In The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the "palantÃri" are "seeing stones" used for spying across the fictional Middle Earth.
According to the website Tolkien Gateway:
The purpose of the stones in general was dual: to communicate with one another, and to see afar. Stones were linked with each other and each could reveal what was near another stone, but those of strong will and mind could direct their gaze anywhere, both in space and time.
But we neither live in Middle Earth, nor is our story a hobbit-populated fantasy.
That should concern us all greatly.
In March, the adjudicated sexual assaulter scrawled his illegible signature on an executive order directing the federal government to share data across agencies (just like the "seeing stones"). As the bromance between the former host of Celebrity Apprentice and the owner of Tesla and X sours, the new tech bro du jour picked to carry out this latest example of draconian government overreach is Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal and, fittingly, Palatir.
As reported in the New York Times:
The Trump administration has already sought access to hundreds of data points on citizens and others through government databases, including their bank account numbers, the amount of their student debt, their medical claims and any disability status.
The Trump administration has already used Palantir to compile our IRS data into a central database, as the Times further explains:
At the I.R.S., Palantir engineers joined in April to use Foundry to organize data gathered on American taxpayers, two government officials said. Their work began as a way to create a single, searchable database for the I.R.S., but has since expanded, they said. Palantir is in talks for a permanent contract with the I.R.S., they said.
According to Raw Story:
The company has received also new contracts from the Pentagon and is speaking to the Social Security Administration and the Internal Revenue Service about buying its technology, according to six government officials and knowledgable Palantir employees, and Democratic lawmakers have warned that Trump could use the personal information to target immigrants and punish his critics.
Some Palantir employees reportedly do not support this, however, as the Times explained:
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