Is Trump setting up a surveillance database on Americans?

US President Donald Trump might be on the way to creating a master database on every single American, giving him “untold surveillance power.” According to reports in US media, the US administration’s work with Palantir Technologies Inc to gather data of American citizens from several federal agencies has raised concerns over privacy and potential misuse.

Trump in March passed an executive order to implement federal data sharing. That order is now being enforced by the US administration with support from Palantir. A New York Times report revealed Friday that several federal agencies have already started using the Palantir platform, including the Department of Health and Human Services as well as the Social Security Administration.

Moreover, there are speculations that the Internal Revenue Service might also launch talks with Palantir over potential onboarding. Now, the US government can easily compile date from all these different federal agencies into one mega database.

The idea of creating detailed profiles of Americans using government data is not far-fetched.

The Trump administration has already pursued access to extensive data points on citizens and others, including bank account numbers, student debt amounts, medical claims, and disability status from government databases.

In its justification, the US administration says it’s looking to “eliminate information silos and streamline data collection across all agencies to increase government efficiency and save hard-earned taxpayer dollars.”

More about Palantir

In recent years, Palantir has emerged as a top data and analytics firm.

While it serves corporate clients, its most notable and controversial work is with the US government, particularly the military and intelligence agencies, as well as foreign governments.

Founded in the early 2000s by right-wing billionaire Peter Thiel, along with venture capitalists and entrepreneurs Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Alex Karp—who is currently CEO—Palantir has become a key player in this space.

However, the firm is being labelled as “controversial’ in US media. It has been notorious for being highly secretive about its data mining and surveillance work.