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The Department of Homeland Security secretary calls leakers a threat to national security and wants to prosecute them.

But much of what the public knows about DHS, which includes its agencies Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection, is thanks to whistleblowers and leakers who have exposed the government’s increasingly unlawful conduct as it aggressively enforces immigration law across the country.

In recent months, a series of major investigations into DHS, ICE, and CBP have relied on insiders who provided documents and information to journalists. Journalists, in turn, published what the public would otherwise never see.

Here are just a few recent examples of the journalism that leaks have made possible:

ICE claims the power to enter homes without a judge’s warrant

In January, The Associated Press reported on an internal ICE memo instructing officers that they could forcibly enter people’s homes to make arrests without a warrant signed by a judge. Instead, the memo claimed that an administrative warrant — issued by the executive branch and never reviewed by a court — is sufficient.

The news story was based on a whistleblower complaint sent to Congress and shared with the AP by an anonymous congressional official. The complaint and memo were later made public.

Because of this reporting, based on a leak, the public learned of a major constitutional violation. ICE is reversing its own past practices and training materials, which had long instructed officers that a judicial warrant was required to enter a home.

Yet, as one legal expert noted, challenging ICE’s new interpretation of the law in court could be difficult, because courts have made it so hard to sue federal officers for violating constitutional rights. That makes public scrutiny one of the few tools available to challenge ICE’s claim that it can knock down your door without a warrant. And that scrutiny is possible only because of a leak.

DHS is labeling protesters “domestic terrorists.”

Journalist Ken Klippenstein has repeatedly exposed internal DHS activities using leaked government documents. One of his most recent revelations shows that DHS has labeled American citizens who protest against ICE as “domestic terrorists.”

According to documents leaked to Klippenstein, ICE branded a Portland, Oregon, man, Chandler Patey, and “countless other American protesters” as domestic terrorists based on minimal and dubious evidence. (The unsubstantiated rumor that Patey is the leader of antifa — whatever that even means — was started by a right-wing influencer, for instance.)

The leaks also revealed a DHS-wide portal that aggregates personal information about alleged terrorists, including protesters, allowing authorities to centralize surveillance of them.

Without sources willing to leak these documents, the public would have no idea that DHS is transforming constitutionally protected activity into domestic terrorism.

ICE’s expanding surveillance state, built with big tech

Some of the most detailed reporting on ICE’s surveillance infrastructure has come from leaks and information via confidential sources provided to outlets like 404 Media and Wired, which have exposed how major tech firms are helping build ICE’s spy tools.

Next time DHS talks about cracking down on leaks, think about all you wouldn’t know without leakers.

404 Media, for instance, recently relied on internal ICE materials to report about a tool developed by Palantir for ICE called “Elite.” Elite helps ICE decide what neighborhoods to raid by mapping the addresses of people targeted for deportation, using sensitive personal information from agencies like the Department of Health and Human Services. 404 Media even published a copy of an internal Elite user guide.

Similarly, Wired relied on confidential sources to report that the Department of Government Efficiency was working on a “master database” in April 2025 to help DHS track and surveil undocumented immigrants, built on Palantir software and stitched together from vast pools of government data. Experts warned of sweeping privacy violations affecting not only those who are undocumented, but citizens, too.

ICE’s propaganda machine

In addition to exposing DHS’s tactics and surveillance, leaks have also revealed how the government is working to shape public perception. In December 2025, The Washington Post reported on ICE’s internal “media machine” using leaked chats and other documents from within the agency.

Those messages showed ICE officials coordinating with the White House to push propaganda celebrating immigration arrests, mocking immigrants in private chats, and selectively curating videos and images to fit a political narrative. They illustrated how ICE is manufacturing and distributing content to flood the internet with its own propaganda and overwhelm independent sources of information.

While many believed, based on what they could see online, that the government was pumping out propaganda, these leaks confirmed it and gave the public inside information about how it operates.

Protect the whistleblowers who make this possible

These are just four examples of journalism — based on leaks — that have been essential to informing the public about America’s growing surveillance state.

These stories share a common thread: Without whistleblowers and leakers, the public would never know how DHS is breaking the law and abusing our civil rights and civil liberties.

So the next time DHS talks about cracking down on leaks, or the government actually prosecutes a whistleblower, think about all you wouldn’t know without leakers. If the government succeeds in silencing leakers and whistleblowers, it won’t make us safer. It will only help the powerful operate in the dark, without accountability.

freedom.press/issues/dhs-calls…

404 Media

2026-01-15 14:03:04

‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid

Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.

The findings, based on internal ICE material obtained by 404 Media, public procurement records, and recent sworn testimony from an ICE official, show the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground. The tool receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) among a range of other sources, according to the material.

The news comes after Department of Homeland Security (DHS) head Kristi Noem said the agency is sending hundreds more federal agents to Minneapolis amid widespread protests against the agency. Last week ICE officer Jonathan Ross shot and killed 37 year old U.S. citizen Renee Nicole Good. During Operation Metro Surge, which DHS calls the “largest immigration operation ever,” immigration agents have surrounded rideshare drivers and used pepper spray on high school students.

“Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) is a targeting tool designed to improve capabilities for identifying and prioritizing high-value targets through advanced analytics,” a user guide for ELITE obtained by 404 Media says. The tool aims to be nearly all encompassing when it comes to finding ICE targets, from identifying subjects in the first place, to building a list of people, to supervisors approving selections for officers to ultimately go into the field and apprehend.

💡
Do you know anything else about this tool? Do you work at ICE, CBP, or Palantir? I would love to hear from you. Using a non-work device, you can message me securely on Signal at joseph.404 or send me an email at joseph@404media.co.

One feature of ELITE is the “Geospatial Lead Sourcing Tab,” according to the user guide. This lets ICE see people it may potentially want to detain on a map interface, based on various criteria such as “Bios & IDs,” “Location,” “Operations,” and “Criminality.” An ICE officer can then select people one by one, or draw a shape on the map to see people in that selected area.

