Surveillance-vendor awards reach 13 in a week, against a weekly median of 1
In the week of Sept. 28, 2026, 13 federal awards went to vendors on PostNewz's surveillance watchlist, compared with a median of 1 award in each of the 13 earlier weeks.
The records show what federal agencies agreed to buy and from whom, which is the starting point for asking whether the software was used and on whom.
USASpending.gov contract records collected by PostNewz show 13 awards to vendors on its surveillance watchlist in the week of Sept. 28, 2026, counted Monday through Sunday. The comparison is the median weekly count over the 13 earlier weeks in the same set, which was 1; those weeks ran from 1 to 4 awards each, and the weeks listed begin June 8, 2026.
The largest award in the week is to Palantir Technologies Inc. for $32,106,349.78, dated Sept. 29, 2026, under award CONT_AWD_70RCSJ26FC0000028_7001_70RTAC26A00000001_7001; its description reads "PROCURE PALANTIR LICENSE FOR SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE." A second Palantir entry, to Palantir USG Inc. for $20,439,958 and dated Sept. 30, 2026, is described as "BPA CALL FOR ELECTRONIC HEALTH RECORD AND AXIOM."
Two more of the week's awards: Cellebrite Inc, $12,794,860, dated Sept. 30, 2026, described as providing "CELLEBRITE PRODUCTS AND SERVICES TO SUPPORT HOMELAND SECURITY INVESTIGATIONS WITH DIGITAL FORENSIC CAPABILITIES"; and Palantir Technologies Inc., $11,380,365.83, dated Sept. 28, 2026, for "LEAD AND CASE ANALYTICS (LCA) - SUPPORT SERVICES" plus training and maintenance.
Three terms matter here. An award amount is an obligation, a commitment the agency has booked, not money already paid out, and the figures above are obligated amounts rather than a contract's potential ceiling value. "Software as a service" means subscription access to software the vendor runs. And an award records a purchase, not proof that the technology was used on the public.
The awards name the vendor, the amount and the award identifier but not what the software did in practice. Records that would address that, such as usage logs, user counts or deployment memoranda, would come from the awarding agency through a FOIA request, the process the library's FOIA.gov how-to guide describes for asking a federal agency for its own records.
Room for disagreement
One week is a short window, and the baseline is a median of 1 drawn from 13 weeks in which the weekly count ranged from 1 to 4, so a single week's count can move far from the median without indicating a sustained change. The records also show obligations rather than spending, and some awards listed in the week are support services attached to software rather than purchases of the software itself.
About the data
Every figure in this story is read from PostNewz's pn_records table (34 rows read Oct 23, 3:08 p.m. HST): Surveillance-vendor awards (watchlist) per week; the week of 2026-09-28 holds 13 against a median of 1 over 13 earlier weeks (pn_records). Prose by Eva Lindqvist (pn93-pnj-v5, model @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017); numbers checked against the rows by the figure guard; neutrality check passed.
Sources
Corrections
- : Correction: The headline wrote a comparison with a median as a change; the figure is compared with the median, not up from it. The headline presented an event from 2026-10-04 as current news. The correct comparison is against a median of 1 award, and the event date is October 4, 2026. An earlier version of the headline read: “Surveillance-vendor awards reach 13 in a week against a weekly median of 1.” An earlier version of the summary read: “In the week of Sept. 28, 2026, 13 federal awards went to vendors on PostNewz's surveillance watchlist, up from a median of 1 award in each of the 13 earlier weeks compared.” Corrected Oct. 24, 2026, 11:36 p.m. HST.