I’ve always thought - I don’t care if the NSA is spying on US citizens because their job is national security. The problem is when those tools trickle down. All of a sudden you have a local cop with too much time on their hands spying on you. But if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t have anything to hide, right? Isn’t that how the saying goes?
Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
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Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#12Is this really surprising? Palantir's value comes from its data not that god awful interface it has.
Really? Because others have frequently claimed the opposite -- that it is a visualization company with the insight to focus on lucrative government contracts.
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#13I’ve always thought - I don’t care if the NSA is spying on US citizens because their job is national security. The problem is when those tools trickle down. All of a sudden you have a local cop with too much time on their hands spying on you. But if you’re not doing anything wrong, you shouldn’t have anything to hide, right? Isn’t that how the saying goes?
Counterpoint: http://magarshak.com/blog/?p=169
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#14Why does the media seem to be publishing so many "well duh" tier articles about various companies at the moment? "Big data company collects big data", "company known for monetising private data collects private data", "political consulting company profiles voters and tries to affect vote". No shit?
Because what is clear to you, isn't clear to Joe public. Oh - and "company known for monetising private data collects private data" isn't the story. People kind of understand that. What they didn't understand is that "company known for monetising private data" actually sold the raw data, rather than using it for its own targeted advertising.
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#15Why does the media seem to be publishing so many "well duh" tier articles about various companies at the moment? "Big data company collects big data", "company known for monetising private data collects private data", "political consulting company profiles voters and tries to affect vote". No shit?
I know this might be a surprise to you, but not everyone knows everything that you do.
I'm not exactly tapping my own research here. Palantir is a big data/spying company, what do you expect from them? Facebook asks you for lots of private data and it's clearly obvious that when you post data on Facebook, Facebook gets that data. So what's the shock that they hold this private data? The only surprising aspect of the current Facebook drama is that they apparently mine your phone for additional data but that's not the main focus of the outcry. Why are people surprised that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy, did political research and affected a voter outreach strategy? None of this requires any real background knowledge, and yet the outcry seems extremely disproportionate to the revelations at hand. It seems like the Snowden reports all over again, where the world was up in arms that an intelligence agency was collecting intelligence.
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#16> As shown in the privacy breaches at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the pressure to monetize data at tech companies is ceaseless
Says Bloomberg, and includes Facebook code on their pages
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#17Why does the media seem to be publishing so many "well duh" tier articles about various companies at the moment? "Big data company collects big data", "company known for monetising private data collects private data", "political consulting company profiles voters and tries to affect vote". No shit?
media will do this about every subject, think of it as the original analytics, if the story drew a lot of attention then another story similar to the first story will also draw attention because people will associate it with the original really interesting story that drew all the attention. Sooner or later the quality and interest of the stories on subject X will decline and people will not react so much to them so t…
Here’s the problem with the journalism industry:
They love to write about scandals and problems. But if you have an actual solution to the problem, they aren’t going to publish it.
You can also see articles on court cases about some scandalous things, but can hardly find out how the case eventually turned out. And so on.
Journalism highlights problems not solutions because that’s what gets the most “outrage reshares”. The exception is some “cool new technology” that can have a story about it, but not as a SOLUTION associated to a lot of PROBLEM stories.
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#18> Aided by as many as 120 “forward-deployed engineers”
This term popping up again made me curious. To my surprise, that's not just some overloaded nickname (what's cooler than styling yourself with a military or martial arts term, right?), that's what they are actually called:
https://www.palantir.com/careers/teams/forward-deployed-soft...
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#19Why isn't there a privacy watchdog that constantly monitors these kind of companies?
I also expect this watchdog to test for data leakage from one site/company to another (e.g. by taking on the role of customer).
They should do this on a frequent basis.
Without this, companies seem to be free to do whatever they want.
Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens
#20Why does the media seem to be publishing so many "well duh" tier articles about various companies at the moment? "Big data company collects big data", "company known for monetising private data collects private data", "political consulting company profiles voters and tries to affect vote". No shit?
Because what is clear to you, isn't clear to Joe public. Oh - and "company known for monetising private data collects private data" isn't the story. People kind of understand that. What they didn't understand is that "company known for monetising private data" actually sold the raw data, rather than using it for its own targeted advertising.
has there actually been any suggestion/evidence that Facebook sells the data? All I'd heard is that companies like Cambridge Analytica were using surveys and Facebook's at-the-time lax data security to scoop up data about the friends of people who answered their Facebook quizzes.