Who's watching while we shop?
Every week, millions of us shop at Coles. We scan our groceries, tap our cards, and go home.
But behind the checkout screens, Coles has partnered with Palantir – a CIA and Trump-linked surveillance corporation owned by a far-right billionaire, whose core business is building AI data and surveillance tech for actors like ICE and the US military.
Coles collects vast amounts of data on us every time we shop. Its own privacy policy confirms it uses video and audio surveillance in stores, collects transaction and purchase histories, and tracks our device identifiers, IP addresses and web/app activity.
And right now, we don't know whether Palantir has access – directly or indirectly – to systems containing our customer data or in-store surveillance feeds.
✍️ This matters. Sign to demand Coles end the Palantir partnership and keep military-grade surveillance tech out of our supermarkets.
But behind the checkout screens, Coles has partnered with Palantir – a CIA and Trump-linked surveillance corporation owned by a far-right billionaire, whose core business is building AI data and surveillance tech for actors like ICE and the US military.
Coles collects vast amounts of data on us every time we shop. Its own privacy policy confirms it uses video and audio surveillance in stores, collects transaction and purchase histories, and tracks our device identifiers, IP addresses and web/app activity.
And right now, we don't know whether Palantir has access – directly or indirectly – to systems containing our customer data or in-store surveillance feeds.
✍️ This matters. Sign to demand Coles end the Palantir partnership and keep military-grade surveillance tech out of our supermarkets.
Supermarkets are essential infrastructure. We buy our groceries there every week. They are not intelligence agencies. They are not defence contractors.
Palantir's software is used to directly enable some of the worst abuses of the Trump regime. It's used by ICE to power data systems that track, target and coordinate detention and deportation operations – and US Senate investigations have linked those operations to family separations with more than a thousand children still not reunited.
Its tech was also used to plan the illegal attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro that reportedly left more than a hundred people dead or wounded. And Palantir's founder and chair is the controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel – who's spent vast sums of money promoting ideas and political candidates widely condemned as anti-democratic and racist.
Yet one of the country's largest supermarket chains is embedding Palantir's sophisticated tech in its core operations, while simultaneously collecting detailed surveillance and behavioural data from shoppers.
This combination has the potential to normalise intrusive data practices in everyday life – long before we have robust safeguards in place to protect privacy, fairness and democratic accountability.
Palantir's software is used to directly enable some of the worst abuses of the Trump regime. It's used by ICE to power data systems that track, target and coordinate detention and deportation operations – and US Senate investigations have linked those operations to family separations with more than a thousand children still not reunited.
Its tech was also used to plan the illegal attack on Venezuela and kidnapping of Maduro that reportedly left more than a hundred people dead or wounded. And Palantir's founder and chair is the controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel – who's spent vast sums of money promoting ideas and political candidates widely condemned as anti-democratic and racist.
Yet one of the country's largest supermarket chains is embedding Palantir's sophisticated tech in its core operations, while simultaneously collecting detailed surveillance and behavioural data from shoppers.
This combination has the potential to normalise intrusive data practices in everyday life – long before we have robust safeguards in place to protect privacy, fairness and democratic accountability.
We are calling on Coles to:
Add your name to our petition, and we'll keep you in the loop on next steps.
- End its partnership with Palantir
- Publicly clarify what data has been accessed by Palantir
- Commit to keeping defence-grade data-integration systems out of Australian supermarkets
Add your name to our petition, and we'll keep you in the loop on next steps.
SIGN NOW
We deserve to buy groceries without wondering what invisible systems are watching, tracking or profiling us.
I call on Coles to:
- End its partnership with Palantir
- Publicly clarify what data has been accessed by Palantir
- Commit to keeping defence-grade data-integration systems out of Australian supermarkets
72,136 signatures
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