OTTAWA — The Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) is using software from the data-mining firm Palantir, The Logic has learned—technology that U.S. counterparts have integrated into “predictive” programs that have drawn criticism from civil rights groups.

But the force won’t say how it’s deploying the system. “I can confirm the Ontario Provincial Police does use a Palantir product,” the force’s acting manager of media relations Bill Dickson said by email. “I cannot give you any other details in order to protect investigative and intelligence techniques.”

The Logic filed an access-to-information request with Ontario’s Ministry of the Solicitor General, which oversees the provincial police force, in September 2021, seeking copies of memos and contracts that would reveal dealings the ministry had with Palantir. That December, the ministry refused to disclose any documents, citing 12 different sections of the province’s access-to-information law.

The Logic appealed the refusal to the provincial information and privacy commissioner’s office. Through the mediation process meant to resolve such appeals, the ministry disclosed this month that the OPP uses Palantir’s products and services.

“Palantir has provided the OPP with licensing, engineering and initial training services for the Palantir Gotham analytical software,” the ministry said. “Palantir assisted the OPP [to] integrate various data holdings in order to facilitate analysis via the Gotham platform.”

Dickson would not say how long the OPP has used Palantir’s services.

The venture capitalist Peter Thiel co-founded Denver-headquartered Palantir in 2003. Gotham, its original platform, is designed “for government operatives in the defense and intelligence sectors,” states the company’s prospectus for its September 2020 listing on the New York Stock Exchange. The software includes an artificial intelligence tool that “scans billions of data points in order to assist investigators … with identifying patterns and connections.”

Civil rights groups have criticized U.S. police forces for programs that employed Palantir Gotham. Starting in 2011, the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) used Gotham as part of its Operation LASER, aggregating and analyzing data to generate a watchlist of residents judged most likely to commit offences. The Stop LAPD Spying Coalition said the “predictive” policing program disproportionately targeted racial minorities. In April 2019, the force said it would shut LASER down. 

The New Orleans Police Department also reportedly began working with Palantir in 2012, using its software with social media information and criminal databases to identify residents whom officers deemed at the greatest risk of committing or being victims of violence. Local civil rights lawyers objected that the force had not disclosed the program. In 2018, Palantir’s own staff complained about a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for services that helped its agents find and deport undocumented immigrants.

Besides being the province’s police force, the OPP provides local law enforcement in over 320 Ontario municipalities, similar to the RCMP in most other provinces. 

One reason for not disclosing more information, the ministry said in the mediation, is that the OPP is “about to release an open competitive process for the procurement of a data analytics solution/system which may replace Palantir. Releasing our contract value may injure the OPP, its competitive process and give unfair advantage.”

The original contracts were “not for public disclosure,” the ministry said, and were covered by a section of Ontario’s Financial Administration Act that allows the provincial attorney general or deputy to authorize spending for “special cases” related to law enforcement, and to sign off that the money has been duly accounted for without being “subject to any further examination.” 

Palantir did not respond to multiple requests for comment.

The OPP’s use of Palantir Gotham and lack of public disclosure raises concerns, said Cynthia Khoo, a fellow at the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto’s Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy. “How could they still do this, knowing everything we know?” Policing programs based on analyzing forces’ crime databases can create “feedback loops of injustice,” she said, since most common sources of information such as stop and arrest records or social posts are “known to be biased or inaccurate in some way.” A September 2020 report Khoo co-authored called for a moratorium on algorithmic policing technologies, pending a national judicial inquiry.

This September, Palantir CEO Alex Karp told an audience at the Financial Times Weekend Festival he was “very skeptical” of building products that can “stop crime before the person commits it,” although “they could do it very well.” The practice is “benign,” he said, but leads to a slippery slope when it’s used to “negatively evaluate the actual underlying value of individuals, and then do it neighbourhood by neighbourhood.” 

