in the Executive Branch, warrant risking the future possibility that a power–hungry politician from an opposing political party will possess swift and immediate access to your most intimate personal information?
At its core, immense data centralization and citizen profiling rest on the logic that ‘one has nothing to fear if one has nothing to hide.’ However, it is perfectly acceptable to desire privacy for one’s digital, domestic, and community life. We the people give power to the government so that the government can secure our natural rights and serve our interests, not the other way around. A healthy republic would trust its citizens and not feel the need to monitor them closely.
Conservatives should not let the US implement a program similar to those implemented by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which tracks and judges their citizens’ every move. It is widely reported that China has one surveillance camera for every two of its 1.4 billion people. A 2017 BBC investigation revealed that China’s facial recognition software can use these cameras, identify a target, and make an arrest in just seven minutes. By contrast, several days elapsed before American law enforcement apprehended the high-profile assassins of TPUSA leader Charlie Kirk and United Healthcare CEO Brian Johnson. The CCP utilizes its surveillance system to oppress the Chinese people, abusing individual freedom under the pretense of protecting the greater good. The Uyghur minority, for example, is tracked, monitored, and limited from conducting the same day-to-day business as other Chinese citizens. Over the last several years, the CCP has used the Global Public Security Cooperation Forum to export this technology to aspiring autocracies.
In short, the totalitarian use of surveillance, mastered by the CCP and becoming more prevalent in the U.S., stands antithetical to the principles of individual liberty and small government we hold dear. Will it be harder to identify illegal immigrants and take longer to solve crimes? Absolutely. However, the American government limits federal power to protect the rights of its citizens. It is more than reasonable to desire privacy for one’s family, medical records, internet history, and location data. We will all live freer without the centralization of domestic surveillance and governmental record-keeping. The government should stop monitoring individuals’ social media accounts, rebuild information silos by delegating more police powers to the state governments, and cut ties with private contractors like Palantir, who are motivated by profit rather than concern for the common good.
At a time of extreme political polarization, privacy issues bear tremendous potential to generate bipartisan support and cooperation. Unlikely allies of small government conservatives could include progressives skeptical of Big Tech and ACLU-backed liberals. In the United Kingdom, the adverse consequences of failing to protect individual privacy are already manifest: numerous online websites require governmental identification, and the police scour social media posts to punish heterodox political speech. America should stay true to its tradition of limited government and civil liberty, thus avoiding the Orwellian future that Palantir and increased surveillance look to create.
Image Credit — Wikimedia Commons
Copyright © 2026 The Princeton Tory. All rights reserved.