Palantir police: review of AI system, privacy and Swedish pension money

This guide is informational. Always verify how the rules apply to your specific case.

PolicePrivacyOversight

Summary: Today's ETC states that the Police Authority uses Palantir's analysis platform. The Government replies in Parliament that the Police Authority itself determines which IT services it uses and that the Government does not approve or receive specific information about such choices. At the same time, Palantir is one of the world's most controversial technology companies: built for intelligence analysis, closely linked to military and police clients, strategic partner of Israel's Defense Ministry and singled out in a United Nations report on companies allegedly profiting from occupation and warfare in Gaza.

This is therefore not a common question of procurement. If Swedish police use Palantir, it is about who gets to build the infrastructure for the state's most sensitive analysis: which people are connected, which patterns are considered suspicious, what risk profiles are created and how can an individual understand or respond to what the system helps the authority to see?

Palantir and the Swedish police — what we know

Searches such as palantir police and palantir Swedish police often lead to the same core question: does the Police Authority use Palantir's analysis platform, and if so, to what? Today's ETC has reported that Swedish police are using Palantir. In the Riksdag, the question has been put in writing and answered by saying that the Police Authority itself determines

which IT services it uses.

According to the report, the police have not disclosed openly which data sources are linked, how long data is stored or what automated analyses are being carried out. That's the gap this review fills: not as a technical manual, but as a citizen's perspective on power, integrity and

democratic control.

Source critical starting point

This article details allegations, financial connections and privacy risks. Palantir has not been convicted of war crimes. The company disputes central claims in the criticism, writing in its response to the UN Special Rapporteur that it does not provide surveillance services, does not support predictive policing and is not involved in the Israeli target identification systems commonly mentioned in the debate, including Lavender and

Gospel.

At the same time, it is precisely the combination of serious allegations, military use, weak transparency and huge data capacity that makes the issue relevant for Swedish citizens. When the same type of platform is used in law enforcement, it is not enough to ask whether the provider claims to comply with the law. It must also be asked who controls the tool, what public transparency exists and what errors can have consequences for individuals.

What is it that has happened?

Today's ETC reports that Swedish police are using Palantir's platform and that the cooperation should have been ongoing for several years. The article describes how the Police Authority does not respond openly to key questions, while the newspaper points to digital traces that, according to them, show use

Following the disclosure, a written question was asked in parliament about the police's use of analysis and intelligence tools. In the reply, the Minister of Justice writes that the Police Authority itself determines which IT services the Authority uses, and that the government does not approve or

receive specific information about this.

That answer is formally comprehensible but politically inadequate. A government agency must be able to buy IT. But when the IT system is an advanced analytical tool from a corporation with deep ties to the military, intelligence and warfare, the issue becomes bigger than the government's procurement routine. It becomes a matter of democratic control.

Upcoming Judicial Track 2026: Real-time AI Facial Recognition

Parallel to the debate over Palantir and analytics platforms, the government is proposing a new law on police use of AI for real-time facial recognition. According to Prop. 2025/ 26:150, the technology shall be permitted to be used when it is strictly necessary to locate or identify certain persons in situations involving serious crime, missing persons, or the enforcement of a sentence. Use shall be proportionate and normally require authorisation from the prosecutor or court

The bill is proposed to enter into force on July 1, 2026. It is not the same as the Palantir question, but it shows the same larger movement: the police get more data-driven tools, and the individual gets a greater need to be able to ask what evidence, what analysis and what records actually influenced an intervention or decision. Read also our review of police surveillance records and groups such as gypsies/itinerants, where oversight has already shown how record quality affects privacy.

What is Palantir?

Palantir is an American data and AI company whose core product is to collect, structure and analyze large amounts of information. The company's platforms, often described through products such as Gotham, Foundry and AIP, are used to make data searchable, connect people and events, visualize networks, and provide decision support

in complex environments.

In an ordinary business, it can be about logistics, supply chains or risk management. In police, defense, and intelligence environments, use is more sensitive. There, the same technology can help analyze criminal suspicions, intelligence information, geographic patterns, tips, vehicles, phone numbers, relationships and historical records. The more sources that are connected, the greater the power over people's digital footprint

Who is behind Palantir?

Palantir was founded in the early 2000s in the circle around PayPal and Silicon Valley. Palantir's own listing with the U.S. SEC lists Alexander Karp, Stephen Cohen and Peter Thiel as the company's “Founders”, with a special arrangement for voting control. In broader company histories, Joe Lonsdale and Nathan Gettings are also mentioned as

part of the founding group.

Peter Thiel is the most politically charged profile: PayPal co-founder, early Facebook investor and an influential conservative/libertarian tech financier. Alex Karp is Palantir's CEO and the public voice defending the company's role in Western security and defense policy. Stephen Cohen has been central to the company's technical and organizational control structure

Palantir's listing also shows why the company should not only be understood as an ordinary listed company. The voting structure of the founders, according to the filing, can give them very strong control over the direction of the company even when ordinary shareholders own shares. That's important when the company sells socially critical technology to states: the question is not just what customers buy, but also what values and strategic interests shape the product

The Intelligence Roots

Palantir emerged after the September 11 attacks and built its identity around national security, counter-terrorism and intelligence analysis. A presentation on In-Q-Tel as a strategic investor for the CIA cites Palantir as an example of companies that In-Q-Tel invested in and brought into the intelligence community. That doesn't mean Palantir is “CIA” in the legal sense, but it says a lot about the company's original market: the state, the intelligence world and the security apparatus.

