Palantir Surveillance for Germany’s Police

Gotham Ushers in A New Era in Total AI-Surveillance and Transnational Intelligence

Image credit: Jakub Porzycki

German police are rapidly moving toward artificial intelligence (AI), led by Palantir Technologies’ flagship platform, Gotham. The name—borrowed from the dark, crime-ridden city of Batman—hints at the kind of policing future being imagined. This Big Tech–driven transformation of law enforcement raises urgent questions about powerful surveillance software being implemented for domestic policing without a sufficient legal basis and lacking the democratic legitimacy of an appropriate law that has gone through parliament.

For advocates, this is long-overdue modernisation. For critics, it is the foundation for a super-surveillance state that poses risks to a country’s technological sovereignty, individual civil liberties, and democratic oversight.

Gotham combines facial recognition with Big Data analytics, greatly expanding the capacity for automated data analysis and predictive policing. The software aggregates and analyses vast amounts of information—from state and federal police databases to telecommunications metadata and social media activity. In practice, this allows for real-time connections between individuals, events, and locations to be made. Palantir’s platform is also marketed as a tool against terrorism, organised crime, and corruption. Proponents argue that since modern criminals exploit digital technologies the police need equally powerful tools to keep up.

To understand how Gotham reached Germany, it is necessary to look at Palantir’s origins in the United States. Palantir Technologies was founded in 2003 in Palo Alto with early backing from the CIA’s venture arm, In-Q-Tel. Gotham was built to integrate and analyse large datasets for intelligence and defence agencies. It was first deployed in counterterrorism and military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. From there, Palantir expanded into domestic law enforcement, winning contracts with the FBI and local police forces.

The company also became central to US immigration enforcement. By the mid-2010s, agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) were using Palantir systems to track, detain, and deport migrants. Under the Trump administration, these operations accelerated: Palantir’s ImmigrationOS platform enabled large-scale arrests and removals, drawing criticism from civil liberties groups.

Behind this success stands Peter Thiel, Palantir’s co-founder and early financier. Known for co-founding PayPal and investing early in Facebook, Thiel recognised the potential to apply Silicon Valley’s data analysis tools to national security and policing. Though Alex Karp has served as CEO since the company’s founding, Thiel has remained a key figure on the board. His political connections, particularly his support for conservative candidates and his advisory role during the Trump administration, positioned Palantir to secure lucrative government contracts.

The modernisation and unification of Germany’s law enforcement IT landscape has been on the agenda for two decades. This digital transformation has been slow going. Palantir, so the story goes, will change that.

Germany’s police force is run by individual states, not by the federal government. The police IT infrastructure was developed in-house and has long-overdue integration. Investigators often face slow, cumbersome obstacles to retrieveinformation in cases that cross precincts. The federal-state “Polizei 20/20” (P20) programme aimed to unify these disparate systems. Germany’s federal and state governments funded this to the tune of €300 million (£350 million) in 2019. Conservatives like Friedrich Merz and Alexander Dobrindt have been campaigning for years to make Palantir software available nationwide as part of the P20 programme. In 2023, a Social Democratic Party minister stopped the initiative. Shortly thereafter, following its victory in the federal election in early 2025, the new conservative government under Merz brought the Palantir acquisition back to the table.

Under the new conservative government, Germany’s Ministry of the Interior became much more open to Palatir’s Gotham software. The southern state of Baden-Württemberg was on the verge of introducing Gotham while the neighbouring Rhineland-Palatinate had passed a law approving advanced AI-based police investigations using big data analysis. East German states like Berlin and Saxony-Anhalt are also not far away from making, as it was called, “a pro-Palantir decision.” Germany’s Bundesrat (the council of Germany’s 16 states) was also calling for a shared and automated data analysis platform.

Palantir’s entry into German policing began in the state of Hessen. In 2017, the CDU-led government piloted the software under the name hessenDATA which was fully operational by 2018. Officially, it was meant for use against terrorism and organised crime. In practice, its remit expanded rapidly: first to burglary, then to minor offences, and eventually to the processing of accident witnesses. Neighbouring North Rhine–Westphalia followed in 2022 with DAR (Datenbankübergreifende Recherche und Analyse). In Bavaria, the “cross-procedural research and analysis system” (VeRA) was introduced in 2022 and moved into live operation by the end of 2024. Bavaria’s police even used the tool while it was still in testing, eager to exploit its promise of real-time analysis. Also of note here: the innocuous names police give their surveillance AIs.