ELITE has already been used by ICE to target specific areas, according to sworn testimony from an ICE official in Oregon. In October, immigration officers waited in three unmarked SUVs outside an apartment complex in Woodburn. They went on to bust a driver’s window and pull a 45-year-old woman from a van, used ICE’s facial recognition app Mobile Fortify on her, and agents had the goal of making eight arrests per team per day, Oregon Live reported. Lawyers representing the woman say authorities arrested her and more than 30 other people in a “dragnet.”

“One of our apps, it’s called ELITE. And so it tells you how many people are living in this area and what’s the likelihood of them actually being there,” a deportation officer with ICE’s Fugitive Operations Unit, identified in court records as JB, testified about the raid in early December. 404 Media purchased a transcript of JB’s testimony from the court. “It’s basically a map of the United States. It’s kind of like Google Maps.”

“It pulls from all kinds of sources,” JB continued. “It’s a newer app that was actually given to us in ICE.” JB said ELITE is what ICE sometimes uses to track the apparent density of people at a particular location to target. “You’re going to go to a more dense population rather than [...] like, if there’s one pin at a house and the likelihood of them actually living there is like 10 percent [...] you’re not going to go there.” For that raid in Woodburn, JB suggested the immigration officers used ELITE to generate leads. Additionally, in a text thread of immigration officers, someone described the area as “target rich,” which JB explained meant the officials had run multiple license plates in that area and found vehicles registered to people “who had either a criminal or immigration nexus.”

Screenshots of the ICE official's testimony. Image: 404 Media.

JB and other officials were testifying in the case of MJMA, the woman pulled from the van during the Woodburn raid. She is being represented by attorneys from Innovation Law Lab.

Once a person is selected on the map interface, ELITE then shows a dossier on that particular person, according to the user guide. That includes their name, a photo, their Alien Number (the unique code given by the U.S. government to each immigrant), their date of birth, and their full address. ELITE notes the source of the address (such as the government agency that supplied it), and gives an “address confidence score.” One address confidence score example in the guide is 98.95 out of 100; another is 77.25 out of 100. This score is based on both the source of the address and how recent the data is, the user guide says. (ICE is paying skip tracers, private investigators, and bounty hunters to help verify peoples’ addresses.)

Those sources can include HHS, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), and “CLEAR.” The guide does not provide any more specifics on what CLEAR might be, but ICE has repeatedly contracted with Thomson Reuters which sells a data product called CLEAR. Thomson Reuters did not respond to a request for comment. HHS did not respond to a request for comment.

The documents don’t say if those are the only entities providing data for ELITE. The user guide says ELITE is “integrating new data sources” to reduce officer workload.

ICE can also use ELITE to look up people based on an unique identifier, such as their Alien Number, name, or date of birth. ELITE also lets ICE do this in bulk, selecting up to 50 people at once, according to the guide.
playlist.megaphone.fm?p=TBIEA2…
ICE can filter the map by what the guide calls Special Operations. These are “groups of pre-defined aliens specifically targeted by Leadership for action.” ICE officers are told to consult ICE leadership or “broadcasts” on when to use these operation filters. DHS’s surge in Minneapolis is focused at least in part on the city’s Somali community after renewed focus on a COVID-19 fraud case. The overwhelming majority of Somalis who live in the Minneapolis and St. Paul area are U.S. citizens, PBS reported.

“These records give us behind-the-scenes insight into the kind of mass surveillance machine ICE is building with help from powerful tech companies like Palantir,” Laura Rivera, senior staff attorney at Just Futures Law, told 404 Media. “When combined with what we know from ICE testimony and other public information, it gives us a blueprint into how ICE is going into communities and identifying people for arrest in real-time.”

Senator Ron Wyden, who represents Oregon where ELITE was discussed, told 404 Media in a statement, “The fact ICE is using this app proves the completely indiscriminate nature of the agency's aggressive and violent incursions into our communities. This app allows ICE to find the closest person to arrest and disappear, using government and commercial data, with the help of Palantir and Trump's Big Brother databases. It makes a mockery of the idea that ICE is trying to make our country safer. Rather, agents are reportedly picking people to deport from our country the same way you'd choose a nearby coffee shop.”
Screenshot of the Palantir contract, via highergov.com.
The ELITE user guide does not say who developed the system. But the tool’s distinctive title—Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement—exactly matches one included in an addendum to a Palantir contract from last year. It says Palantir should “continue configuration and engineering services” for ELITE and some other ICE tools. That supplemental agreement for $29.9 million started in September and is planned to go on for at least a year.

Palantir has worked with ICE for years and was focused on criminal investigations, supporting Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) Investigative Case Management (ICM) system. That changed in the second Trump administration, with Palantir now working on ICE’s deportation efforts.

After participating in a three-week coding sprint, ICE updated an ongoing Palantir contract related to “Enforcement Prioritization and Targeting,” to “support the development of an accurate picture of actionable leads based on existing law enforcement datasets to allow law enforcement to prioritize enforcement actions,” according to an internal Palantir wiki previously obtained by 404 Media. The goal was to find the physical location of people marked for deportation, and Palantir said it believes its work with ICE is “intended to promote government efficiency, transparency, and accountability.”

The leaked material described Palantir’s deportation-focused work as “concentrated on delivering prototype capabilities” and lasting around six months. It left open the room for more work with ICE, and said “Palantir has developed into a more mature partner for ICE.” Documents ICE published described Palantir’s work as building a tool called ImmigrationOS.

More than eight months have passed since Palantir discussed the issue internally. Neither Palantir nor DHS responded to multiple requests for comment.

In their testimony, JB said, “it’s a tool that we use that gives you a probability. But there’s never [...] there’s no such thing as 100 percent.” The user guide adds, “As always, make sure you do your due diligence on each target to confirm removability prior to action.”

