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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

#221

Post by ng12 »

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?

Palantir is a consulting company, plain and simple. They don't do anything IBM couldn't, they just (plausibly) do it better than IBM.

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

#223

Post by ng12 »

OldFatCactus wrote: post #35
ckastner wrote: post #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...

they fear the words "consultant" or "contractor" I think

Yup. And FDE is just a consultant, an FDSE is a software engineer attached to a specific client. A regular SE works only on generic products.

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

#224

Post by ng12 »

avs733 wrote: post #220

Ignoring the enormous argument over whether what I am about to say is legal in the US/America's particularly constructed law... Is it time to consider whether companies who's primary business is the collection, summation, synthesis, and re purposing of information should be defacto illegal? Its not that having the government do this is meaningfully better, but I'm convinced that is a better overall path. The public s…

> Is it time to consider whether companies who's primary business is the collection, summation, synthesis, and re purposing of information should be defacto illegal?

You mean IBM/SAP/Oracle?

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

#225

Post by otakucode »

amelius wrote: post #186
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…

> I certainly wouldn't be able to live with myself if I knew I was writing software with the explicit purpose of being able to track down rebels in Yemen, catch illegal immigrants, and violate the constitutional rights of millions of Americans. Perhaps open-source licenses should explicitly exclude use in certain applications. Even if not legally enforceable, it would serve as a constant reminder to developers who DO…

They certainly are legally enforceable and some software does this already. I can't recall exactly which software it was, but I know I have encountered multiple times software licenses which forbid the softwares use by military organizations or for military purposes, or which forbid government use. Licenses can contain practically anything you like. And thus far, courts haven't been restrictive at all in terms of what can be included.

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

#226

Post by zo1 »

thestephen wrote: post #159

> 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 poss…

For all we know, keeping a closer eye on previous criminals deters them from repeating their crimes. This strikes me as a very benign way of preventing a crime from happening in the first place. Rather than letting it happen, creating a victim and perpetrator, and then having to punish the latter yet again.

At the very least, this should give them the impression that policing is much higher than it actually is. Sounds like a good deterrent to me.

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

#227

Post by otakucode »

RedTennisRacket wrote: post #192
specialist wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you for participating here. "Ultimately trust in the government and that law enforcement ... is a force for good and prevents many bad things from happening every single day, is at the heart of the palantir philosophy." Trust is built on transparency, accountability, responsibility. Can I make FOIA requests to Palantir?

FOIAs are not made to companies, they are made to government entities. But yes, of course you can make FOIA requests to government entities we work with (the law guarantees you this privilege), and about the work we do with them -- reporters do this all the time. In some of the more liberal countries the things we do with the government are even part of public record and you can find contracts and services we provide…

When I send a FOIA request to [insert law enforcement agency here] and ask them to provide me with the source code and data used to classify me as a criminal so that I can determine whether the chain of reasoning holds up, and the law enforcement agency then needs to turn to Palantir to request that source code and data, what response will they get?

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

#229

Post by TheCoelacanth »

return1 wrote: post #179
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anarchocapitalism is authoritarian rule by capitalists, where property is valued above all other rights.

there is no rule or authority in anarchism. ancaps advocate a voluntary society.

Anarchocapitalism does not allow someone to opt out of the concept of property. That is not a voluntary society. Capital owners are the authorities in anarchocapitalism. A truly anarchistic society would have no private property.

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

#230

Post by avs733 »

ng12 wrote: post #224
avs733 wrote: post #220

Ignoring the enormous argument over whether what I am about to say is legal in the US/America's particularly constructed law... Is it time to consider whether companies who's primary business is the collection, summation, synthesis, and re purposing of information should be defacto illegal? Its not that having the government do this is meaningfully better, but I'm convinced that is a better overall path. The public s…

> Is it time to consider whether companies who's primary business is the collection, summation, synthesis, and re purposing of information should be defacto illegal? You mean IBM/SAP/Oracle?

I don't think it is unreasonable within what I said to differentiate the industry that supports data collection and archiving as a broad process (e.g., those you describe) with those that seek and intent specifically to collect and operationalize data about people without fully informed consent.
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