To AnitaB.org Board of Trustees and Grace Hopper Celebration organizers,

Last year and this year, the Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) listed Palantir as a major sponsor [1]. Palantir recently renewed millions of dollars in contracts with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and has provided ICE with tools of mass surveillance, including data analytics and case management software, since 2014 [2]. Its software has been implicated in ICE's countless human rights abuses [3]. Palantir's case management tool (Investigative Case Management) was shown to be used at the border to arrest undocumented people discovered in investigations of children who crossed the border alone, including the sponsors and family members of these children [4]. The company's analytics tool (FALCON) is used by the division of ICE that leads workplace raids [5], which have grown by 650% under President Trump [6] and often involve family separation (as happened in Mississippi in early August when almost 700 people were arrested for deportation, leaving some children alone without either parent for days [7]). This ongoing partnership enables ICE to commit serious human rights violations through immigration raids, concentration camps, and the spread of fear across the immigrant community in the US [8]. Currently, ICE holds tens of thousands of people in concentration camps across the US [9]. Palantir's software allows ICE to uphold this regime by directly supporting federal immigration enforcement attempts to arrest and detain undocumented people throughout the country, which have resulted in separating families both at the border and in the interior.

Because of newfound attention to Palantir's business with ICE, the company has been waging a public relations counteroffensive to minimize its role in federal immigration policy [10]​ [11]. GHC is the world’s largest conference for women in computing, gathering 20,000 people across all backgrounds, many of whom are early-career women or students. GHC can be extremely influential for its attendees, with many women finding community, career development, and skill building opportunities. Funding well-respected and impactful events such as GHC is one of the ways in which Palantir can try to buy positive public sentiment. By accepting Palantir’s money, proudly displaying them as a sponsor, and giving them a platform to recruit, AnitaB.org is legitimizing Palantir's work with ICE to GHC's attendees, enabling ICE’s mission, and helping Palantir minimize its role in human rights abuses.

GHC cannot claim to be for all women in tech as long as it turns a blind eye towards ICE's human rights abuses. A large number of workers in the tech industry are immigrants or come from immigrant backgrounds [12], and are current or potential targets of ICE's actions. Women make up half of all immigrants [13], and numerous accounts of mistreatment, abuse, harassment, and sexual assault, particularly against women, have been reported within ICE concentration camps [14]. How can your organization uphold its mission to promote equality, diversity, and inclusion in tech by allowing more GHC attendees to be further recruited into and implicated by Palantir’s and ICE’s crimes? What message does this send to the thousands of women attendees poised to become future leaders and advocates of diversity and equality in tech? The tech industry deserves leaders who will stand up against injustice. Our visions for equality, diversity, and inclusion should not just apply within our industry, but towards the impact our industry has on the public as well.

AnitaB.org cannot continue to accept Palantir’s money and give them a platform to recruit at GHC while claiming to promote diversity and inclusion in the tech industry. By supporting Palantir and their partnership with ICE, your organization is providing cover for human rights abuses and violence against immigrants, including women and their families. In the past, community action compelled your organization to drop your partnership with Uber for ethical reasons [15], and recently Lesbians Who Tech dropped their own sponsorship with Palantir [16]. We're asking you to sever your connections with Palantir as well.

We call on you to:
    1) Drop Palantir as a sponsor for GHC 2019 and future conferences
    2) Release a statement denouncing the prior sponsorship and Palantir’s involvement with ICE
    3) Institute and publicly release an ethics vetting policy for future corporate sponsors and recruiters

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After signing, please share this petition on Twitter with @GHC and @AnitaB_org along with the hashtag #GHCDropPalantir or use their contact form

Sources:
[1] https://ghc.anitab.org/2019-sponsorships/corporate-sponsors/
[2] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/458170-ice-renews-contract-with-palantir
[3] https://notechforice.mijente.net/palantir/
[4] https://theintercept.com/2019/05/02/peter-thiels-palantir-was-used-to-bust-hundreds-of-relatives-of-migrant-children-new-documents-show/
[5] https://www.wnyc.org/story/palantir-directly-powers-ice-workplace-raids-emails-show/
[6] https://www.newsweek.com/ice-sees-640-surge-workplace-arrests-under-trump-administrations-immigration-1255229
[7] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/kids-left-parent-home-days-mississippi-ice-raid/story?id=65150421
[8] https://www.google.com/amp/s/slate.com/technology/2019/05/documents-reveal-palantir-software-is-used-for-ice-deportations.amp
[9] https://www.businessinsider.com/ice-immigrant-families-dhs-detention-centers-2018-6
[10] https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/11/business/dealbook/investor-bias-discrimination.html
[11] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-08-22/the-complicated-politics-of-palantir-s-ceo
[12] https://www.wired.com/story/tech-as-we-know-it-would-not-exist-without-immigrants
[13] https://eca.unwomen.org/en/news/in-focus/women-refugees-and-migrants
[14] https://theintercept.com/2018/04/11/immigration-detention-sexual-abuse-ice-dhs/
[15] https://anitab.org/news/press-release/abi-ends-partnership-uber/
[16] https://www.businessinsider.com/lesbians-who-tech-ends-sponsorship-deal-palantir-human-rights-2019-8