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The article is implying there's more to be worried about than there actually is - they didn't mention anything actually "disturbing" but want us all to be conce

The article is implying there's more to be worried about than there actually is - they didn't mention anything actually "disturbing" but want us all to be concerned about the vague threat of city surveillance nonetheless. What does Palantir do? “integrate[s] disparate data sets and conduct[s] rich, multifaceted analysis across the entire range of data.” How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards, fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana. So the data already existed in NYC databases and the crimes they're enforcing already existed. And yet: "the potential for that kind of outright abuse is less disturbing than the ways in which Palantir’s tech is already being used. The city’s embrace of Palantir, outside of law enforcement, has quietly ushered in an era of civil surveillance so ubiquitous as to be invisible." -- total hyperbole! If anything the most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir which is frequently lauded as one of the most elite, selective startups for software engineering positions. It seems to operate in small change relative to all the hype.

guelo 10y ago
If NYC has data that has not previously been used for surveillance and Palantir is enabling them to use it for surveillance ("you're violating the fire code!") then it is ushering in an era of civil surveillance. I don't see what the hyperbole is.
- noamyoungerm 10y ago
  I would argue that the surveillance isn't in how the data is used, but rather in the fact that NYC has that data at all. Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis. What would you say if a human had reached the same conclusion as Palantir by analyzing the same data?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - LeifCarrotson 10y ago
    > Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis. I strongly disagree. In this electronic age, it is unreasonable to to expect companies and agencies not to store data electronically. Isolated, these data points are not illegal - the USPS knows your address, the IRS knows where you work, the DOT knows your license plate - these are all necessary for these agencies to do their jobs. Private companies know stuff too - your phone company knows about calls you make, your ISP knows about sites you visit, your bank knows about purchases you make. Some of these can be forgotten, some are necessary to do business. The problem comes when someone cross-references innocent data to a level that results in an invasve unwarranted intrusion into your privacy. Should we penalize Facebook for keeping our photos? No, that's what we use it for. Should we penalize shopkeeper for recording security videos of their store to help analyze thefts? No, that's within his rights. Should anyone be allowed to correlate all the images with all the security footage to have a camera-by-camera record of the motions of everyone in the city? No, that's a dystopian horror story in the making. The criminal intent is in the analysis, not the storage.
  - rocqua 10y ago
    I agree, but I could see how we might previously allowed some data collection because the dangerous analysis seemed infeasible at the time.
- 15thandwhatever 10y ago
  One of the mentioned uses was tax fraud, however, IBM has been doing this statewide, for years now. https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34304.wss https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34304.wss
  - 15thandwhatever 10y ago
    I also remember a string of commercials from IBM about how they help out police with predictive algorithms, historical analysis, etc. Here's one I was able to dig up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2UjBO22EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2UjBO22EI Why is it quiet when IBM does it, but horrific when Palantir/Big Bad Thiel does it? It's either: a) no one cares about what IBM does anymore, because they're seen as "old school", or b) no one was paying attention before and only now caught wind of it?
    - vkou 10y ago
      c) People assume IBM is dumb, and incompetent. We can rest easy, knowing that they will never be involved in a dystopian nightmare. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
    - tamana 10y ago
      IBM built custom computing solutions for Nazi Germany, so....
titanomachy 10y ago
I thought the numbers seemed small as well, it's probably a foot-in-the-door kind of deal for Palantir. If they can sign NYC, municipal governments follow.
burrows 10y ago
This line of reasoning is almost too ridiculous for a shill. "The planet already had Uranium-238 so Oppenheimer didn't really give us nuclear weapons."
koolba 10y ago
> How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards, fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana. Seriously? Is fake marijuana an actual problem?
- conistonwater 10y ago
  I think that just means contraband lettuce.
  - microtherion 10y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80niKBTm0mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80niKBTm0mg
  - ethanbond 10y ago
    No it's a reference to K2 which has actually been a huge problem in NYC. A month or two ago there were like a couple dozen people hospitalized in a single morning
- 1986 10y ago
  This refers to 'synthetic marijuana' (K2, Spice, etc.)
- rpedroso 10y ago
  Actually yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids They typically cause more severe side-effects than traditional marijuana. There have been a few rounds of subway ads related to synthetic marijuana.
  - Redoubts 10y ago
    And to follow up, with a NYC example: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/k2-synthetic-marijuana-overdose-in-brooklyn.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/k2-synthetic-mari...
- isoprophlex 10y ago
JPKab 10y ago
I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir was paying Gizmodo to publish this article. It's basically a giant advertisement for the image of Palantir as some awesome software company. The reality is the software, once groundbreaking, is now mediocre, and they are a services company which happens to have a software product. Talking about how the NYC government is using it to invade privacy makes it out as if ANY data blending/visualization software couldn't do the same thing. We all know that it could, and that Palantir is bullshit.
- sixdimensional 10y ago
  I have wondered on more than one occasion if Palantir wasn't simply made up of a bunch of people who know how to "work the data/analytics machine" well, supported by people who know how to get government & big business contracts REALLY well. By "work the data/analytics machine", I mean putting together the full spectrum of data analysis tools & people - something that anybody with enough money/time/staff can do - anything from the ETL/stream processing, integrating across different databases, big data processing systems, BI tools/analytical tools, graph processing, search tech, conventional data mining, recurrent/convolutional neural networks, etc. etc. etc. Partially, I say this out of personal experiences, having observed how government & big business is often quite motivated to spend some money, when seeing what they perceive to be "cool" and advanced data/analytics capabilities. That's not saying Palantir doesn't have advanced tech, I am sure they built some pretty cool proprietary stuff. But, just that maybe what they do isn't such a mystery to people who understand how it is done anyway.
  - snowwrestler 10y ago
    They seem to push the notion that they are the proprietors of amazing software for data analysis. Then when you buy them, a bunch of "forward deployed engineers" come in and carefully comb through all your data sources and figure out how to get it all ingested and linked in their software. Which, of course, is actually the hard part of doing data analysis at large organizations! By default, in any large org, important data is fragmented and sitting in silos--and departments defend it that way. Being able to see all that data come together would seem like magic. But it's mostly because of the manual work upfront. Maybe the right way to think about Palantir is a data-aggregating operation that uses marketing to convince large organizations to allow them to aggregate data.
kafkaesq 10y ago
How does NYC use it? Today, fake cigarettes and fire code violations. Tomorrow, aggregating the 1M+ or so surveillance cams around the city. Cross-referenced with facial recognition databases, cell tower logs, social media droppings, what have you. Total hyperbole! It's not hyperbole at all. The most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir It's called "a foot in the door." Palantir knows that the potential of the "smart cities" market is deep and vast. So that's why its initial deals with NYC -- and what better marquee client to have? -- are priced at teaser rates.
- brainfire 10y ago
  Sorry, it's hyperbole.

