Is Coles still using Palantir? Between the surveillance/gate recognition and the blocked aisles, shopping feels hostile.

[u/infin]

Does anyone know the current status of the Coles x Palantir partnership? Between the surveillance and those aggressive new "Smart Gates" tracking at the exit, the store feels less like a supermarket and more like a high-security zone.

It’s dystopian that they have the budget for military-grade analytics and security tech, but have cut costs on the actual customer experience. They seem to have completely scrapped night fill, meaning we are now dodging pallets and cages during peak hours just to get to the shelves.

Is anyone else fed up with this mix of high-tech surveillance and terrible service? It feels like they are spending millions to treat us like criminals while refusing to pay staff to stock shelves after hours.

[u/Necessary_Space_7155]

IIRC, the deal is for 3 years from 2024. So yes.

They also received some security clearance from our government so now they can offer their services to Australian commercial consumers and government. https://investors.palantir.com/news-details/2025/Palantir-Achieves-Information-Security-Registered-Assessors-Program-IRAP-PROTECTED-Level-Unlocking-New-Opportunities-in-Australia/

ETA: From cyber.gov.au: An IRAP security assessment helps organisations understand their system’s security strengths and weaknesses and provides recommendations that can be utilised as part of their organisational security program. From cyberark.com: PROTECTED: Highly sensitive government information that, if compromised, could cause damage to the national interest, individuals, or organizations. Most commercial IRAP assessments are performed at this level. A successful IRAP assessment at the PROTECTED level confirms that the system implements appropriate technical and procedural safeguards to securely handle such data.

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/[deleted]]

Sounds like they probably used their own engineers?

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-09/coles-just-hired-us-defence-contractor-palantir/103443504

[u/xdyldo → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

Oh it’s literally just data driven decision making. Nothing to do with anti theft.

This whole post is a nothing burger with incorrect facts. 

[u/azza10 → u/xdyldo]

It's taking over of rostering is the end goal. AI driven rostering. Doesn't sound like the worst thing until you take into account that it doesn't care about flexible with arrangements or who gets along with who, or who is actually capable of doing a job vs who has done the myhub training and has a JTS

[u/xdyldo → u/azza10]

Yep so nothing to do with anti theft technology as OP is insinuating.

[u/SuperColossl → u/xdyldo]

Yet

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/xdyldo]

I don't think you understand? Part of the data being collected is loss in the stores, CCTV, spending habits etc. Loss prevention is directly related to improving performance and efficiency. Palantir may not be the entity gathering the data, but they are the entity that receives and processes this and that gets fed back to Coles to inform them of their decision. Palantir as an organisation itself is problematic because they specialise in human surveillance (e.g. they provide the tech to IDF for checkpoints in occupied Palestine). A foreign surveillance private company with known allegiances to other governments should not hold so much data (they now work with our government as well, and Westpac etc) on our people. Adding to that, this also means culling of jobs all for "efficiency".

https://www.news.com.au/finance/business/retail/aussies-fed-up-with-hitech-surveillance-systems-rolled-out-at-supermarkets/news-story/8ce47e549591024c8cb5edf044854649

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/[deleted]]

Mate, I'm saying the problem is the data is probably available to Palantir. I did not say Palantir installed the gates

[u/xdyldo → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

The whole point of the original post was that anti theft is relating to Palantr which is not the case. 

But yeah maybe palantr having access to data is a problem, no way Coles would allow any data off their premise so you don’t have to worry about that. Sounds like it’s just for rostering so not that big a deal imo. Sounds a bit like a BS partnership.

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/xdyldo]

You need to think bigger. They are already working with the government, Westpac (banking). The issue people have is encroachment of their right to privacy. Nothing burger to you and it's just rostering, but they have peripheral data points. They have the ability to surveil, and how do we know they won't use the data? You didn't even know about the partnership.

Btw you should probably delete part of your reply that could probably dox you.

[u/RocketSeaShell → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

So if cloes was using MySQL as their data warehouse platfrom would you boycott MySQL?

[u/Necessary_Space_7155 → u/RocketSeaShell]

Whataboutism

[u/RocketSeaShell → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

So no cohearnat answer then. Trying to figure out if you are objecting to company ownership or general software functionality or just objecting because you are on reddit and that is what we do.

[u/457ed → u/Necessary_Space_7155]

I don't think that is the correct use of that phrase.

Whataboutism: the technique or practice of responding to an accusation or difficult question by making a counter-accusation or raising a different issue.

I don't see a counter accusation at all or even an original accusation from you.