Utah AG suspends Banjo's state contract after report about its founder's KKK past, suspends use of the surveillance tech while auditing it on data privacy, bias
you should also read his book on police/tech surveillance. https://twitter.com/... Schmaltzing Matilda / @shammaboyarin : Some of those who burn crosses, create massive surveillance tech for the forces. https://twitter.com/... Andrew Gutin / @andrewgutin : Weirdly we keep finding all these connections between cops and white supremacist murderers. Weird. W. E. I. R. D. https://twitter.com/... Drew Olanoff / @yoda : softbank's finest. https://twitter.com/... Corrina Laughlin / @cklaughlin : The CEO of Banjo, who has developed a surveillance apparatus for the state of Utah, was a neo-nazi who planned a synagogue shooting. Can't help thinking of @wewatchwatchers book and other prescient media studies works about the racialized history of tech surveillance. https://twitter.com/... I'Nasah K. Crockett / @so_treu : The grossest of ironies: the banjo is an instrument whose roots lie in West Africa. https://twitter.com/... Isaac Krasny / @isaackrasny : Serious question: do VCs run background checks on founders the same way companies run background checks on employees? https://twitter.com/... @sltrib : The Utah Attorney General's Office will “fully review” a massive state contract with @Banjo after a news report showed its founder, Damien Patton, was once an active participant in a white supremacist group and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue. https://www.sltrib.com/... Heidi N. Moore / @moorehn : Weird how white supremacists keep getting prominent jobs. FFS. https://www.sltrib.com/... @sltribpolitics : Utah Attorney General to review contract for surveillance system in light of founder's KKK past https://www.sltrib.com/... #utpol https://twitter.com/... Brian Merchant / @bcmerchant : As you read this story about how the CEO of Banjo was once a member of white supremacist hate groups, did hate crimes + drove the car during a synagogue shooting, pls think about the quarter-billion dollars investors gave him to develop surveillance tech https://onezero.medium.com/... Timothy Burke / @bubbaprog : weird how every law enforcement-backed surveillance company is manned by a white supremacist huh https://twitter.com/... Blake Montgomery / @blakersdozen : The CEO of the surveillance company Banjo drove the getaway car in a KKK synagogue shooting when he was 17. https://onezero.medium.com/... Ryan Block / @ryan : Hi, Damien. Hi, everyone with a racist, violent past. No, you don't get to apologize and explain away and walk away from your history. It's your story. But we all get to decide whether your story should be part of *our* collective story. I decide: fuck no. OneZero / @ozm : In May 2015, SoftBank invested $100 million into Patton's Utah-based company. Other investors include BlueRun Ventures and Balderton Capital. Banjo now employs nearly 200 workers. http://read.medium.com/5Cyn0Hl Sarah Myers West / @sarahbmyers : Add this to a growing list of surveillance tech companies with white supremacist/reactionary right origins. https://twitter.com/... Siva Vaidhyanathan / @sivavaid : Please do not ignore the deep connections between Nazis and the surveillance industry. This story makes those connections even more clear. https://twitter.com/... Will Sommer / @willsommer : The CEO of a tech surveillance company once helped the KKK shoot up a synagogue. Remarkable story from @MattStroud. https://onezero.medium.com/... Ben Walsh / @bendwalsh : In 1990, “Patton and a Klan leader took a semi-automatic TEC-9 pistol and drove to a synagogue in a Nashville suburb. With Patton at the wheel, the Ku Klux Klan member fired onto the synagogue” https://twitter.com/... Meredith Whittaker / @mer__edith : Holy shit. CEO of Palantir competitor Banjo, “actively participated in white supremacist groups in his youth and was involved in the shooting of a synagogue.” Given who's using this tech - ICE, police, etc. - and who's paying the cost, we can't ignore these connections https://twitter.com/...
Context & Ripple Effects
Banjo had spent months building a state-level footprint: a March profile of its Palantir-like emergency-flagging tools detailed a five-year deal giving it access to Utah's surveillance data. That arrangement collapsed within weeks of an April [[a:953061|OneZero report revealing CEO Damien Patton's neo-Nazi past and involvement in a synagogue drive-by shooting]], which prompted the attorney general to suspend both the contract and use of the technology while auditing it for data privacy and bias.
The suspension lands amid a broader reckoning over unvetted police-tech vendors — earlier this year, Clearview AI's scraping of billions of images for 600+ law enforcement agencies showed how quickly surveillance tools scale before oversight catches up.
First-order effects
- Utah loses immediate access to Banjo's crime- and emergency-detection system mid-contract, and the audit on data privacy and bias puts the five-year deal's terms under formal review.
- Patton's leadership becomes untenable at a SoftBank-backed firm that has raised nearly $223M, forcing the board to address governance, not just PR.
Second-order effects
- Other states and agencies running or considering Banjo-style tools face pressure to re-examine vendor vetting, and competitors like Palantir-adjacent firms can pitch themselves as the diligence-safe alternative.
- Investors including SoftBank face write-down and reputational risk as due-diligence failures on a portfolio company become public, raising the bar for background checks in govtech deals.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, state contracts for AI surveillance will increasingly carry explicit vetting, bias-audit, and data-governance clauses — turning procurement into the de facto regulator of police tech where legislation lags.
- The episode feeds a structural split in the industry between vendors built for public-sector scrutiny and those whose growth outpaces their accountability, with scandals becoming the trigger point for contract suspensions rather than routine review.
The trend: Government buyers are shifting from rapid adoption of AI surveillance vendors to contract-level scrutiny, with vetting failures and bias audits now capable of halting deployments outright.