That background is crucial to the Swedish debate. A system built to help security agencies find patterns in large data sets could be effective. But efficiency is also the crux of the risk. As pattern analysis moves into mainstream policing, the line between concrete criminal suspicion and broad social mapping can become difficult to see

Israel Connection and Gaza Criticism

Palantir is not an Israeli corporation. It is an American corporation. But the Israel connection is central. In January 2024, Bloomberg reported, in an article that Palantir himself republishes, that Palantir and the Israeli Defense Ministry entered into a strategic partnership for technologies for “war-related missions”. The agreement followed a meeting in Tel Aviv between Israeli defense representatives and Palantir co-founders Peter Thiel and Alex Karp. Palantir also held a board meeting in Tel Aviv to mark solidarity with Israel following the Hamas attack

on 7 October 2023.

This is an unusually clear political and military positioning from a tech company. It makes it impossible to describe Palantir as a neutral software provider without further ado. The company sells tools, but the tools are sold into war, intelligence work and state apparatuses where decisions can be about life, liberty and mass surveillance

Allegations of war crimes and international law violations

The harshest criticism concerns Palantir's alleged role in Israel's warfare in Gaza and in the broader system of occupation and control of Palestinians. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese published the 2025 report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”. The report describes a corporate apparatus that, according to the Special Rapporteur, profits from and enables occupation, apartheid and genocide. Palantir is mentioned in the public reporting as one of the companies whose technology and aid to

Israel is under scrutiny.

Al Jazeera summarizes the report and writes that Palantir is said to have extended its support to the Israeli military after October 2023. The article describes that there are “reasonable grounds” to believe that the company provided technology for automated predictive analytics and decision support on the battlefield. In the same discussion, AI systems such as Lavender, Gospel and Where's Daddy? are mentioned. , which have been linked in international reporting to target identification and attacks in Gaza.

This is where Palantir's own contentiousness matters. In its response to the UN, the company writes that it did not provide the technology for Lavender or Gospel, is not involved in these systems, and does not support predictive policing flows. Palantir instead portrays its work as legal defence and security support to an allied state

The legal issue is therefore not settled by a newspaper headline. But the democratic question remains: should Swedish police use analytical infrastructure from a company whose products and management are so closely linked to a warfare that is the subject of accusations of international law violations, war crimes and genocide?

The economic links: who benefits from Palantir?

Palantir is a publicly traded company. That means government contracts, military contracts and police procurement aren't just technology issues. They are revenue streams that affect stock price, investors and fortunes. The more states buy data-driven security technology, the more valuable the infrastructure becomes for

those who own the corporation.

The Swedish connection is clear through pension capital. SVT reports that Swedish AP funds had large holdings in Palantir. According to SVT, the Seventh AP Fund held 3,034,437 shares in Palantir as of June 30, 2025, corresponding to approximately SEK 3.94 billion, while AP1, AP2, AP3 and AP4 also had holdings at their last accounting. SVT writes that AP7's shareholding had risen from SEK 389 million in October 2023 to SEK 4.8 billion in

mid-August 2025.

This means that Swedish pension savers can indirectly be financially exposed to a company accused of contributing to serious human rights violations in Gaza. That doesn't mean every pension saver has chosen Palantir. On the contrary, the point is that exposure is often through index funds and institutional investment decisions far from the control of the individual

On a global level, reporting on the UN report also singles out capital giants such as BlackRock and Vanguard as major institutional investors in several of the companies mentioned, including Palantir. As such owners profit from rate increases, war technology, surveillance infrastructure and data-driven government contracts become part of a larger financial ecosystem.

The business model: security as a market

Palantir's business model is based on translating difficult societal problems into computer problems: terrorist threats, organised crime, migration, border control, military logistics, healthcare, fraud and public administration. There are situations where such technology can bring real benefit. But the model also creates a strong incentive for more public problems to be solved through more data collection, more analysis and more centralized

technical control.

When the police buy that type of system, there is a risk of functional slippage. A tool first used in serious organized crime can later be used in broader intelligence work. Data sources that appear delimited at first can be paired with more registers. Analysis that is first decision support can in practice become governing, as people tend to trust systems that are presented as advanced and objective

The privacy risk: profiling without understandable justification

The biggest danger is not necessarily that a police officer manually reads an assignment about you. The bigger danger is that the system could help the authority establish patterns: who knows whom, which addresses are revisited, which vehicles or phone numbers are linked, which people should be prioritised and which environments are considered risky

If the analysis gets it wrong, the consequence can still be real: more checks, tougher assessments, more difficult contact with authorities, or a person being indirectly treated as a risk without being told why. It is particularly problematic if the system is used in intelligence work where the transparency of the individual is already limited

This is at the heart of the Swedish legal certainty issue. A person can suffer from government action without there being a single clearly incorrect decision to appeal. Instead, the person may gradually be subject to more attention, more checks, or more suspicious behavior. If the basis is a network analysis, a coincidence or an incorrect registry assumption, it will be very difficult to defend yourself.