Supporters of the rollout argue that Palantir's software improves efficiency, allowing investigators to connect dots in seconds rather than days. However, others warn that convenience should not come at the expense of constitutional protections. In 2023, the Federal Constitutional Court ruled that police laws in Hesse and Hamburg authorising Palantir’s use were unconstitutional. The court found that dragnet data analysis by association violated core constitutional protections, particularly the right to informational self-determination. The ruling was a landmark. It underscored that technological convenience does not override constitutional principles. Meanwhile, legal challenges continue. In North Rhine–Westphalia, cases are pending that will further test the limits of Palantir’s legality under German law.

It is a security risk that threatens to undermine democracy and freedom, not only in the hands of right-wing populists. German experts have repeatedly warned that Palantir poses a danger to democratic governance. One such warning appeared in a recent episode of the long-running public television documentary Panorama. Even more troubling, Palantir’s AI-driven surveillance software is slated for use not only by police, but also by Germany’s secret services, the military, and other state authorities. A nationwide introduction of Palantir’s ImmigrationOS by German police is currently under discussion.

Critics fear that software produced by a US Big Tech corporation could also pursue its own political or ideological agenda. ImmigrationOS risks becoming the central instrument of population control across Germany’s so-called “security-relevant” agencies—a euphemism for an AI-driven surveillance state.

Gotham not only analyses suspects, it ingests information from victims, complainants, and witnesses. An individual who reports a burglary or provides testimony in an accident case may find their data cross-referenced and stored in Palantir’s system. Once entered, one becomes part of a separate surveillance web, without being offered consent and with little possibility of removal.

The system’s predictive components, which estimate a person’s likelihood to commit crimes, raise ethical concerns, particularly regarding bias against marginalised groups. Algorithmic bias, also known as the “White Guy Problem”, is another concern. Like other predictive policing tools, Palantir reproduces existing patterns of discrimination. A central register for mentally ill people, framed as “the prevention of violence,” is also being discussed. This signals a shift from treatment and care towards surveillance, stigmatisation, and punishment.

The German states Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania have voiced opposition to relying on a foreign provider. Critics warn that reliance on a foreign provider undermines digital sovereignty. Concerns include potential hidden backdoors and the lack of transparency around source code. Palantir and similar companies often justify access to sensitive data as necessary for “AI training”, raising further questions about oversight. In 2023, Bavaria’s police force had its software tested by Germany’s prestigious Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology, located in the city of Darmstadt. The institute analysed the source code and provided an analysis that did not find any secret access doors. However, their evaluation remains classified because of “security concerns” and “Palantir trade secrets”.

The cost of implementing Palantir’s software is another sticking point. In addition to licensing fees, German taxpayers could be on the hook for training, maintenance, and future upgrades, expenses that often balloon over time. Critics argue this locks Germany into a costly and potentially risky long-term dependency on a private US vendor.

Scope creep is perhaps the greatest danger. In the state of Hesse, Gotham was initially used for serious and organised crimes as well as terrorism investigations. It was quickly expanded to cover minor crimes and accident reports. Bavaria also no longer uses it solely for serious crimes. The logic of surveillance is expansion, such that once a tool is available, pressure grows to apply it more broadly. Critics warn that the line between major crimes and everyday policing is being erased.

Palantir is not just a technological upgrade—it represents the fusion of state power with a foreign surveillance corporation, operating with minimal oversight. Citizens are made transparent, their lives reduced to data points. Meanwhile, the state and its corporate partner remain opaque, thus shielded from democratic and media scrutiny.

The Federal Constitutional Court has shown that constitutional safeguards can still restrain overreach. But political momentum, corporate lobbying, and the allure of efficiency continue to drive Palantir forward. The danger is not only in what Palantir does now, but in what it enables for the future. Once the infrastructure is in place, future governments will inherit a powerful surveillance machine ready to be turned on political opponents, activists, or minorities.

A system developed for war zones and border control is being normalised as everyday police infrastructure. The justifications are familiar: efficiency, modernisation, security. However, the consequences are profound: the erosion of civil liberties, dependency on a foreign corporation, and the stealth construction of a super-surveillance state.

“Our product is occasionally used to kill people,” the Palantir CEO admitted. Is this what Germany’s police have in mind when acquiring Palantir’s software?