Private Function Hosted by Palantir Co-Founder for U.S. Mayors

On Wednesday at 530 pm Mayors from multiple cities will join the co-founder of Palantir, Joe Lonsdale, at a secret meeting in San Francisco. Palantir is the company who provides “mission critical” technology to ICE.

Palantir also sells their tech to police departments across the country. For six years they kept their contract with the New Orleans Police Department a secret, until an investigative reporter shed light. They managed to keep it so secret that even the New Orleans city council didn't know about it. They did this by offering the tech through the Mayor’s office as a philanthropic donation.

We usually find out about these shady deals after the fact. But not this time.

Leaders from Kansas City, St. Louis, Richmond, and Richmond will attend, alongside Stephen Benjamin, the Mayor of Colombus, South Carolina. They will join Joe Lonsdale, co founder of Palantir, at a private function in San Francisco.

When Palantir’s tech was used in New Orleans, it was found to have a disparate impact on vulnerable communities of color. Palantir will tell these city leaders their tech helps to reduce crime, but it doesn’t work. It hurts communities of color because the datasets are full of systemic bias. These Mayors need to stand up for their communities and refuse to attend the event.

This event is organized by Donnie Fowler, who runs Tech4America (t4a.org), a public service matchmaking venture that brings together tech and public leaders to tackle tough problems. From 2012-2016, Donnie was VP of business development at crime prediction software startup PredPol, Inc., the result of an experiment between the LAPD and UCLA.

We need your help to ask the Mayor of Columbus, South Carolina and other city leaders (we don't have the list of attendees) not to attend this event.