How ICE raids in Minnesota connect to a years-old fraud scandal

The Trump administration is using a years-old scandal first prosecuted under the Biden administration to justify its immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

^{David Ingram (NBC News)}

ICYMI

Arizona – Arizona recently passed new state bylaws. We are also actively seeking volunteers to assist with collecting signatures to get Blase Henry onto the ballot. If you are in the Tucson area and are interested in helping out, please reach out!

Candidate News – Hunter Rand has officially made the ballot for his race for Sparks City Council. Hunter, who recently received the endorsement of the U.S. Transhumanist Party, joins Tim Grady as having received endorsements from both members of the All Hands for a Free Future coalition. Love live the Handies!

International – While the rule has previously been implied but not codified, the board officially moved to have any international relations coordinated directly through the Pirate National Committee and not via state parties. The PNC also voted to confirm that we are no longer members of Pirate Party International, voting to leave via unanimous vote. As stated in the Part II of the Through the Spyglass article: We are not members of PPI. This vote was to tie up any loose ends and confirm our departure for the record.

Pirate National Committee – there is a vacancy at the Public Relations Director position following a resignation. The role is expected to be filled by the Feb. 22nd meeting. There will be no meeting next week due to the holiday (Super Bowl Sunday). The Feb. 15th has been moved to livestream, meaning the Feb. 15th and 22nd meetings will both be livestreamed to YouTube.

Volunteers – We are actively seeking volunteers from Arizona, Idaho, Illinois, North Carolina and West Virginia! We are actively seeking volunteers from every state, but we are especially seeking volunteers from those five states.

Special thanks to Ty Clifford, Vice Captain of the United States Pirate Party, for chairing yesterday’s meeting in the absence of the Captain.

uspirates.org/icymi-updates-fr…

Om te beginnen wil ik iedereen onwijs bedanken voor zijn/haar bijdrage en hulp voor het mogelijk maken van deze donatie-actie. Die is met zeer veel waardering en dankbaarheid ontvangen in Oekraïne en door betrokken organisaties. Het is een behoorlijke opgave geweest om alles geregeld te krijgen voordat ik kon vertrekken. Daar heb ik veel hulp […]

Het bericht Verslag netten voor Oekraïne verscheen eerst op Piratenpartij.

Dear Friend of Press Freedom,

Rümeysa Öztürk has now been facing deportation for 311 days for co-writing an op-ed the government didn’t like, and journalist Ya’akub Vijandre remains locked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement over social media posts about issues he reported on. Read on for more of the week’s press freedom stories.

Arrests of journalists Don Lemon, Georgia Fort send unmistakable message

Federal agents arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort on charges related to their news coverage of a Jan. 18 protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, in an outrageous attack on freedom of the press.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said, “These arrests, under bogus legal theories for obviously constitutionally protected reporting, are clear warning shots aimed at other journalists. The unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them.”

“We’ve recently seen that even in the Trump era, public pressure still can work,” Stern added. “It’s time to do it again. News outlets across the political spectrum need to loudly defend Lemon’s and Fort’s rights.”

• Read the statement

Alex Pretti’s murder was an attack on press freedom

The murders of Alex Pretti and Renee Good in Minnesota once again show the power of cellphone footage in combating official lies. Solely because footage was so clear that even the Trump administration knew its story wasn’t credible, the party line shifted within hours of Pretti’s shooting from comments about a “terrorist” planning a “massacre” to something akin to “jaywalking is now a capital offense.”

These days, cellphone videographers are a vital part of the news ecosystem, serving as crucial source material for reporters. FPF’s Stern writes about how shooting, killing, censoring, and other targeting of individuals filming news as it unfolds is an attack on press freedom (and an offense against all else that’s good in the world).

• Read more here

Whistleblower Guan Heng granted asylum

A judge on Wednesday granted asylum to Guan Heng, a whistleblower who secretly filmed Uyghur internment camps in China and shared his footage online after arriving in the United States. His footage became crucial evidence for journalists reporting on the camps, including the team at BuzzFeed News that won a Pulitzer Prize.

We said in a statement that those who spoke out against Guan’s deportation case “should carry that momentum to other fronts in the very active battles for the rights of whistleblowers, journalists, and people who film government wrongdoing, whether in China or Minneapolis.” And we called on the Department of Homeland Security to “give serious thought to why an immigration crackdown supposedly intended to target the worst of the worst is endangering the best of the best.”

• Read the statement

Las Vegas judge doubles down on prior restraints

District Judge Jessica Peterson managed a remarkable feat: Violating the same bedrock First Amendment principles twice in just over a week.

First, on Jan. 13, Peterson issued a sweeping “decorum order” unconstitutionally restricting what journalists could publish about a sexual assault trial. She walked that back after a letter from the Las Vegas Review-Journal, but, eight days later, kicked the paper’s journalists out of court for not agreeing to her censorial demands.

The Nevada Supreme Court quickly struck down the second illegal order on Wednesday. Peterson could have saved herself some embarrassment if she’d changed course after reading Stern’s op-ed earlier in the week — or better yet, if she’d read the FIrst Amendment.

• Read the op-ed

Unpaywalled reporting informed Chicago during ICE invasion

FPF founding board member and native Chicagoan John Cusack wrote for the Chicago Sun-Times about how the city benefited during the Operation Midway Blitz immigration enforcement crackdown from unpaywalled reporting by Chicago Public Media (which owns the Chicago Sun-Times), the Chicago Reader, Unraveled Press, The Triibe, Block Club Chicago, and others.

In other places, though, paywalls “create a two-tiered citizenry — one that can afford to be informed and one that cannot. Those most likely to be surveilled, policed, detained and deported are least able to afford subscriptions.”

His op-ed highlighted FPF’s event last October featuring fellow FPF board member Katie Drummond of Wired and Joseph Cox of 404 Media discussing the business benefits those outlets experienced after unpaywalling.

