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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

#151

Post by dangerlibrary »

refurb wrote: post #145
dangerlibrary wrote: post #129

> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. Having worked in this field, I can say that this is hilarious overkill. The vast majority (in dollar terms) of Medicare/Medicaid fraud is drug companies misreporting their Average Market Price (AMP), the critical variable in how much they get paid. In 2012, Glaxo settled(!) a small bundle of cases, some of which I worked on, fo…

Medicare fraud goes well beyond price reporting by manufacturers. Physicians can bill for more expensive procedures, bill phantom patients, etc. That's a huge part of the multi billion dollar fraud that Medicare has. I assume being able to identify physicians will outlier billing patterns would be helpful in figuring out where to look closer.

I mean, if you want to get into it, you're both right and wrong.

The second largest cases are typically against hospital chains that encourage (read: basically force) their coding teams to use particular billing codes. It's easy enough to model this from claims data (and we did). When a chain buys a new hospital, suddenly patients that present with the same diagnosis codes are all getting extensive exams that ostensibly require 45+ minutes of a physician's time and cost 4-10x more.

Again - the large operators (hospital chains) absolutely dwarf individuals (doctors). DOJ barely has the resources to prosecute the largest offenders, and have faced repeated budget cuts. Wasting time on individual doctors or private practices (beyond maybe making examples of a few egregious actors) would be an inefficient allocation of their resources.

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

#152

Post by creaghpatr »

dangerlibrary wrote: post #129

> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. Having worked in this field, I can say that this is hilarious overkill. The vast majority (in dollar terms) of Medicare/Medicaid fraud is drug companies misreporting their Average Market Price (AMP), the critical variable in how much they get paid. In 2012, Glaxo settled(!) a small bundle of cases, some of which I worked on, fo…

Medicare fraud is estimated to be around $60B per year or 10% of the whole budget. So if Palantir can decrease that rate by 1 or 2% then it's tough to call that overkill

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/medicare-funds-totaling-60-bi...

>Going even further back, in 1998, a Senate investigation into Medicare fraud found $6 million in payments to a “business” whose fake address would have been smack in the middle of the Miami Airport.

>The report released today shows no improvement, but investigators say it is not that hard to fix the problem.

>ABC News went to one of the locations listed in the report that was on Chicago’s Southside next to a porn shop, with no doctor’s office evident, where Medicare sent nearly $600,000 using an ineligible mailbox shop location as a billing address until 2013.

Seems like exactly the kind of problem Palantir can solve to the advantage of taxpayers.

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

#153

Post by joelcornett »

chatmasta wrote: post #93
dpwm wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 t…

As an aside, education does not scale with the ever increasing number of ways that personal information can “get online”. Additionally, it assumes some degree of privilege as more and more of everyday life moves online. Not everyone can afford to care for their own privacy, and those that do must pay the time, money, and convenience costs associated with it.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

gnode wrote: post #130
pmlnr wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Definitely not, although that specific aspect - you _know_ you're being watched - makes life different, in some way, simpler. The rules are obvious, however, if they change, you might find yourself in a much worse situation, than in the West - for now.

> you _know_ you're being watched - makes life different, in some way, simpler. Arguably, what happens when people are aware of surveillance is one of the worst parts of it. Following the Snowden revelations, there were noticeable chilling effects: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/27/new-s...

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by forgottenpass »

beaconstudios wrote: post #4

Why 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?

"A more productive answer to someone saying something you agree with is “I agree”, not mistakenly berating them for not agreeing sooner."

(https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16627766)

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

#157

Post by zrobotics »

ideophobia wrote: post #106
chillingeffect wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What kind of search filtering options are available for fishing expeditions?

You can search on or around nearly anything. That's one of their selling points to customers. The search function is multi-faceted, in that 1) it can index the data of any files you upload to Palantir (making everything text searchable), 2) Analysts can indicate specific attributes of an entity just by highlighting text in a file and marking it as a DOB or SSN or whatever. 3) The # of attributes is nearly limitless.…

Are there options to restrict search space (i.e. limit data sources that could potentially contaminate an investigation)?

And if so, is that a common practice, or is it more typical to search through all avaliable data for anything potentially useful and weed out later?

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

#158

Post by [deleted] »

creaghpatr wrote: post #152
dangerlibrary wrote: post #129

> The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. Having worked in this field, I can say that this is hilarious overkill. The vast majority (in dollar terms) of Medicare/Medicaid fraud is drug companies misreporting their Average Market Price (AMP), the critical variable in how much they get paid. In 2012, Glaxo settled(!) a small bundle of cases, some of which I worked on, fo…

Medicare fraud is estimated to be around $60B per year or 10% of the whole budget. So if Palantir can decrease that rate by 1 or 2% then it's tough to call that overkill http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/medicare-funds-totaling-60-bi... >Going even further back, in 1998, a Senate investigation into Medicare fraud found $6 million in payments to a “business” whose fake address would have been smack in the middle of the M…

[deleted]

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

#159

Post by thestephen »

> The LAPD uses Palantir’s Gotham product for Operation Laser, a program to identify and deter people likely to commit crimes. Information from rap sheets, parole reports, police interviews, and other sources is fed into the system to generate a list of people the department defines as chronic offenders [...] The list is distributed to patrolmen, with orders to monitor and stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets.

This is pretty much everything I was afraid of when it comes to this field - big data "prediction" being used to predispose people into crime, and by extension, algorithmic racism.

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

#160

Post by musage »

elcapitan wrote: post #142
opportune wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Freedom and democracy are always in a conflict, that's why most democracies have constitutions which put the individuals and their rights first. A total democracy would mean that a majority can override personal freedoms and basic rights of individuals (like, vote about executing your neighbor). Because of that the combination of democracy with a bill of rights has become so commonplace that you don't even notice any…

"in conflict" and "incompatible" are two different things. Observe how this sentence makes zero sense: Freedom and democracy are always incompatible, that's why most democracies have constitutions which put the individuals and their rights first.

Democracy being incompatible with freedom is also something quite different from "mentioning the simple fact that the combination of democracy with a bill of rights has become commonplace".

Your comment as is doesn't really compile.

> A total democracy would mean that a majority can override personal freedoms and basic rights of individuals

As opposed to what, though? If it's opposed to not even needing a majority to do that, what's the big insight?

For example, dictatorships and freedom are in even harder conflict, that's why they don't even have constitutions that put individuals and their rights first. And private enterprise, at least in a vacuum (and when run by sociopaths) doesn't even have the concept of the workers or consumers having any "rights".

If one talks about a 2,5 meter tall person and say they "aren't as tall as they could be", without even mentioning that in comparison to most people they're still freaking tall, that's not the honest mistake of saying something dumb in good faith, it's a rhetorical trick, it's sophistry.

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