A mid-sized crowd gathered at the corner of Bishop and Queen streets during Monday’s lunch rush, waving signs reading “Palantir Automates Cruelty” and “Palantir Powers the Surveillance State” outside Pacific Guardian Center in downtown Honolulu. The peaceful demonstration targeted Palantir Technologies, the data analytics and artificial intelligence firm that protest organizers say has operated as an unlisted tenant inside the office complex for nearly a year without ever appearing in the building’s tenant directory.
The protest was organized by the ACLU of Hawaiʻi and Indivisible Hawaiʻi, according to Aloha State Daily, with the actual on-the-ground organizing led by Zane Dalgamouni, a Punahou School student. Catherine Titzer, a community field fellow for the ACLU of Hawaiʻi, told the outlet that Palantir has been in Honolulu for about a year and that the protest sought to address what she called a large lack of transparency about the company’s presence and activities in the city. Sergio Alcubilla, the ACLU of Hawaiʻi’s community engagement director, set up a table with signs and organizational information for passersby.
Palantir had reportedly looked to renovate office space at Pacific Guardian Center as far back as September 2025, per reporting at the time from Pacific Business News, but protest members said the company’s name never showed up in the building’s tenant listings. Palantir, which provides analytics and AI tools for government defense, police enforcement, and higher education clients, also operates offices in Washington, D.C., New York, Washington state, and California, along with a presence in Canada, Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Australia. The company changed its primary corporate headquarters from Denver to Aventura, Florida earlier this year, and is now described as a Miami-headquartered software company.
No Heads-Up for City Hall
Honolulu City Councilmember Tyler Dos Santos-Tam confirmed that local municipal leaders received no prior briefings or official notice about Palantir opening a physical office in the city, a gap that left local activists to discover the office space through online job postings rather than any public announcement. Those postings reportedly show Palantir recruiting for high-level military-facing roles in Honolulu, according to Aloha State Daily’s reporting…