Other Canadian agencies have bought Palantir Gotham. In March 2019, the Department of National Defence awarded the firm $997,434 for access to the platform, to assess it for use by the Canadian Special Operations Forces Command; the contract expired a year later. 

The Calgary Police Service (CPS) has been using Gotham since 2012. Officers use it to collate sources such as internal files, dispatch calls and data from its record-management system to link residents, organizations and vehicles, according to Citizen Lab’s review of department records. But the force does not deploy the software’s AI features, Khoo noted. 

She called for the OPP to disclose how it’s using Palantir Gotham. “Are they also using it the way CPS is, as a database organizer?” she said. “Or are they actually using it in the way that it’s marketed [and] was used in L.A. and New Orleans, as a form of algorithmic policing?”

While the OPP refused to say how long it’s been using Gotham, a December 2016 job posting for an operational-analyst role cites Palantir among the tools the new hire would use. The position’s tasks included providing input to the force’s provincial operations centre, based in Orillia, “to identify emerging trends, establish priorities, approaches and mitigation strategies.” 

The analyst would collate “intelligence data by utilizing software/database (i.e. iNetviewer, Computer Aided Dispatch, Palantir etc.),” the posting stated. Other duties included liaising with agencies like Criminal Intelligence Service Ontario and the Canadian Security Intelligence Service on “organized crime, regional crime trends and extremist/terrorist activities.” 

The OPP also appears to be using Palantir’s software in community-enforcement settings. In July 2020, the council of the Township of Carling received a presentation on an analysis of impaired-driving stops and RIDE locations in West Parry Sound, Ont., the previous year. The study drew data from Palantir Gotham as well as the force’s record-management system, so that the local detachment could “strategically plan RIDE locations based on past statistical data,” according to a report included in the council’s briefing packages.

In 2020, the force was one of several police agencies that stopped using a different AI product, Clearview AI, over concerns that its image-scraping technology violated Canadians’ rights (an investigation by the federal and several provincial privacy commissioners later concluded it did).

One question The Logic put to the OPP was whether it had sought guidance from Ontario’s information and privacy commissioner on Palantir products. Dickson, the OPP spokesperson, wouldn’t say, citing the need to protect investigative methods, but the privacy commissioner’s office sent The Logic a statement Tuesday saying the police had not consulted it.

“We understand that Palantir Gotham software can be used to integrate various data sources and has algorithmic capabilities that have been used as part of predictive policing programs,” the statement said. “These programs raise significant concerns for privacy and other fundamental rights, because they can be used in ways that are potentially invasive, inaccurate, or discriminatory.”

Advanced technology can be very helpful to police, the statement went on, but especially with AI tools, “strong governance and oversight are critical, as is continued engagement with the public, particularly those communities most likely to be impacted.”

The OPP should be transparent about what checks and consultations they’ve undertaken, said Khoo. “Did you see what happened in all these other cities?” she said. “How do you account for that?” 

The Calgary police conducted privacy impact and risk assessments when they deployed Palantir Gotham, even though the force wasn’t using its AI features, she noted. Other police and government agencies have developed policies to govern the “responsible use and adoption of these technologies,” she said, citing the federal privacy commissioner’s June 2021 guidance on facial recognition and Toronto Police Services Board’s rules on the use of AI, approved this February.

Palantir has ramped up its presence in Canada in recent years. The firm hired David MacNaughton, a former Canadian ambassador to the U.S., as its country president in August 2019. In early March 2020, he met with Peter Bethlenfalvy, at the time Ontario’s Treasury Board president, according to records that department released in response to an access-to-information request. On Palantir’s proposed agenda were applications like health data, tax fraud and police services.  

In April 2020, as The Logic first reported, MacNaughton told a private event that Palantir was working with the Ontario government, among others, on their COVID-19 responses. That September, ethics commissioner Mario Dion ruled that the former ambassador had broken conflict-of-interest rules in communications with federal officials on pandemic engagements.