Whether its Palantir or not, it does make perfect sense that the NSA would subcontract this work to a 3rd party. Someone is out there with this contract
Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
151–160 of 168 posts
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#152Palantir has hundreds of employees swarming around downtown Palo Alto. Hundreds. Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something. There is something very weird about the employees in Palo Alto: I never see them at local meetups, events, parties, and such. They are truly strangers who keep to themselves and don't engage with the local community... and very young. I get the feeling they come from afar and…
They don't come from afar. As an ex-dev, I can actually say that most of them come from across the street (Stanford). When I was there, the heaviest represented schools were Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, UIUC, and Cornell.
And no, at least on the core dev team, I can't imagine any of them ever even considering joining the NSA. We did what we did because it was fun. NSA sounds too corporate.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#153Palantir may not be printing this on t-shirts, but they aren't that secretive about what they do.
Let's say you're an FBI agent with a warrant that allows you to spy on Joe Schmo, and any of his foreign contacts (not named individually). And maybe you're doing this because of ties to drug smuggling, so you're allowed to ignore the fourth amendment when dealing with some particular data source, but other sources are only allowed within the scope of the warrant.
Palantir (or at least one of their products) allows querying across those data sources within the bounds of the warrant. So rather than the good old days when "secure in their persons and papers" meant that you could actually keep your data private, with Palantir, the government has moved the position that until a human sees it, it doesn't count.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
This is the first time I've heard Palantir being called paramilitary thugs. Are there specific claims that would substantiate that? (I was an early employee.)
Nope. Admittedly, kind of a cheap shot. Especially the thugs part. However, more broadly, I believe a lot of problem is the asymmetric abuse of rhetorical language by the clever silicon valley execs. Once you have the public using your terms, they're on your terms. It's why the word "surveillance" is so critical to the discussion: People know what it means. "Analytics" and even "privacy" are euphemisms that keep aver…
I am confused. If there are no claims or evidence supporting the usage of the term "paramilitary thugs," then why bring it up at all? "Trying to get some terminology inserted into the discussion" is worthless (and arguably harmful) if there is no justification for such inflammatory terminology.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
A lot of them also obtain US Govt security clearances, and it's a bit of a process to obtain and something of an achievement in and of itself. But the ones I know also take the responsibility seriously, and I can't help but wonder if that influences some of them to spend more time with each other where they don't have to watch what they say, and less with the "outside" world where they have to be a little more on gua…
If you're born and raised in America, with a clean record, and sane, shouldn't getting clearance be easy?
First, in order to get a clearance you have to be sponsored. Companies have a limited number of sponsorship slots allocated to them by the government.
Then, the process behind getting cleared is fairly arduous. You may have a clean record but you have to prove it exhaustively even for the lowest level of clearance -- I believe the application form is on the order of 40 pages. You have to list all of your friends and sexual relations from the past 10 years, for instance, so that they can go an interview every single one of them.
Essentially, being born and raised in america and having a clean record while being sane is just a baseline requirement.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#156Do they hire H1B's? That would be a really quick clue as to whether or not they are doing work for NSA. None of my Indian friends know any H1B that works at Palantir, which is really odd, but maybe other people have different anecdotes.
It could also just be a moral choice. I don't hire H1Bs because I believe we have a sufficient talent pool here in America.
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Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#157Do they hire H1B's? That would be a really quick clue as to whether or not they are doing work for NSA. None of my Indian friends know any H1B that works at Palantir, which is really odd, but maybe other people have different anecdotes.
It could also just be a moral choice. I don't hire H1Bs because I believe we have a sufficient talent pool here in America.
How's that a moral choice though? If anything it's a nationalistic choice, which is totally fine.
To the OP, they do hire H1bs for their commercial products. I know an Australian and Indian working there.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#158Full Disclosure: I'm ex-Palantir Government Dev Ok guys. Let's use Occam's Razor for a second. What's more likely? 1) A company that purposefully goes around blackmailing people to make deals, uses underhanded tactics, and spies on the people, yet is able to hire amazingly talented (and opinionated supporters of the EFF) engineers from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT. Or 2)a company that builds a data analytics pl…
There are subsections within large companies; it's usually unclear to most employees what that subsection really does (that is, if they're even aware of the existence of the subsection to begin with).
Companies try to gauge level of "trustworthiness" and transfer folks higherups feel are trust-able into the subsections where work is done that some may feel is ethically dubious.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personally, I consider the left-wing leadership of the country to be nihilists: they seek to gain self-esteem by destroying others' values (e.g. wealth, rights, etc.). They do it via egalitarian ideology. Hence, egalitarian nihilists. If you have noticed a subtle ideological change between Democrats of the previous "generation" (such as Bill Clinton) and the "Young Turks" of the party (like Obama), this is the differ…
Such Randian nonsense. If the dems are such egalitarians and want to destroy the wealth of others, why do you have growing disparity and retain the Bush tax rates? And if you say Obama has more of this than Clinton, why are wealthy people paying less taxes now than they did in the 90s?
> Such Randian nonsense
What I said is my own opinion, didn't come from Rand.
All the supposed refutations of Rand online are laughably ridiculous, including the popular one by Huemer. Until you provide a reasonable one, please don't dismiss people by linking them to Rand. (And please never dismiss ideas by _falsely_ linking them to Rand, as you did in this case.)
As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#160Earlier quoted context omitted.
Such Randian nonsense. If the dems are such egalitarians and want to destroy the wealth of others, why do you have growing disparity and retain the Bush tax rates? And if you say Obama has more of this than Clinton, why are wealthy people paying less taxes now than they did in the 90s?
> Such Randian nonsense What I said is my own opinion, didn't come from Rand. All the supposed refutations of Rand online are laughably ridiculous, including the popular one by Huemer. Until you provide a reasonable one, please don't dismiss people by linking them to Rand. (And please never dismiss ideas by _falsely_ linking them to Rand, as you did in this case.) As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set t…
> As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally.
If you had been following "negotiations" with Congress (take late 2010 as an example) you'd know that the president basically did a song and dance where he started out pretending he wanted higher taxes and proceeded to leave things exactly the same.
He did not assert his strong position in that. If Congress literally did nothing, taxes would have been raised. He declined to fight for the tax-raising side of that argument and forfeited a superior negotiating position. If he really believed it in the beginning, he did not think highly enough of it to do what he could have.
Edit: removing trollish comment about Rand, because it's bad to flamebait. Let me just say that it was clear to me from your comment that you have been influenced by folks nearing the Rand side of the spectrum, and that you can cease to compare it with Rand but it still comes out awfully similar... Thus I don't hesitate to say, even after your objections, that the comment was very Randian, in the sense that it is Rand-like.