guelo 10y ago

If NYC has data that has not previously been used for surveillance and Palantir is enabling them to use it for surveillance ("you're violating the fire code!") then it is ushering in an era of civil surveillance. I don't see what the hyperbole is.

noamyoungerm 10y ago
I would argue that the surveillance isn't in how the data is used, but rather in the fact that NYC has that data at all. Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis. What would you say if a human had reached the same conclusion as Palantir by analyzing the same data?
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- LeifCarrotson 10y ago
  > Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis. I strongly disagree. In this electronic age, it is unreasonable to to expect companies and agencies not to store data electronically. Isolated, these data points are not illegal - the USPS knows your address, the IRS knows where you work, the DOT knows your license plate - these are all necessary for these agencies to do their jobs. Private companies know stuff too - your phone company knows about calls you make, your ISP knows about sites you visit, your bank knows about purchases you make. Some of these can be forgotten, some are necessary to do business. The problem comes when someone cross-references innocent data to a level that results in an invasve unwarranted intrusion into your privacy. Should we penalize Facebook for keeping our photos? No, that's what we use it for. Should we penalize shopkeeper for recording security videos of their store to help analyze thefts? No, that's within his rights. Should anyone be allowed to correlate all the images with all the security footage to have a camera-by-camera record of the motions of everyone in the city? No, that's a dystopian horror story in the making. The criminal intent is in the analysis, not the storage.
- rocqua 10y ago
  I agree, but I could see how we might previously allowed some data collection because the dangerous analysis seemed infeasible at the time.
15thandwhatever 10y ago
One of the mentioned uses was tax fraud, however, IBM has been doing this statewide, for years now. https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34304.wss https://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/34304.wss
- 15thandwhatever 10y ago
  I also remember a string of commercials from IBM about how they help out police with predictive algorithms, historical analysis, etc. Here's one I was able to dig up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2UjBO22EI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2UjBO22EI Why is it quiet when IBM does it, but horrific when Palantir/Big Bad Thiel does it? It's either: a) no one cares about what IBM does anymore, because they're seen as "old school", or b) no one was paying attention before and only now caught wind of it?
  - vkou 10y ago
    c) People assume IBM is dumb, and incompetent. We can rest easy, knowing that they will never be involved in a dystopian nightmare. [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - tamana 10y ago
    IBM built custom computing solutions for Nazi Germany, so....