• Read it here

What we're reading

One year into President Trump’s second administration, press freedoms are under attack

WFAE
FPF Executive Director Trevor Timm explained how attacks on press freedom are growing. Timm’s greatest concern, he added, is that the government may soon cross the Rubicon of “actually prosecuting journalists for doing their job.”

NY Times Magazine writer subpoenaed over article in federal trial

U.S. Press Freedom Tracker
The court should reject prosecutors’ demand that Jeffrey Toobin testify about his reporting. Forcing journalists to testify about their newsgathering chills reporting and undermines the First Amendment.

The best weapon you have in the fight against ICE

The New York Times
Cellphone footage is an incredibly important source of accountability. Government attacks on those who document the news, whether journalists or not, are attacks on the First Amendment.

Illinois law shielding officials’ personal information amid political violence sparks transparency backlash

Chicago Tribune
A new Illinois law that allows public officials to shield their personal information from the public is “basically a sledgehammer” allowing politicians to carry out censorship, FPF Senior Adviser Caitlin Vogus explained.

RSVP here: freedom.press/covering-immigration.

freedom.press/issues/lemons-ar…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

New York, Jan. 30, 2026 — Federal agents have arrested journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort on charges related to their news coverage of a protest at a church in St. Paul, Minnesota, on Jan. 18.

The Trump administration had previously tried to criminally charge Lemon, and it lost.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said:

“The government’s arrests of journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Fort are naked attacks on freedom of the press. Two federal courts flatly rejected prosecuting Lemon because the evidence for these vindictive and unconstitutional charges was insufficient, and Lemon has every right to document news and inform the public. Instead of accepting that humiliating defeat, the government has now doubled down.

“These arrests, under bogus legal theories for obviously constitutionally protected reporting, are clear warning shots aimed at other journalists. The unmistakable message is that journalists must tread cautiously because the government is looking for any way to target them. Fort’s arrest is meant to instill the same fear in local independent journalists as big names like Lemon.

“The answer to this outrageous attack is not fear or self-censorship. It’s an even stronger commitment to journalism, the truth, and the First Amendment. If the Trump administration thinks it can bully journalists into submission, it is wrong. We’ve recently seen that even in the Trump era, public pressure still can work. It’s time to do it again. News outlets across the political spectrum need to loudly defend Lemon’s and Fort’s rights. Journalists are not making themselves the story, Trump is.”

freedom.press/issues/fpf-state…

In Part I, you were asked to keep a simple question in mind: “is this really self-determination?”

You have sat through the history of the French-Indian War, Pontiac’s War, U.S. Independence, and have stewed on what it all truly meant in terms of “self-determination” for a day.

We now could take this in any direction to continue to see the devastating effects of “self-determination” when it is for an in-group and not for everybody. We could look at Australia, and how in May of 1787 (almost three years to the day after the Treaty of Paris was ratified) the “First Fleet” departed in New South Wales as their new penal colony, having lost their original penal colony in North America.

European settlers would not be on Australian land until 1788, themselves not under their own free will. Yet, by 1901, Australia had a “White Australia” policy that restricted Australia from non-European immigration.

Australia was considered “terra nullius”, meaning the land belonged to “no one”.

Aboriginal Australians already lived there.

But to Great Britain, Australia provided another opportunity to send settlers to expand their reach and empire. It mattered not who lived there before; the land was British and her settlers.

At least, that’s how Britain saw it.

To the Aboriginal Australians, they saw an invading force taking their land, flooding it with their own people and destroying their way of life without much in the way of stopping it or defending themselves. Australia was not empty, and yet Britain treated the Aboriginals as though they were not human.

There was not even the farce of signing and breaking treaties; the Aboriginal Australians were considered a conquered “people”, at best.

Is this really self-determination?

We could move onto South Africa, New Zealand, Rhodesia, or any other settler project in the English-speaking world that we might be able to better recognize.

Mind you, this is not an attack specifically on Great Britain; they are merely the European country of focus as the direct continuation of the history of the United States and thus the simplest to look at.

We could move onto Algeria and France, move onto Hawaii, or South American settler expansion in Argentina or Chile.

However, there is one example that cannot be ignored. While the rest of the examples pertain to historical wrongs and sins we can map to and say “this was wrong”, there is an example that one actively should be saying “this is wrong”.

Part I ended with this:

“So what happened? Great Britain allied with a native population to fight a war and immediately turned their backs on them and gave their land away to the settler colonial project without their knowledge, and which the settlers claimed is their God-ordained right to have, leading to apartheid and genocide.”

That brings us to our subject, properly.

On New Year’s Day 1882, Leon Pinsker, in response to pogroms against Jews in Russia, released Auto-Emancipation, advocating for a Jewish state.

Fast forward to 1897, the First Zionist Congress takes place in Basel, Switzerland, headed by Theodore Herzl, head of the now-named World Zionist Organization. The goal of the Zionist Organization was to create a “Jewish homeland”, in which Jewish settlers would come to Ottoman Palestine, specifically, but other ideas were discussed. Palestine was selected for being the “biblical homeland” of the Jewish people.

Waves of Aliyah, or Jewish settlers to the Levant, would follow; from 1881-1939 there would be five Aliyahs.

Then, an ally makes itself known.

During World War I, the Entente of Great Britain, France, Belgium, Russia, later the USA and others, sent young men to die fighting the young men sent to die from the Central Powers of Germany, Austria-Hungary, Bulgaria and, more pertinent to the story, the Ottoman Empire.

Britain and France, once again aiming to expand their empires, began to plan how they would split up the Ottoman Empire upon victory. First, to achieve victory, Britain would promise the Arabs of the Ottoman Empire their recognized independence and Arab state during the McMahon–Hussein correspondence.

Meanwhile, Britain would also promise Lord Rothschild, the most prominent British Zionist at the time, that Britain would support their fight for a Jewish homeland. This was announced in the Balfour Declaration.

