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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

#161
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

if libertarianism is equated with fascism then i believe we have at last reached peak fascism edit: liberatianism is by its nature less demo-cratic because it reduces the "kratos" part of democracy but it is not fascist because it is not authoritarian. anarchocapitalism is its conclusive endgame.

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

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

#162
post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wasn't even thinking about public data. There's a lot of data that law enforcement already collects. What about license plate data, data from IMSI catchers, and leaked data. Add in the publicly available online data and you can supposedly build up quite a profile about them. What if somebody is arrested and happens to have a very convenient data set on a lot of people, such as data used for marketing purposes. Is i…

You bring up a good point. Palantir is not just mining public data, but also organizing data that law enforcement provides to them (like license plate readings). But if law enforcement already has that data, is the problem that Palantir organizes it, or that law enforcement collects it in the first place?

I would argue that law enforcement would have no use for collecting such vast amounts of data without a service like Palantir. So the blame rests on both Palantir and law enforcement

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

#163

this is kind of scary and sad when powerful technology is being misused ...probably it is better to live in China ??? ..the government openly monitoring its citizen instead of spying on them

Reminds me of a friend who said he never wears a condom, because condoms can break.

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

#164

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…

Palantir's repeated forays into politics are a bit troubling as well, particularly when combined with the issues you mention.

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

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I don't specifically remember an option to weed out searching, but I'm reasonably certain there were advanced options that included "does not equal" or "does not contain" type boolean searching. From my experience though, it wasn't common practice to weed out from the start, but rather to start with a general search and slowly narrow it down to the targeted data. A lot of data sources weren't automatically imported, they were more like extended queries. So if I wanted employment records, for example, I had to initiate that as a custom search to query that external system, and pull back the data for the specific individual I was investigating, it was not available in the database by default. But once it was imported and tagged, it was available in any future searches for the remainder of the data retention period.

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

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

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…

> If the warrantless surveillance includes information such as the time and place of where you plan to commit a crime, law enforcement can stop you for a random check on the way there, giving them actual evidence for prosecution.

why is that a bad thing?

If the crime is victimless (such as any drug usage "crime"), then the issue isn't with the police, but with the state defining what "crime" is, and that definition doesn't align with the people's definition.

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

#168
After September 11, thre was a big push for "Visual Analytics," which is basically rebranded statistics plus visual data mining tools. There's a report called Illuminating the Path that lays out the research agenda. I read it in grad school when my advisor was trying to tag everything under the sun as Visual Analytics in an attempt to get access to the Visual Analytics money pot. (We didn't.) It's creepy to see it come back around, fully realized by Palantir.

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

#169

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…

>But the article touches on the biggest issue with Palantir, which is that they seem to be completely fine with allowing law enforcement agencies to use their software for parallel construction I think that any company that works for the government to any degree is considered part of the government and is bound by all rules a government agency/employee would be.

Yes and no.

Government pushes lots of compliance down in contractors and state government, but tends to not push down transparency requirements.

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

#170

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?

I see other responses explaining how surveillance data, itself inadmissible in court, can lead people to evidence that is admissible. That's great, but it still makes it seem like only criminals are at risk. Far from it. It's important to remember that this same parallel construction can be used to strengthen false allegations or convictions, allegations or convictions under an unjust or unreasonable law (e.g. marijuana prohibitions), or discriminatory application of a proper law. Got a political opponent? Use Palantir to discover some little pecadillo, then engage the police/court machinery either to get an actual conviction or - almost as good - a whole bunch of negative PR. It's not just criminals. This kind of thing endangers everyone.
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