See my public commentary in support of AI regulation in Colorado, strong mass surveillance ordinances in Denver, and a mask-ban for ICE in our city.
Note: this public message would not be possible without the investigative reporting of Ken Klippenstein and 404 Media.
TRANSCRIPT:
I was recently talking to a friend from Venezuela when he was telling me the story of the colectivos.
They were (Nicolás) Maduro’s private police force.
“Society collapses,” he told me, “when you can’t trust a policeman more than a thief.
We are now becoming more and more like Venezuela, with untrained armed officers terrorizing our cities. Like Venezuela, whose people have been subject to drone strikes and advanced warfare technologies, we have also become an experimental ground for AI targeting weapons.
A DHS whistleblower recently revealed to Ken Klippenstein 21 different major ICE operations, resulting in over 6,000 apprehensions since June.
From Operation Abracadabra, a covert effort to develop informants amongst immigrants, to Operation Bench Warmer, which spans the deployment of 2,000 intelligence assets across the country.
These show how aggressively ICE is scouring neighborhoods and developing sources to spy on immigrants.
These advanced warfare tactics fund data, surveillance, and physical violence to enforce a terrorizing assault on American communities.
404 Media recently revealed an AI tool by Palantir, a company based here in Colorado called “ELITE”, which among other things uses data from the Department of Health and Human Health Services to build lists of targets and sources from selected geographic locations.
This includes Medicaid data of those receiving health care in the state of Colorado, regardless of their citizenship status.
Using Palantir, an ICE officer could draw a circle around a neighborhood and get up-to-date information on which targets are most likely to be in their homes, echoing AI technologies that were used to follow people to their homes in Gaza.
The DHS is now looking for ways to use private ad tracking information for up-to-date location of tracking of targeted individuals. ICE is setting up traps to capture protesters and scan their faces, potentially for inclusion in a database of domestic terrorists that could be built by Palantir.
Who is going to protect us?
I am an immigrant I am a writer, I am a protester, I am a whistleblower.
All those categories of people have been targets for these AI weapons and technologies. But since I started speaking out, the list of people that are subject to targeting from these technologies has exploded. It has gone from immigrants and Palestinians to op-rep writers, student protesters, and now basically every American that opposes the Trump regime, stands up against fascism, supports trans rights, as of the passage of NPSM-7.
You may not think so now, but you will be next too.
I’m afraid every day for the safety of my community, and I hope you take strong action on AI legislation and support and encourage other representatives in the state of Colorado to do the same.
Thank you.
Credit to Eric Gross for helping, follow his work!