After the successful Arab Revolt and the war won, the Ottoman Empire was partitioned according to Britain and France’s Sykes-Picot agreement, giving us what will become modern-day Middle Eastern borders, breaking their promise to the Arabs, and carving out what would be named “British Mandatory Palestine” as a Jewish National Homeland.

The Arabs who allied with Great Britain and the Entente found themselves subjects of the British and French, while Arabs living in the Levant would see the area slowly transformed into a Jewish state.

So what happened? Great Britain allied with a native population to fight a war and immediately turned their backs on them and gave their land away to the settler colonial project without their knowledge, and which the settlers claimed is their God-ordained right to have, leading to apartheid and genocide.

Germany would go on to blame Jews, among others, for the Central Powers defeat in WWI, directly leading to persecution and the rise of antisemitism in Germany, itself leading to the rise of the Nazis.

In 1933, Nazi Germany and Zionist organizations came to the Haavara Agreement, in which approximately 60,000 German Jews would take the opportunity to leave for Palestine. With WWII’s start in September 1939, Britain and Germany would be at war and Britain would cut off Jewish immigration to Palestine from Germany.

Six million Jews would go on to die in the Holocaust, a systematic genocide against the Jews of Europe.

By 1944, a year before the official end of WWII, Zionist extremists would grow angry with and violent against the British for their limiting of Jewish migration to Palestine. The Irgun, a Zionist terrorist organization, would bomb the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.

By 1947, the Jewish settlers would declare the Jewish state of Israel, Arab states would intervene and lose in 1948, and Palestinian Arab Muslims would be ethnically cleansed from their lands. Settlers claimed they were “promised this land.”

Is this really self-determination?

When looking at Zionism, we see what was essentially a nationalism of the oppressed. Jews were facing oppression, discrimination and persecution from European states, and the Zionist solution was for them to have a state themselves and “self-determination”.

Yet, in practice, the Israel settler colonial project, which is something prominent early Zionists like Theodore Herzl or Ze’ev Jabotinsky would not have denied, has led to the displacement of native populations and turned them into second-class citizens. Jewish settlers are granted the rights of first-class citizenry while Arab Muslim Palestinians live in apartheid conditions.

The following is a quote from Abdullah Öcalan in his book Democratic Confederalism:

“The Palestine conflict makes it clear that the nation-state paradigm is not helpful for a solution. There has been much bloodshed; what remains is the difficult legacy of seemingly irresolvable problems. The Israel-Palestine example shows the complete failure of the capitalist modernity and the nation-state.”

The nation-state with a preferred people or in-group will never be a just cause. Nationalism of the oppressed still ends in such a predicament in practice.

One must realize nationalism of the oppressed is still nationalism. The plight of the oppressed must be addressed and rectified, but to answer with “give them their own country” is not the solution one should seek.

Sikhs have historically oppressed and persecuted, and they call for the Sikh nation-state of “Khalistan”. The Kurds were spliced up in their homeland and left to be a minority in four nations without moving an inch and robbed of their own “Kurdistan”.

It’s hard not to feel sympathetic towards the Sikhs and Sikh self-determination, or the Kurds and Kurdish self-determination, and we in the US Pirate Party wholeheartedly do hold such sympathies, but if the answer is simply “give them a nation-state as well,” ask yourself the question of “is this really self-determination?”

It is not because they are undeserving of self-determination and liberty; all peoples are. But they say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. If we wish to truly stop the violence perpetrated by the nation-state, is answer is to create more, regardless of pure intention?

This is also not to compare the Khalistan or Kurdistan movements to explicitly settler movements like Manifest Destiny or Zionism; this is to say that the path to hell is paved in good intentions.

There are models to explore outside of the nation-state. It is not a sacred concept, and other methods of self-rule must be explored and implemented if we can ever hope for true peace and self-determination.

The Rojava project stands as an example better suited for a model of self-determination, but this does not serve as an explicit endorsement of said model. That is, self-determination does not need to come from the nation-state and the Kurds have already proven that.

The nation-state, one with a set in-group, as history has shown, can quickly devolve into a harborer of violence, no matter how just the cause.

“The history of the last two centuries is full of examples illustrating the violent attempts at creating a nation that corresponds to the imaginary reality of a true nation-state.” – Abdullah Öcalan, also from Democratic Confederalism

In the pursuit of having a “Jewish nation”, the historically oppressed Jews have turned into oppressive settlers in their own right. Israeli settlers did not just force Palestinians from their home at gunpoint historically; they are still actively forcing Palestinians from their home at gunpoint.

West Bank settlers/settlements should sound off alarms just as much as the genocide in Gaza; the displacement of native populations by settlers to create a new first-class citizenry has not been left behind in the 19th or 20th centuries.

That is ethnic cleansing, and it is actively happening today.

The world watches and, while many protest and boycott, the highest powers in the land continue to let sins of the past happen in the present.

So I ask, if it is self-determination only for the Jews, is this really self-determination? If the Palestinian way of life is irrevocably changed due to the influx of new settlers and violence allowed and often carried out by the state, is this really self-determination?

Even if one could argue the Zionist idea started with good intentions, if one granted the benefit of the doubt, it has, in practice, become an ideology of apartheid and genocide.

The United States continuously finds itself the strongest ally of Israel, and one has to wonder: Is that all ideological and geopolitical, or does addressing the wrongs committed by Israel towards Palestinians open the can of worms of how the United States treated, and still treats in many ways, Native Americans? Is the United States willing to address our own apartheid? Can we reckon with the idea that the most impoverished counties in the U.S. are all American Indian-populated counties and reservations?

How can there be justification in 2026 to still call Zionism a “self-determination” project? After witnessing the death and destruction it has caused, it becomes a detached-from-reality position to maintain.

For if self-determination doesn’t include everyone, is this really self-determination?

