Surveillance Technology

In July 2026, two UK parliamentary committees (Science and Technology; Health and Social Care) urged the Labour government to exercise a February 2027 break clause and terminate Palantir's seven-year, £330M contract to run the NHS Federated Data Platform, citing use of Palantir's software to support military strikes in Gaza and Iran, its role in US ICE immigration operations, and data-security concerns. In September 2026, Health Innovation Minister James Frith disclosed to the Commons Health Committee that roughly 60,000 additional patients withdrew their medical records from NHS research between mid-May and mid-July 2026, attributing at least part of the rise to public 'mistrust' of Palantir that moved in step with press attention on the company's NHS role, while describing the increase as 'modest' but requiring continued monitoring. DHSC and Frith gave conflicting public statements over whether NHS trusts are required to use the platform.

Digital rights group SHARE Foundation, corroborated by Amnesty International and Citizen Lab, found at least 14 Serbians infected with mercenary spyware between December 2025 and August 2026, including student pro-democracy activists, an opposition member of parliament, and a local government official. At least one confirmed Pegasus infection (zero-click) was documented alongside at least two infections with a domestic NoviSpy spyware variant, one occurring after police confiscated a student's phone during questioning. Apple sent threat notifications to affected users in 110 countries on August 13, 2026. The targeting coincided with Serbia's March 2026 local elections and ongoing student protests following the 2024 Novi Sad railway station collapse, with additional targeting anticipated around October 2026 parliamentary elections. Citizen Lab researcher John Scott-Railton said Pegasus 'is still being used to hack people campaigning for democracy' despite a decade of NSO reform promises.

In August 2026, Huawei courted Egypt with a proposal to build AI data centers powered by its Ascend chips, explicitly including military and surveillance applications and integration with national population databases; reporting noted the presence of China's Ministry of Public Security insignia in proposal materials, suggesting direct involvement of Chinese state surveillance infrastructure. The bid put Huawei in direct competition with a US-backed consortium for the same government tender, marking one of the first instances of head-to-head US-China competition for a national AI data center contract. The US government raised concerns, warning of extraterritorial legal consequences for unauthorized use of restricted Huawei accelerators; Egypt is one of roughly 40 countries requiring US permission for AI chip shipments. A similar Huawei-powered national AI proposal in Malaysia was scaled back after US pressure, and Malaysian customs seized a $13 million chip shipment bound for re-export in June 2026.

A cross-border investigation by Forbidden Stories, the Guardian and Middle East Eye, based on a decade-long DGST insider (pseudonym 'Safir') corroborated by security sources in Morocco and Europe, detailed how Morocco's intelligence agency DGST acquired and used NSO Group's Pegasus spyware from 2017 onward against domestic political opponents, journalists and foreign officials, including French President Emmanuel Macron and 15 French government members. The investigation described a three-party arrangement in which a UAE-linked company (Al Fahad Smart Systems, later acquired by UAE state-owned defense group Edge) acted as financial intermediary or payer for Morocco's access to Pegasus. Morocco has consistently denied purchasing Pegasus despite the documentary and testimonial evidence; NSO Group declined to confirm Morocco as a customer, citing Israeli law.

On July 13, 2026, the European Union imposed sanctions on VK Company for developing MAX, a messaging app mandatorily preinstalled on all smartphones, tablets, computers, and smart TVs sold in Russia since September 2025. MAX's terms of service explicitly permit sharing user data with Russian government institutions, and human rights lawyers say law enforcement has access to VK-administered platforms including VKontakte, Odnoklassniki, and MAX. The EU action, part of a package that also sanctioned developers of the FSB's SORM surveillance system, followed a Russian government crackdown on independent apps such as Telegram and WhatsApp. MAX had over 45 million registered accounts and 18 million daily active users as of late 2025.

On June 5, 2026 Microsoft published the conclusion of its internal investigation into the Israeli military's use of Azure cloud and other Microsoft products. The review acknowledged prior gaps and committed to strengthening human rights governance procedures, expanding internal escalation paths for misuse allegations, and tightening contract language. Human-rights advocates and Microsoft employees criticized the review as insufficient because it did not commit to terminating identified contracts or publish the underlying findings. The review followed sustained internal organizing and external reporting on mass surveillance of Palestinians via Azure.

Middle East Eye reported in June 2026 that Israeli spyware firm NSO Group continued to target WhatsApp users with Pegasus despite a binding US court order arising from the Meta v. NSO Group litigation. The reporting cited evidence of continued infections after the judgment, raising the prospect of contempt proceedings and renewed pressure on US sanctions enforcement against the company.

In May 2026, London Mayor Sadiq Khan's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) blocked a proposed two-year, up to £50M Metropolitan Police contract with Palantir for AI-driven criminal-investigation data analysis, finding the Met had seriously considered only one supplier and failed to present a procurement strategy for approval - a 'clear and serious breach' of procurement rules. Palantir filed a High Court challenge in June 2026, alleging MOPAC acted unlawfully and irrationally by treating the company's 'values and ethics' as grounds for rejection and imposing an unlawful veto; MOPAC denies ethics were the basis and says the Met's process itself was unlawful and gave 'misleading and/or inconsistent information.' As of September 2026, Khan agreed to have his texts and emails searched as part of discovery, with 12+ MOPAC/GLA officials also designated document custodians; a full High Court hearing is scheduled for January 2027.

In April 2026, the EFF published analysis showing Palantir's ELITE tool is used by ICE for mass deportation sweeps, contrary to Palantir's claims of 'prioritized enforcement.' Sworn testimony revealed ICE agents use ELITE to determine where to conduct deportation sweeps using data from 'all kinds of sources' including Medicaid. Nearly 1 in 5 ICE arrests were of Latine persons with neither criminal history nor removal order. Reports link Palantir systems to facial recognition used to identify people recording law enforcement. The tool has been connected to deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Palantir publicly embraces UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights.

