Palantir’s expansion in Europe sparks debate over data and dependency

The controversial American technology company Palantir has become the focus of debate in Europe, particularly in Germany.

According to an assessment in Euractiv, German politicians are debating during the summer break whether police should be allowed to use specific Palantir software.

The software in question is a data analysis tool developed by Palantir: Gotham.

The Gotham software connects different data sources, making them more useful for clients. Palantir offers this software for a wide variety of use cases: the company’s website features videos of soldiers monitoring satellite constellations and drone footage.

Some German regional police forces have been using a lesser version of this tool for years to connect different databases, but there is strong criticism that even this has an insufficient (or entirely absent) legal basis.

For example, civil society activists have filed a lawsuit against the state of Bavaria’s use of this software.

Currently, Germany’s Ministry of Justice, led by the Christian Democrats, is examining whether to permit the use of Palantir’s software at the federal level.

However, as various reports show, Germany is not the only country in Europe using Palantir.

In 2019, France’s General Directorate for Internal Security extended an existing contract with Palantir, signed after the ISIS attacks in Paris in November 2015. Europol also used the company’s software in the task force that responded to these attacks.

According to documents obtained by The Guardian, the results were so poor that the EU law enforcement agency considered suing Palantir because, for example, its software “could not properly visualize large data sets.”

Several countries, including the Netherlands and Greece, began using another Palantir software, Foundry, to track where Covid-19 cases were appearing or how factors like road work might affect the virus’s spread.

The company has a health division whose products are widely used in the US. In the United Kingdom, Palantir signed a £330 million contract with the NHS (National Health Service) starting in 2023, but the implementation of the contract has been delayed for various reasons, including staff skepticism.

The war in Ukraine, which began in 2022, put Europe back into crisis mode. Palantir once again acted quickly, collaborating with the Polish government to create a portal where Ukrainian refugees could find job listings.

The company has also successfully entered the military domain. Earlier this year, NATO selected Palantir for its Allied Command Operations, the alliance’s war room, to facilitate decision-making and military planning.

This move was a blow to France, which has long opposed European dependence on the US in many critical areas.

The problem is not a lack of European companies operating in the same field. For instance, the Ireland-based Siren, which has offices in other European countries as well as America and the Pacific, promotes its own product as the “only true alternative” to Palantir.

“With the changing global geopolitical balances, we at Siren are seeing an increase in demand for investigative technologies in Europe,” the company stated in a blog post, positioning its products as an alternative plug-in to Palantir that can operate without users having to fully switch to a closed vendor ecosystem.

One of the arguments always put forward was that domestic alternatives could not produce results as good as Palantir’s tools. Still, some German regions remain unconvinced.

Schleswig-Holstein, situated between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea, continues to search for domestic options in Germany and Europe.

The regional government has set ambitious technological sovereignty goals in other areas as well, attempting to rid itself of Microsoft Office.

“It would be wrong to create a new dependency in another fundamental sector of the state, the police force, by purchasing Palantir software,” says regional politician Jan Kürschner. “The regions that have gone down this wrong path should turn back as soon as possible.”