Regrettably, in the Pirate movement overseas, mainly in Europe, there are folks who take a pro-Israel stance and claim Zionism is Jewish self-determination.

To our “counterparts” in Germany and elsewhere in Europe, and to an international whose leader is intimately involved with the World Zionist Organization, you have lost the plot.

We are not members of Pirate Party International, and we do not stand with those who stand in defense of the bastardization of self-determination.

We are the United States Pirate Party, and in our platform, we advocate for the right to free association and self-determination. People living in a political entity should have the right to maintain, alter or conclude their relationship to larger entities, or join in union, if it is the will of the people.

The will of one cannot be the will of all. So long as the will of the people is ignored, so long as displacement, genocide and apartheid persists, and so long as one’s concept of self-determination fails to answer to true freedom for all individuals, we will never be truly free. You are free to move and live wherever you wish, a person moving from one place to another does not make you a settler, but your moving should not come at the expense or destruction of others.

Not if your end result is the apartheid and genocide of the Native peoples, like how Manifest Destiny led to the ongoing apartheid and genocide of American Indians, and like how Zionism has led to the ongoing apartheid and genocide of the Palestinian people.

Ask yourself, before defending any movement that claims it is: is this really self-determination?

uspirates.org/through-the-spyg…

Pirate Parties International continuously aims to protect basic human freedoms globally. Too often we gaze at the countries where Pirate parties exist, mostly in the developed world. However, we strongly believe that Pirates have a duty to examine problems around the world and attempt to garner international concern. Hopefully we can make a difference!
The issue we want to share with you regards the Taliban’s new Criminal Procedure Code in Afghanistan. A full copy of the 59 page law has been released.

The Taliban’s new Criminal Procedure Code legitimizes slavery and entrenches oppression!

We encourage the international community to read it for themselves (link to the full text on the Rawadari Website) and highlight further its outlandish claims on righteous conduct. From what we have learned already it justifies violence against women and children.

Of course, this region has suffered from decades of destabilizing conflicts and human rights abuses, but the current atrocity particularly bothers us. This code categorizes Afghan society into four classes: scholars, nobles, middle, and lower. Each class will face different punishments for crimes (including many normal acceptable behaviors in developed countries) based on their social status.

This hierarchical class system is discriminatory against minorities. It creates a monolithic definintion of who is a Muslim (a Hanafi) and how he should behave, while also punitively discriminating against women and non-binary individuals in unfathomable ways. It isolates all marginalized groups, such as Shia Muslims and other non-Hanafi sects. As highlighted by the Afghan human rights organization NGO Rawadari this measure exacerbates the humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan, including everything from education to employment to public life.

We suggest two basic frameworks for international collaboration to end the Taliban.

1. Immediate international action by nation states to impose targeted sanctions on Taliban officials. We further advocate for formal recognition of the Taliban’s actions as crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court.
2. Solidarity with Afghan resistance, minorities, and diaspora communities. We must support Afghan human rights defenders who resist this repressive regime. We encourage our member parties to amplify voices like those of Nilofar Ayoubi and Rawadari, who document these abuses. We also encourage the promotion of secure digital tools for communication and censorship circumvention. Finally we advocate support for a strong democratic system with a Pirate party in Afghanistan.

The Taliban’s penal code is a stark reminder that even slavery continues to exist on this planet. If we do not stand up against it, then it could return anywhere. Afghanistan was once a relatively liberal country until the 1970s where western people came to travel and have fun. We hope that we can one day return there, and that all people living in Afghanistan will one day be able to enjoy the basic human freedoms that most of us enjoy.

The following message was prepared by PPI board members. It does not necessarily reflect the views of all of our members, but we hope it does. If any of our members though have competing ideas about this issue or any other issue that they would like us to broadcast, please share them with us. We are happy to broadcast a variety of ideological opinions and diverse issues. Our goal is to create positive communication to solve problems.

pp-international.net/2026/01/s…

There has been a notable absence of a certain topic on the United States Pirate Party website. Something that has been so relevant and so important to the day-to-day for anyone considering themselves “politically involved” that it almost becomes indefensible that nothing has been properly stated on the issue.

Today is a course correction.

There will not be only one topic being tackled today, and by the end of it, dear reader, it’s hoped you understand why this took so long.

Before we can begin, you must keep this question in the back of your mind: “Is this really self-determination?”

In the interest of familiarity, we will first start at a time everyone is familiar with: the American Revolution.

We know the history; Stamp Act, Boston Massacre, tea in the harbor, Shot Heard ‘Round the World, Lexington and Concord, Crossing the Delaware, Yorktown, independence and freedom from Great Britain and the monarchy. Kids are taught this stuff from a young age, and this is how the story of the U.S.A’s founding typically goes.

Less mentioned, if mentioned at all, is the “French-Indian War”, which was actually the North American theatre of the Seven Years War, the first truly world war.

That is where we truly need to begin this story.

The French-Indian War is named as such because the British Army, their colonial settlers, and their American Indian allies fought a war against the French Army, their colonial settlers, and their American Indian allies over the Ohio River Valley; modern day Pittsburgh and the Ohio River.

All that you know to be quintessential Americana was the subject of two European Empires and their colonial settlers attempting to claim land for themselves and their home empires.

The war began when tensions over who controlled the Ohio River Valley boiled over into conflict after a young George Washington (yes, really) and his regiment ambushed, attacked and killed Joseph Coulon de Jumonville, a French officer reportedly sent to warn Washington of their encroachment on French land and was said to be merely on a diplomatic mission.

Again: settlers on this land claiming it to be theirs. French settlers, numbering ~40,000 in 1750, and British settlers, ~1 million, claiming land that they only knew existed with certainty as early as 1503 (when Amerigo Vespucci confirmed it was not Asia they discovered a route to but the New World entirely) for countries that have only had permanent presence on the Américan continent since 1604 (France, Port-Royal) and 1607 (Great Britain, Jamestown).

