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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

#241

Post by snowwrestler »

> Cavicchia was in charge of forensic investigations at the bank. Through Palantir, he gained administrative access to a full range of corporate security databases that had previously required separate authorizations and a specific business justification to use. He had unprecedented access to everything, all at once, all the time, on one analytic platform. He was a one-man National Security Agency, surrounded by the Palantir engineers, each one costing the bank as much as $3,000 a day.

I've long thought that the "secret sauce" of Palantir is just that signing a Palantir contract gives executives a reason and excuse to pull together data that had never before been indexed against each other.

I mean, if you take any old dumb BI platform and give it access to data that people have not previously connected, you're going to get new insights.

Someone once described Palantir as a data mapping consultancy that marketed itself as a software platform.

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

#242

Post by TheCoelacanth »

return1 wrote: post #235
TheCoelacanth wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

of course it does. you can choose to create a commune, nobody is going to stop you unless you try to create it on the property they are homesteading in.

I didn't voluntarily agree to respect other people's purported ownership of property. They have authority to keep me off of their property that I didn't agree to. That is a non-voluntary society. Property ownership is inherently non-voluntary, otherwise it isn't ownership.

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

#244

Post by ng12 »

avs733 wrote: post #230
ng12 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Palantir does not do data collection in that sense. They're much closer to IBM than you realize.

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

#245

Post by JasonFruit »

gnode wrote: post #111
ekianjo wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don’t care if the NSA is spying on US citizens because their job is national security Since when is the NSA supposed to spy on their own citizens by default? They should only target individuals that represent risk anyway. (if they were respecting the constitution)

> They should only target individuals that represent risk anyway. (if they were respecting the constitution) If they were respecting the constitution, they should only target individuals for which they have a warrant (assuming we're talking about US citizens). Even then, it's my understanding that this is the job of the police, rather than the military.

Thank you for understanding this. I've been looking for someone to point this out.

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

#246

Post by notacoward »

RedTennisRacket wrote: post #174
opportune wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Law enforcement uses dragnet warrantless surveillance to gather data (such as who is calling whom, who is in physical proximity with whom). That data is loaded into Palantir's software. Law enforcement uses that data to acquire admissible evidence of the perpetrators' crimes. This is the crucial step, because although the original evidence couldn't be admissible in court due to its collection without a warrant, it ca…

You raise several good points, but a few clarifications here: - In our software that we deploy to police departments, generally the origin of any piece of information is tracked, as well as when it was entered and by who. The intention with this is to prevent this (and other) kinds of abuse. Malicious users can still abuse the system and do a parallel construction e.g. outside of our system or maybe in a way that the…

> we have terminated relationships before with very big government agencies when we had doubt about whether our tools would be used for unlawful purposes.

Let that sink in for a moment, folks. Then go back and read this other part.

> trust in the government ... is at the heart of the palantir philosophy

So, at Palantir they trust the government that they know is trying to use their product unlawfully. With all due respect, I think many of us are a little more sparing with our trust.

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

#247

Post by return1 »

TheCoelacanth wrote: post #242
return1 wrote: post #235

Earlier quoted context omitted.

of course it does. you can choose to create a commune, nobody is going to stop you unless you try to create it on the property they are homesteading in.

I didn't voluntarily agree to respect other people's purported ownership of property. They have authority to keep me off of their property that I didn't agree to. That is a non-voluntary society. Property ownership is inherently non-voluntary, otherwise it isn't ownership.

We are off-topic here, and it seems you ve made up your mind already so i ll just leave this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

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

#248

Post by pm90 »

RedTennisRacket wrote: post #231
pm90 wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Of course the exact boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not should be fiercely debated. What makes most people uneasy, and especially those of us who work in tech, is that many police departments and 3 letter agencies have routinely abused the trust that people put in them. If you want the citizenry to have trust and faith in law enforcement, they have to demonstrate a desire to not break constitutional ri…

I think it's important to distinguish between individual abuse and systemic abuse. Every one of those agencies has had, in their history, at least some cases of individual abuse (e.g. one particular individual abusing their power). This is unavoidable (because these agencies employ humans, and humans are assholes sometimes) but as long as the situation is appropriately handled at the organizational level (the respons…

That is an excellent point. Its much more sensational when you have a few bad apples but exposing a rot within an organization isn't as "newsworthy". Besides, if the corruption spreads far enough, it might be able to actively silence its critics (e.g. Nixon's shenanigans).

Perhaps a systemic fear of Government overreach is embedded in the DNA of the American people. I would argue that a healthy criticism is very important; but paranoia can be dangerous and unproductive.

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

#249

Post by RedTennisRacket »

notacoward wrote: post #246
RedTennisRacket wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You raise several good points, but a few clarifications here: - In our software that we deploy to police departments, generally the origin of any piece of information is tracked, as well as when it was entered and by who. The intention with this is to prevent this (and other) kinds of abuse. Malicious users can still abuse the system and do a parallel construction e.g. outside of our system or maybe in a way that the…

> we have terminated relationships before with very big government agencies when we had doubt about whether our tools would be used for unlawful purposes. Let that sink in for a moment, folks. Then go back and read this other part. > trust in the government ... is at the heart of the palantir philosophy So, at Palantir they trust the government that they know is trying to use their product unlawfully. With all due re…

Not every government in every country is of the same quality in terms of e.g. corruptibility and willingness to improve. That's just how it is. It's not too different from other companies that are not expanding into certain regions because they don't consider the region politically stable or developed enough, for instance.

That doesn't contradict the belief that law enforcement is necessary and good.

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

#250

Post by fooblitzky »

saagarjha wrote: post #216
sincerely wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of how Google bans its employees from using code released under certain licenses: https://opensource.google.com/docs/thirdparty/licenses/#bann... I wonder if Palantir has any similar policies?

I find it interesting that Google seems to allow GPL (though they ban AGPL). I know at many companies the GPL is an anathema that would be the first entry on a list like this one.

IANAL, but my understanding is that the GPL only requires you to release source code if you "distribute" the resulting binary. As a web company, most of Google's code would not be considered distributed, only the output of that code. The AGPL was created to close that gag for web companies, probably the reason Google bans it.
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