On February 23-24, 2026, xAI reached agreement with the Pentagon to deploy Grok on classified military systems at Impact Level 5 (IL5) - the highest military AI security classification. Unlike Anthropic, xAI accepted the Pentagon's 'all lawful use' standard without restrictions on autonomous weapons or mass surveillance. The deal positions Grok to replace Claude across up to 3 million DoD personnel, with potential applications in intelligence analysis, weapons development, and battlefield operations.

In January 2026, reporting revealed that ICE was using a Palantir-built tool called ELITE that taps Medicaid data to identify and arrest people for deportation. The tool maps potential targets and provides 'confidence scores' for individuals' current addresses. A data-sharing agreement between ICE and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services gave ICE access to personal data of nearly 80 million Medicaid patients. The Electronic Frontier Foundation challenged the use of healthcare data for immigration enforcement, arguing patients never consented to their health-related information being repurposed for deportation.

On December 30, 2025, the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control removed three executives linked to the Intellexa commercial spyware consortium from its sanctions list. The individuals had been sanctioned by the Biden administration in 2024 for enabling spyware (including Predator, capable of one-click and zero-click device compromise) used to target U.S. government officials, journalists, policy experts, opposition politicians, and activists worldwide, as part of a broader effort under Executive Order 14093 to curb commercial spyware. Treasury and State Department officials offered only a vague characterization of the removal as a 'normal administrative process,' without publicly explaining what changed in the underlying conduct that had justified the original designations.

The US Federal Communications Commission designated DJI as a national security threat and banned its communications equipment from use in the United States in December 2025.

Ghana and the UAE signed a roughly $1 billion agreement for what was billed as Africa's largest AI and innovation hub, with G42 affiliate AI71 responsible for a $180 million AI compute hub and a further $100 million national digital-identity system built on Falcon large language models. Investigative reporting (The Labari Journal) found the underlying MoU had not been published, that the authority of Ghana's planned Responsible AI Office over the foreign-operated hub was undefined, and that Ghana's Emerging Technologies Bill governing data protection standards remained in draft form when the deal was signed. The report also noted an Emirati signatory to related deals had past ties to the DarkMatter surveillance venture. G42 has separately taken steps to reduce China-linked technology exposure and deepened US ties (Microsoft $1.5B investment, board seat).

Following the Guardian's investigation revealing mass Palestinian surveillance via Azure, Microsoft ceased and disabled specified Israel Ministry of Defense subscriptions including cloud storage and AI services. Microsoft President Brad Smith stated 'We do not provide technology to facilitate mass surveillance of civilians.' This was the first known case of a US tech company withdrawing services from the Israeli military since the Gaza war began. However, Microsoft's wider relationship with the IDF remained intact, and Unit 8200 reportedly migrated the surveillance data to Amazon Web Services.

Paragon Solutions' U.S. subsidiary signed a $2 million, one-year contract with ICE's Homeland Security Investigations division in September 2024 for its Graphite spyware, awarded non-competitively as a 'unique' capability. DHS issued a stop-work order in October 2024 pending White House review of compliance with Executive Order 14093, which restricts U.S. government use of commercial spyware over human-rights concerns. On August 30, 2025, under the Trump administration, ICE lifted the stop-work order and reactivated the contract, per federal procurement records first reported by journalist Jack Poulson and confirmed by TechCrunch. The reactivation came after WhatsApp's January 2025 disclosure that roughly 90 Graphite targets worldwide, including journalists and human-rights workers, were spied on, and after Paragon terminated Italy's government contract when Graphite was found targeting Italian journalists and migrant-rescue activists. Congressional Democrats (Sens. Peters and Wyden, Rep. Casar) subsequently sought records on how ICE acquired and uses the tool; no compliance determination under EO 14093 has been published, and DHS's Privacy Office - which would have reviewed the tool - was dissolved in a March 2025 reduction in force.

A joint Guardian/+972 Magazine/Local Call investigation revealed Microsoft provided customized Azure cloud infrastructure to Israel's Unit 8200 intelligence unit for storing recordings of millions of daily Palestinian phone calls. By July 2025, the surveillance system held 11,500 terabytes of military data stored on Azure servers in the Netherlands and Ireland. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella met with Unit 8200's commander in late 2021 to discuss the collaboration. Sources within Unit 8200 said the data was used to research and identify bombing targets in Gaza and to blackmail Palestinians in the West Bank.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed by President Trump on July 4, 2025, includes provisions that effectively grant Anduril Industries a monopoly on new autonomous surveillance towers for US Customs and Border Protection across both southern and northern borders. CBP confirmed to The Intercept that Anduril is now the country's only approved border tower vendor. Anduril's ASTs cover an estimated 30% of the US southern land border, using AI and computer vision to detect, identify, classify, and track people crossing the border. Civil liberties groups have raised concerns about the humanitarian impact of automated border surveillance.

Founders Fund, co-founded by Palantir chairman Peter Thiel, has been a major investor in Palantir Technologies since its founding in 2003. Palantir built the ImmigrationOS platform for ICE, receiving a $30 million contract in 2025. The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported in January 2026 that ICE uses a Palantir tool that feeds on Medicaid and other government data to identify and track people for arrest. The American Immigration Council documented how the system enables mass surveillance of immigrant communities. Founders Fund's continued investment in and promotion of Palantir directly supports the expansion of government surveillance infrastructure.

Paul Graham publicly criticized Palantir Technologies over its $30 million ImmigrationOS contract with ICE, urging programmers not to work for 'the company building the infrastructure of the police state.' He pressed a Palantir executive to commit not to build things that help the government violate the US constitution.