While the French-Indian War ended in British victory and total control over what was previously French North America (essentially, the Saint Lawrence River, the Great Lakes and Mississippi River and the land around it), it was not the central war to the question of self-determination.

It was the war following the conclusion of the French-Indian War, and the war that would lead to further colonist anger towards Great Britain: Pontiac’s War.

In the middle of all of this, one tends to forget that the European Empires were playing local American Indian populations against one another and signing treaties for protection and monetary gain. Many settlers came to spread Christianity and convert the Natives from their Indigenous beliefs.

Have they been granted the right to self-determination? Is this really self-determination?

Once the more consolatory French were defeated and forced to leave, and once British General Jeffrey Amherst began imposing policies threatening the local population, it was Odawa Chief Pontiac (Obwaandi’eyaag) who realized their way of life in the Great Lakes was in danger.

May 1763, Native Americans attacked multiple forts and drove many British settlers out of the region. Due to this conflict, and out of fear that it could be a perpetual state of conflict between settlers and natives, George III of Great Britain proclaimed there shall be no new settlements west of the Appalachian Mountains in October 1763, and that west of the Appalachians would be designated as Indian Territory.

Remember: that is the land the settlers fought a war over specifically to control.

This, as well as anger imposed over taxes installed to pay off debts of the Seven Years War, would set off a chain reaction that would lead to the colonists declaring independence from Great Britain and seeking their own idea of “self-determination”.

During the Treaty of Paris (1783), which marked the end of the American Revolution (on paper), Great Britain, who had previously treated Native Americans with enough dignity to at least sign and honor treaties, gave away land that wasn’t theirs to give, without any Native American delegation present during negotiations.

After that, the story often falls under the growth of the country, the admission of states and keeping balance in the Union until it fell apart briefly, bloodily. Rarely, if ever, is the story of the American Indian spoken of when talking about the growth of the United States.

Perhaps it is too uncomfortable to think about, but in their pursuit of westward expansion, these descendants of settlers, who twenty years prior called themselves “British”, claimed it was their God-ordained right to claim all the land from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

Manifest Destiny, if you will.

While claiming “All men are created equal”, this country systematically had settlers drive the native population from their homes while many of the settlers also held African Americans in chattel slavery and considered them “property” and “3/5ths a person” for census keeping.

Is this really self-determination?

To restate a point from a previous Spyglass article:

“The United States Pirate Party, as part of our platform, advocates for self-determination. As outlined in our platform: “We advocate for the right to free association and self-determination. People living in a political entity should have the right to maintain, alter or conclude their relationship to larger entities, or join in union, if it is the will of the people.”

When Indigenous Americans cannot trust a treaty signed and continuously is driven from their land, is this really self-determination? When Black Americans are still in chains and treated like livestock instead of your fellow man, is this really self-determination?

To say the United States Revolution was a fight for self-determination and freedom becomes tainted when you zoom out and ask: “for who?”

Because if your version of “self-determination” doesn’t include everyone and is only “self-determination” for the in-group, is this really self-determination?

No. In execution, it looked more like genocide and apartheid. Even our own apartheid was simply called “Segregation” after chattel slavery’s “end”. Even the genocide of American Indian populations is boiled down to “leftist talking points” and dismissed.

So why bring this up? Is it to rag on the United States? Is it to hold up a mirror to the worst aspects of the United States and make the U.S. look bad?

No. In execution, I hoped to point out the worst aspects of U.S. history and say “We cannot change that past but we can learn from it and stop it from happening again.”

So what happened? Great Britain allied with a native population to fight a war and immediately turned their backs on them and gave their land away to the settler colonial project without their knowledge, and which the settlers claimed is their God-ordained right to have, leading to apartheid and genocide.

Oh.

Part II coming tomorrow.

uspirates.org/through-the-spyg…

​At a time when the world is on the cusp of developing technologies that seamlessly integrate into daily life, particularly artificial intelligence, using language as input is a compelling proposition.

Language isn’t just a means of communication; it is a part of culture and identity, something people carry with them wherever they go. Imagine landing in a foreign land, surrounded by unfamiliar sounds, and suddenly hearing a familiar language being spoken. There is an immediate sense of connection, comfort, and belonging. This human response reflects a profound sentiment: Language is one of the forces that anchors human beings culturally, emotionally, and socially.

Linguistic Diversity And The European Dream Of Digital Sovereignty

With 24 official languages, alongside many regional and minority tongues, the European Union stands as a living example of “Unity in Diversity.” Despite such linguistic richness, the European AI landscape is dominated by English and a handful of other majority languages, leaving large parts of Europe linguistically underserved. For example, languages such as Latvian, Irish, and Maltese collectively account for only a small fraction of the datasets used to train the largest commercial models, which means these systems often perform poorly or inconsistently on them.

Having identified this gap, the European Commission launched a new initiative under its Digital Decade Programme 2030 to support the use of more languages in AI. Projects such as the Alliance for Language Technologies European Digital Infrastructure Consortium (ALT-EDIC) and the Language Data Space (LDS) aim to transform how AI is trained across the EU.

Why This Matters: Human and Competitive Edge

With many European languages underrepresented in the current digital landscape, the EU’s approach to embracing and incorporating linguistic diversity into its digital tech plans is a bid to uphold its identity while systematically reducing its dependence on non-EU models. The goal is to foster the EU’s local AI economy and strengthen tech autonomy.

1. Digital Inclusion for All Citizens: When AI tools become operational in native languages, accessibility to the general public is enhanced. This helps close gaps in education, public services, healthcare, legal help, and civic life. It is not just convenient; it is essential for fair access to digital life.
2. Cultural Preservation and Identity: The importance of languages in the history of the human race extends beyond the purview of a set of grammar rules or means of expression to communicate. Languages are cultural identities and a proof of evolution. AI that supports local and indigenous languages helps preserve cultural heritage in the digital world. Ensuring they thrive in technological ecosystems affirms their relevance and vitality.
3. Boosting European Innovation and Competitiveness: Multilingual AI equips European startups and companies with market-tailored tools, reducing reliance on external providers and fostering homegrown innovation. Open models like OpenEuroLLM lower cost barriers, support custom use cases, and help European businesses compete globally on a stronger footing.
4. Strategic Tech Sovereignty: By building its own infrastructure, data, and AI models, Europe depends less on foreign systems that may not comply with local laws, privacy rules, or language requirements. This supports the EU’s goals for digital independence and strength.

