While we hear about the threats of ever-growing government surveillance on the Mainland, with the use of biometric technology to track down undocumented migrants and Flock cameras being used on Oʻahu for license plate tracking, we have an ever-growing threat for Hawaiʻi. For the past nine months, the mass-surveillance technology company Palantir has been retrofitting offices in Downtown Honolulu.
Palantir Technologies, a Miami-based corporation, specializes in combining vast datasets to build comprehensive profiles of individuals. It has been used by the London Metropolitan Police Service and the Los Angeles Police Department to integrate tracking from CCTV cameras, license plate readers, arrest logs and social media. For example, if the Honolulu Police Department were to partner with Palantir, walking in front of a biometric surveillance camera would allow the government to log your locations and movements, your social media posts would be linked to your name, your driving habits would be logged, and those you gather with would be traceable.
I didn’t find out about this new office through a press release or a public hearing; I found out about it from online job listings. The company is actively recruiting in Honolulu for high-level, military-facing roles including "Forward Deployed Software Engineers" and "Deployment Strategists" for the U.S. government. While Palantir has not explicitly named its clients, these specific roles, paired with Honolulu’s status as the headquarters for the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, suggest that this corporate footprint is designed to support major federal military operations. Yet, even our local lawmakers are being left completely in the dark.
When asked about Palantir’s new downtown office, Honolulu City Councilmember Tyler Dos Santos-Tam confirmed the secrecy, stating, "This is the first time I’m hearing about this, so ... No, I haven’t been briefed on it at all."
If an elected official representing urban Honolulu is unaware of a major defense-intelligence contractor moving into his district, the public is entirely cut out of the equation. This complete lack of transparency from Palantir brings to light the threats that mass surveillance poses to our free society and will have impacts for years to come.
So far, based on public records, HPD has no open contracts with Palantir. However, once a tool becomes available in a society, it slowly becomes normalized and used by the local government.
Mandy Finlay, advocacy coordinator of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Hawaiʻi, warns that this is how "battlefield tools migrate into everyday governance without public input."
This isn't a hypothetical fear: after facing years of significant public outcry and investigations into racial bias, the Los Angeles Police Department recently canceled its data-mining contracts with Palantir. Policymakers like Dos Santos-Tam note that if the city would want to pass transparency-measures on police contracts with private-firms, a statewide policy from the Legislature may be required due to state/county preemption limits.
However, the ACLU argues the threat is immediate. Finlay notes that while the state recently signed Act 141 to limit local law enforcement cooperation with federal immigration enforcement, "we know this administration buys its way around such protections through private, backdoor data partnerships."
In practice, federal agencies circumvent local sanctuary restrictions by bypassing local police departments entirely, opting instead to purchase bulk, aggregated civilian-tracking data directly from private tech vendors. Palantir Technologies did not respond to a request for comment regarding the operational scope or intent of its new downtown Honolulu office.
Hawaiʻi’s culture is unique from the rest of the country and is embodied in our Aloha Spirit. We pride ourselves on being welcoming to all, and our strong community allows us to trust and look out for our families and friends — not as liabilities, but as ʻohana.
Palantir and mass-surveillance technologies are trained to monitor who you frequently drive to, who you stand with at public events, and who your friends are. On the Mainland, this is intended to map out criminal gangs and extremist groups. With Hawaiʻi's deep interconnectedness, a Punahou student could have a friend who lives in Kailua, an aunty who works in Mākaha, and an uncle who works at Pearl Harbor; this would all look suspicious to an algorithm.
Artificial intelligence does not understand the concept of ʻohana, and instead, treats interconnectedness as a risk. If Palantir and mass-surveillance technologies were to be used in Hawaiʻi, our Aloha Spirit could quickly turn into a culture of fear. Knowing that you are always being watched, you would change how you talk, where you gather, and who you hang out with, creating a society of constant surveillance. You would second-guess everything from going to a protest to attending a family gathering, out of fear that your presence could be used against you.
As a 15-year-old, I fear a future where my every move is watched and where my peers and I cannot speak freely. However, we do not have to accept a future dictated by unaccountable tech giants. We are already ahead of our mainland counterparts by not currently holding a contract with Palantir. It is of the utmost importance that we keep it this way. Honolulu must implement strict transparency rules and require public input before any municipal surveillance contract can even be considered. By drawing a line in the sand now, we can ensure that the future of our city is not defined by constant fear, but by the freedom to live openly.
From noon to 1 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10, ACLU Hawaiʻi, among other groups, will protest Palantir outside of its Hawaiʻi offices at Pacific Guardian Center in Downtown Honolulu.
Want to reach out to the author of this article? Find Zane Dalgamouni on LinkedIn, here.
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