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Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

bloomberg.com

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Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#91

Post by beaconstudios »

xg15 wrote: post #58
beaconstudios wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> Palantir is a big data/spying company, what do you expect from them? How can expect anything of them when I don't even know that company exists, let alone what it does? > 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…

you raise a good point - with the intelligence agencies, I can believe that plenty of people think (or used to think, before Snowden) they are focused on specific valuable targets such as diplomats given that's how they supposedly used to operate before asymmetric warfare, terrorism and sole attackers became the median threat.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#92

Post by 24gttghh »

prepend wrote: post #59

This isn’t Palantir, this is the companies who buy Palantir software. The data from JPMorganChase isn’t visibile to Palantir as an organization, but to the bank. This headline is weird and as accurate as “Microsoft knows everything about you” because the bank uses SQL Server. Or “the Python developers” because python and pandas is used to link a bunch of data together. Since this is Bloomberg, I would expect them to…

This is covered further down in the article:

>The military success led to federal contracts on the civilian side. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. The FBI uses it in criminal probes. The Department of Homeland Security deploys it to screen air travelers and keep tabs on immigrants.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#93

Post by chatmasta »

dpwm wrote: post #86
jonnybgood wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you expand on exactly how Palantir is used for parellel construction?

Let's say I'm law enforcement and I have some information obtained in a way which wouldn't stand up even in the most farcical of courtrooms. What I can do is use surveillance tools to find a way to effectively entrap you, to gather evidence. Think of it like a tip-off that you're not allowed to have. Palantir specialises in providing tools to analyze and aggregate big data. If law enforcement has an interest in it, i…

If the data was sourced from public information that the target willingly posted online, does law enforcement even need to use parallel construction? Couldn’t they use the palantir data to obtain a warrant for more thorough searches?

I too have a problem with business models that invade our privacy. But I think it’s a bit disingenuous to conflate “private information” with information that you voluntarily posted on the internet.

Whatever happened to educating people that what they post on the internet is permanent? Dragnets over public data are a symptom of the real problem, which is lack of user education and understanding of what data they generate and share.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#94

Post by aje403 »

your-nanny wrote: post #73
taneq wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel these issues are orthogonal. There are plenty of nice people who have no commitment to freedom or privacy, and there are plenty of assholes (and even assholes-to-women!) who are also pretty passionate about both.

If they are orthogonal, then the conjunction is maximally informative...

Excellent point, now that you mention it, let's bring Trump and deep learning and 90's grunge into the discussion to form a maximal eigenbasis of discussion

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#95

Post by binarymax »

This isn't surprising. In fact it was expected. This company was born out of the Total Information Awareness mandate by GWB shortly after 9/11. Total Information Awareness means monitoring of everyone and everything. They got contracts and funding and grew to the original vision set in motion 15 years ago.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#96

Post by chillingeffect »

exelius wrote: post #61
opportune wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Values will always be secondary to money in this world.

1. That's a gloomy self-fulfilling prophecy. Try thinking more constructively.

2. Money is a value, so your assertion is a paradox.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#97

Post by 2close4comfort »

jonnybgood wrote: post #52
opportune wrote: post #42

I'm much less concerned with Palantir being used internally by corporations to detect information leaks (although in practice this also means it will be used to quash whistleblowers), since that's at least a viable use for their technology. And it's good that Palantir is pivoting towards less invasive applications of their technology such as supply chain tracking. But the article touches on the biggest issue with Pal…

Can you expand on exactly how Palantir is used for parellel construction?

New Orleans PD...there was an article about it here recently. That is PT/Palantir's vision of the future. It is going to be pretty damn hard to stop once it gets going hopefully Facebook being on the front page of MSN for a couple of days will we a reckoning because the things the average person does not realise would REALLY upset them.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#98

Post by notacoward »

EGreg wrote: post #17
bryanrasmussen wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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”…

> They love to write about scandals and problems.

They particularly love to write about scandals and problems among their rivals. That's the real change here: journalists and bloggers have gone from thinking of Facebook (and other social media) as potential allies to thinking of them as rivals. Negativity sells, as you say, but negativity that reinforces one's view of rivals as evil is especially appealing. People whose own Google Ads revenue is declining because the eyeballs are elsewhere are very highly motivated, both consciously and unconsciously, to write about why those eyeballs are elsewhere when they clearly shouldn't be.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#99

Post by creaghpatr »

jawns wrote: post #72
prepend wrote: post #59

This isn’t Palantir, this is the companies who buy Palantir software. The data from JPMorganChase isn’t visibile to Palantir as an organization, but to the bank. This headline is weird and as accurate as “Microsoft knows everything about you” because the bank uses SQL Server. Or “the Python developers” because python and pandas is used to link a bunch of data together. Since this is Bloomberg, I would expect them to…

Is it really the case that data does not cross boundaries among Palantir clients? And that the algorithms used by any given client are only informed by the data that client provides?

Unless proven otherwise, then that is hearsay.

Re: Palantir is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens

#100

Post by maxerickson »

jondiggsit wrote: post #11

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?

I've always thought that the NSA should respect their statutory mandate and not spy on US citizens.

Why are you comfortable with casual lawlessness?

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