A Few Examples From The EU’s Initiatives

ALIA and AINA: Public AI for Spain’s Languages

The Barcelona Supercomputing Center created ALIA and AINA to support Spanish and its co-official languages: Catalan (including Valencian), Basque, and Galician.ALIA provides open language models to encourage innovation and strengthen Europe’s technology and culture. AINA’s goal is to preserve Catalan in the current digital era by providing linguistic and digital resources crucial to processes such as translation, voice assistants, and AI chatbots.

OpenEuroLLM: Multilingual Foundation Models for All EU Languages

Backed by a consortium of research institutions and companies and funded under the Digital Europe Programme, the OpenEuroLLM project is designed to develop a family of open-source Large Language Models (LLMs) covering all official European Union languages, compliant with European AI regulations, and reflecting European values such as transparency and openness.

These models are intended not only for academic use but also for everyday business, public services, and startup innovation, thereby lowering barriers to AI adoption across the EU.

ALT-EDIC and the European Language Data Space

Another cornerstone initiative is the Alliance for Language Technologies EDIC (ALT-EDIC). This multi-country consortium brings together Member States to build a shared infrastructure for language technologies, including data collection, model development, evaluation, and ecosystem support.

Complementing this is the Language Data Space (LDS), a data ecosystem funded under the Digital Europe Programme that facilitates access to multilingual linguistic data for innovation. Together, these efforts address a core challenge: many European languages lack the volume and quality of digital data needed to train robust AI models.

EU Institutional Language Models & Multilingual Services

The European Commission is also developing AI services and models through its institutional channels — for example, efforts to build an EU-wide large language model that supports all official languages and serves public administrations, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), civil society, and academia. These include initiatives like:

• eTranslation (neural machine translation)
• eSummary (automated multilingual summarisation)
• eBriefing (draft document creation) All part of the Digital Europe AI ecosystem and contributing to multilingual public AI services.

Facing the Challenges

No discussion of ambitious AI policy is complete without acknowledging the hurdles:

• Data Scarcity: Many regional languages lack enough high-quality digital data — a core ingredient of powerful AI. Initiatives like ALT-EDIC help, but the work is long and resource-intensive.
• Compute and Energy Costs: Training large, multilingual models requires substantial compute and energy resources. Europe’s infrastructure investment must go hand in hand with sustainability commitments.
• Global Competition: While Europe’s strategy emphasizes openness, values, and inclusion, the global AI landscape is fiercely competitive, with U.S. and Chinese companies investing in vast proprietary systems. Investments such as those under Horizon Europe and Digital Europe are bridging gaps, but the challenge remains significant.
• Coordination and Scale: A shared pan-European approach requires alignment across 27 Member States, each with distinct languages, cultures, priorities, and capacities.

Conclusion: A Future Built for People and Purpose

Europe’s push for linguistic diversity in AI is more than a policy shift influenced by geopolitical changes. It’s a recognition that technology must reflect who we are: culturally, socially,y and democratically. This is a reminder that policies and investments should center not only on innovation but also on the people whose lives are shaped by the languages they speak.

From ALIA’s regional focus to EU-wide initiatives such as OpenEuroLLM and ALT-EDIC, Europe is working toward a future in which AI is inclusive, human-centred, and sovereign, and in which linguistic diversity isn’t an afterthought but a foundational strength.

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europeanpirates.eu/embracing-l…

Our next PPI board meeting will take place on Tuesday, February 10th at 17:00 UTC / 18:00 CET.

All official PPI proceedings, board meetings included, are open to the public. Feel free to stop by. We’ll be happy to have you.

Where:jitsi.pirati.cz/PPI-Board

Agenda: Pad: https://etherpad.pp-international.net/p/feb10-2026boardmeeting-qjxl0re

All of our meetings are posted to our calendar: pp-international.net/calendar/

We look forward to seeing visitors.

Thank you for your support,

The Board of PPI

pp-international.net/2026/01/u…

New York, Jan. 28, 2026 — A judge reportedly granted asylum today to Guan Heng, a whistleblower who secretly filmed Uyghur internment camps in China and shared his footage online after arriving in the United States. The footage he captured became crucial evidence for journalists reporting on the camps, including the team at BuzzFeed News that won a Pulitzer Prize.

The Department of Homeland Security has 30 days to appeal, during which time Guan will remain in detention. Guan and his relatives have said that if he is deported to China, his life would be in serious jeopardy.

Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) Chief of Advocacy Seth Stern said:

“This ruling is evidence that even in today’s environment, public pressure still works. All of the journalists, activists, editorial board members, and others who spoke out about Guan’s case deserve enormous credit. They should carry that momentum to other fronts in the very active battles for the rights of whistleblowers, journalists, and people who film government wrongdoing, whether in China or Minneapolis. DHS should not wait the full 30 days to drop this case. It should announce immediately that it will not appeal, so Guan can walk free. And it should give serious thought to why an immigration crackdown supposedly intended to target the worst of the worst is endangering the best of the best.”

Please contact us if you would like further comment.

freedom.press/issues/whistlebl…

Every Thursday of the week, Bastian’s Night is broadcast from 21:30 CET.

Bastian’s Night is a live talk show in German with lots of music, a weekly round-up of news from around the world, and a glimpse into the host’s crazy week in the pirate movement.

If you want to read more about @BastianBB: –> This way

piratesonair.net/bastians-nigh…