Risk of discrimination and collective suspicion

Systems based on pattern analysis risk reinforcing existing priorities. If certain neighborhoods, family names, associations, migration backgrounds or social networks are already more controlled, there will also be more data about them. More data can then be used as an argument for more control. In this way, surveillance can create its own evidence.

This is not to say that every single analysis is discriminatory. But it does mean that a democratic state must be able to demonstrate how it counteracts such effects. What are the margins of error? How is the system tested? Who reviews the selections? How to detect if certain groups are more often flagged without factual basis?

Government response leaves a democratic void

The Minister of

Justice's parliamentary response emphasises the Criminal Data Act, internal and external oversight and the role of the Privacy Protection Authority. This is important, but it does not answer the most concrete questions: which data sources are linked, where is data stored, which suppliers get technical access, which automated analyses are carried out and how is accuracy checked?

When the government says that this is the agency's own procurement, a liability loophole arises. Individual police decisions can be reviewed retrospectively, but the societal question is larger: should a Swedish authority be able to introduce analytical tools with very large privacy implications without clear public accounting of risks, limitations and control mechanisms?

Moreover, there is a difference between ex post legal supervision and democratic transparency beforehand. If a system has already become central to the work of the authority, it can be very difficult to back down. Then technology risks creating facts on the ground: the police organise their work around the platform, train staff in it, build processes around it and make themselves dependent on

the supplier.

What the police should report

If the Police Authority uses Palantir, the Authority should at least be able to disclose the following without revealing operational secrets:

Which products are used: Is it Gotham, Foundry, AIP or any other Palantir solution?
What purposes are covered: Is its use limited to certain serious crime, intelligence work, analytical support or broader case management?
Which data sources are linked: Records, tips, open sources, geographic data, communications data, seizures, intelligence data, or other?
Where is the data stored: In Sweden, within the EU, in the police's own environment or in cloud or operational environments close to suppliers?
What access does the vendor have: Can Palantir personnel see data, metadata, logs, model results, or operational information?
How automation is limited: Are there explicit prohibitions on automated decisions, predictive risk classification or biometric connections?
How errors are detected: Are procedures in place to correct incorrect connections, incorrect personal data, and misleading network analytics?

What should be required?

Open disclosure of purposes: The police should disclose the types of cases the system is used for and the types of analysis it may not be used for.
Data protection assessment: Privacy risks, data sources, storage, access and thinning should be described in an impact assessment that can be reviewed.
Provider transparency: It should be clear whether the data is stored in Sweden, within the EU or otherwise, and what technical access the provider has.
Traceability: It must be possible to see in retrospect who applied, which data sources were used and whether the analysis influenced a decision.
Independent control: The IMY, the JO and the Parliamentary Control Authority need to be able to review the technology in practice, not just the regulatory framework on paper.
Ethical supplier vetting: The state should weigh serious human rights charges and military connections when allowing suppliers to build critical analysis infrastructure.
Right to intelligible explanation: If an analysis affects an intervention, decision or registry assessment, the individual should be able to obtain a concrete explanation in retrospect, as far as confidentiality permits.

If you suspect that incorrect information affects you

As a private individual, it can be difficult to gain transparency about law enforcement processing of personal data, especially if confidentiality or ongoing intelligence work is invoked. But you can still work methodically: request documents when there is a specific case, ask the authority to specify what data are the basis for a decision, document contacts and consider complaints to the IMY or JO when transparency

is refused without understandable justification.

The main thing is not to treat AI analysis as magic. A system based on human records, hints and assumptions can also amplify human error. Therefore, any government decision that affects you must be able to explain with concrete circumstances, not with

a black box.

Conveniently, you should save dates, diary numbers, emails, decisions, summons and notes. If an authority suggests that there is data about you but refuses to explain what the data consists of, ask for a written notice and a referral to legal support for confidentiality. It creates a basis for later trial, even when you don't get everything out right away

FAQ: Palantir and the police

What is Palantir?
Palantir is an American data and AI company that collects, structures and analyzes large data sets. The platforms are used in defence, intelligence services, police and

civil service.

What kind of police officer is Palantir?
For police, the system can be used to link tips, records, events, relationships and other data sources to decision support and pattern analysis. Exactly how Swedish police use it is not fully accounted for publicly

Why is Palantir controversial?
The company has ties to military use, intelligence analysis and -- according to international criticism -- technology supplies linked to warfare in Gaza. Swedish AP funds have had large holdings, as reported by SVT

Which Swedish authorities use Palantir?
Public reporting has mainly linked Palantir to the Police Authority. The government's response in parliament points to the fact that the authority itself selects IT providers without a specific

government approval process.

What can I do as a citizen?

Request documents where possible, follow the parliamentary debate, and read our guides on privacy against authorities and police records.

Sources

National Academies: In-Q-Tel, Strategic Investor for the CIA