Australian Governments have already given Palantir and Cellebrite surveillance access to our data, incl people's sensitive NDIS data, and keep giving more.
This Mass Surveillance is not a Democratic Process, and it is a huge, growing problem. Michael West Media are covering developments in this problem And at the bottom of the post is a short list of protection and solutions, and links to more protection info.
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‘Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say’ -Edward Snowden
But most people do have something they’d rather keep private. Not because it’s criminal or shameful. Just because it’s theirs. A message sent in anger. A search made in fear. A place visited that nobody else needs to know about. A financial decision that made sense at the time.
Privacy is about having something that belongs to you.
"In Australia in 2026, that is becoming harder to keep.
Two companies. One pipeline.
"Palantir Technologies is an American company whose software is used by the CIA, the Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Its platforms fuse large datasets — financial records, government databases, transaction histories, intelligence holdings — to build profiles, identify patterns and surface individuals of interest.
"Cellebrite is an Israeli company that does something more intimate: it extracts the entire contents of a specific person’s phone. Encrypted messages. Deleted files. Location history. Call logs. Health data. Everything. The extraction happens even when the phone is locked [unless you are using a Graphene OS phone].
"In the United Kingdom, where the NHS is already trying to exit a £330 million Palantir contract, police forces are simultaneously integrating Palantir and Cellebrite...
"Cellebrite extracts. Palantir analyses.
"In Australia, multiple government agencies use both. Whether that integration is planned here has never been asked in Parliament...
"Palantir has been embedded in Australian government since 2012, when Corrections Victoria began using it for an intelligence system called Centurion...
"Australian government agencies have spent more than $60 million on Palantir contracts.
"Zero ethics assessments have been conducted.
Senator David Shoebridge of the Australian Greens has called for a full audit:
"“Australians’ most sensitive data should never be handed to a US surveillance company, and not one cent of NDIS funding should end up in the pockets of big tech billionaires like Peter Thiel.”
"Peter Thiel — the American billionaire and co-founder of Palantir — has been a vocal supporter of using surveillance technology to reshape the relationship between citizens and the state...
"Cellebrite ... Defence contracts note that data is hosted on Australian servers — but hosting location and legal jurisdiction are different things. Palantir is a US company subject to the US CLOUD Act, which can compel American companies to hand over data regardless of where it is stored...
"What surveillance does...
"In the United States, Flock Safety built cameras to find stolen cars. The same network ended up tracking women seeking abortions and ... police officers stalking ex-partners... One Georgia police chief had searched for his ex-girlfriend roughly 600 times. A database built to answer one question answers very different ones... "
"[Australia's NDIS data network was built to detect fraud. Nobody has asked what else it could answer [but]...
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal said; ‘surveillance is the economic engine of the tech industry.’
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI said; ‘An AI that can watch your computer screen all the time, record every call, have perfect context of your whole life.’
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir said: ‘We want our enemies to wake up scared and go to bed scared’ ... a category he and co-founder Peter Thiel have applied broadly.
"The company that builds the surveillance infrastructure also decides who it is pointed at...
"They are not building this for you.
This Mass Surveillance is not a Democratic Process, and it is a huge, growing problem. Michael West Media are covering developments in this problem And at the bottom of the post is a short list of protection and solutions, and links to more protection info.
- - -
‘Saying you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is like saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say’ -Edward Snowden
But most people do have something they’d rather keep private. Not because it’s criminal or shameful. Just because it’s theirs. A message sent in anger. A search made in fear. A place visited that nobody else needs to know about. A financial decision that made sense at the time.
Privacy is about having something that belongs to you.
"In Australia in 2026, that is becoming harder to keep.
Two companies. One pipeline.
"Palantir Technologies is an American company whose software is used by the CIA, the Pentagon and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Its platforms fuse large datasets — financial records, government databases, transaction histories, intelligence holdings — to build profiles, identify patterns and surface individuals of interest.
"Cellebrite is an Israeli company that does something more intimate: it extracts the entire contents of a specific person’s phone. Encrypted messages. Deleted files. Location history. Call logs. Health data. Everything. The extraction happens even when the phone is locked [unless you are using a Graphene OS phone].
"In the United Kingdom, where the NHS is already trying to exit a £330 million Palantir contract, police forces are simultaneously integrating Palantir and Cellebrite...
"Cellebrite extracts. Palantir analyses.
"In Australia, multiple government agencies use both. Whether that integration is planned here has never been asked in Parliament...
"Palantir has been embedded in Australian government since 2012, when Corrections Victoria began using it for an intelligence system called Centurion...
"Australian government agencies have spent more than $60 million on Palantir contracts.
"Zero ethics assessments have been conducted.
Senator David Shoebridge of the Australian Greens has called for a full audit:
"“Australians’ most sensitive data should never be handed to a US surveillance company, and not one cent of NDIS funding should end up in the pockets of big tech billionaires like Peter Thiel.”
"Peter Thiel — the American billionaire and co-founder of Palantir — has been a vocal supporter of using surveillance technology to reshape the relationship between citizens and the state...
"Cellebrite ... Defence contracts note that data is hosted on Australian servers — but hosting location and legal jurisdiction are different things. Palantir is a US company subject to the US CLOUD Act, which can compel American companies to hand over data regardless of where it is stored...
"What surveillance does...
"In the United States, Flock Safety built cameras to find stolen cars. The same network ended up tracking women seeking abortions and ... police officers stalking ex-partners... One Georgia police chief had searched for his ex-girlfriend roughly 600 times. A database built to answer one question answers very different ones... "
"[Australia's NDIS data network was built to detect fraud. Nobody has asked what else it could answer [but]...
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal said; ‘surveillance is the economic engine of the tech industry.’
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI said; ‘An AI that can watch your computer screen all the time, record every call, have perfect context of your whole life.’
Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir said: ‘We want our enemies to wake up scared and go to bed scared’ ... a category he and co-founder Peter Thiel have applied broadly.
"The company that builds the surveillance infrastructure also decides who it is pointed at...
"They are not building this for you.
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