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Palantir Gets an Initial $3.9 Million to Spy on Federal Workers by Whitney Curry Wimbish
The Trump administration is building a surveillance network to spy on its own workforce across multiple agencies. It has already given Palantir an initial $3.9 million to do so at the Department of Agriculture (USDA), federal spending disclosures show.
The artificial intelligence war profiteer will “design, configure, deploy and manage a secure, user-friendly tool to track USDA employees’ return to the office,” according to a disclosure. The contract started May 1 and has the potential to grow to $13.3 million over the next fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.
The Lever first reported in March that the USDA had hired Palantir to help it enforce its return-to-office demand, a story based on an initial disclosure justifying the reasoning behind the department’s opting for a sole-source contract, commonly known as a no-bid contract, before a dollar amount had been published. Since then, union officials and additional spending disclosures show that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are seeking to implement similar programs.
A request for information published March 11 shows that the VA wants a tech company to build a tool for it to passively gather, measure, and report daily occupancy counts of its 311 owned and leased off-campus administrative locations across the continental U.S. Like the USDA, the VA says it needs the surveillance tech because of an in-person work requirement.
Federal worker union officials said the SSA is a third agency where the administration is surveilling workers coming and going from offices and measuring occupancy levels.
The artificial intelligence war profiteer will “design, configure, deploy and manage a secure, user-friendly tool to track USDA employees’ return to the office,” according to a disclosure. The contract started May 1 and has the potential to grow to $13.3 million over the next fiscal year, which runs from October 1 to September 30.
The Lever first reported in March that the USDA had hired Palantir to help it enforce its return-to-office demand, a story based on an initial disclosure justifying the reasoning behind the department’s opting for a sole-source contract, commonly known as a no-bid contract, before a dollar amount had been published. Since then, union officials and additional spending disclosures show that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) are seeking to implement similar programs.
A request for information published March 11 shows that the VA wants a tech company to build a tool for it to passively gather, measure, and report daily occupancy counts of its 311 owned and leased off-campus administrative locations across the continental U.S. Like the USDA, the VA says it needs the surveillance tech because of an in-person work requirement.
Federal worker union officials said the SSA is a third agency where the administration is surveilling workers coming and going from offices and measuring occupancy levels.
https://prospect.org/2026/05/18/palantir-federal-workers-surveillance-usda-social-security-veterans-affairs/]