New Orleans Police Launch Secret Palantir Predictive Policing Program

The New Orleans Police Department launches a secretive predictive policing program in partnership with Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital arm In-Q-Tel. The program operates without public knowledge or oversight, escaping scrutiny through its establishment as a philanthropic relationship with Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s signature NOLA For Life anti-violence initiative.

Palantir’s prediction model uses social network analysis to identify connections between people, places, vehicles, weapons, addresses, and social media posts held in previously separated databases, along with field interview cards. The system creates a list of approximately 3,900 individuals identified as potential victims or perpetrators of violence based on their connections to gang members, criminal histories, and social media activity.

NOPD uses this list to target individuals for the CeaseFire program, which offers people with criminal records various social services while simultaneously threatening them with the fullest possible prosecution should they reoffend. The program’s predictive model assigns individuals risk scores even when they have minimal direct involvement in criminal activity, based solely on their social connections and patterns the algorithm identifies.

The program’s philanthropic status and New Orleans’ “strong mayor” model of government allow it to bypass the public procurement process entirely. Top political and community leaders—including city council members—are not informed about the program’s existence or scope. This secrecy raises serious legal concerns, as defense attorneys representing individuals targeted by the program are not provided with evidence they have a constitutional right to examine.

The program represents multiple violations of civil liberties: mass surveillance without public knowledge or consent violates privacy rights; the use of predictive algorithms trained on historical data risks perpetuating algorithmic bias and discrimination against certain demographic groups; and the lack of transparency undermines due process protections.

The program’s existence will not become public until investigative reporting reveals it in February 2018. Following the exposure, the Times-Picayune reports that New Orleans decides to terminate its partnership with Palantir in March 2018, ending six years of secret predictive policing operations.