titanomachy 10y ago

I thought the numbers seemed small as well, it's probably a foot-in-the-door kind of deal for Palantir. If they can sign NYC, municipal governments follow.

burrows 10y ago

This line of reasoning is almost too ridiculous for a shill. "The planet already had Uranium-238 so Oppenheimer didn't really give us nuclear weapons."

koolba 10y ago

> How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards, fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana. Seriously? Is fake marijuana an actual problem?

conistonwater 10y ago
I think that just means contraband lettuce.
- microtherion 10y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80niKBTm0mg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80niKBTm0mg
- ethanbond 10y ago
  No it's a reference to K2 which has actually been a huge problem in NYC. A month or two ago there were like a couple dozen people hospitalized in a single morning
1986 10y ago
This refers to 'synthetic marijuana' (K2, Spice, etc.)
rpedroso 10y ago
Actually yes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids They typically cause more severe side-effects than traditional marijuana. There have been a few rounds of subway ads related to synthetic marijuana.
- Redoubts 10y ago
  And to follow up, with a NYC example: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/k2-synthetic-marijuana-overdose-in-brooklyn.html http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/k2-synthetic-mari...
isoprophlex 10y ago

JPKab 10y ago

I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir was paying Gizmodo to publish this article. It's basically a giant advertisement for the image of Palantir as some awesome software company. The reality is the software, once groundbreaking, is now mediocre, and they are a services company which happens to have a software product. Talking about how the NYC government is using it to invade privacy makes it out as if ANY data blending/visualization software couldn't do the same thing. We all know that it could, and that Palantir is bullshit.

sixdimensional 10y ago
I have wondered on more than one occasion if Palantir wasn't simply made up of a bunch of people who know how to "work the data/analytics machine" well, supported by people who know how to get government & big business contracts REALLY well. By "work the data/analytics machine", I mean putting together the full spectrum of data analysis tools & people - something that anybody with enough money/time/staff can do - anything from the ETL/stream processing, integrating across different databases, big data processing systems, BI tools/analytical tools, graph processing, search tech, conventional data mining, recurrent/convolutional neural networks, etc. etc. etc. Partially, I say this out of personal experiences, having observed how government & big business is often quite motivated to spend some money, when seeing what they perceive to be "cool" and advanced data/analytics capabilities. That's not saying Palantir doesn't have advanced tech, I am sure they built some pretty cool proprietary stuff. But, just that maybe what they do isn't such a mystery to people who understand how it is done anyway.
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  They seem to push the notion that they are the proprietors of amazing software for data analysis. Then when you buy them, a bunch of "forward deployed engineers" come in and carefully comb through all your data sources and figure out how to get it all ingested and linked in their software. Which, of course, is actually the hard part of doing data analysis at large organizations! By default, in any large org, important data is fragmented and sitting in silos--and departments defend it that way. Being able to see all that data come together would seem like magic. But it's mostly because of the manual work upfront. Maybe the right way to think about Palantir is a data-aggregating operation that uses marketing to convince large organizations to allow them to aggregate data.

kafkaesq 10y ago

How does NYC use it? Today, fake cigarettes and fire code violations. Tomorrow, aggregating the 1M+ or so surveillance cams around the city. Cross-referenced with facial recognition databases, cell tower logs, social media droppings, what have you. Total hyperbole! It's not hyperbole at all. The most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir It's called "a foot in the door." Palantir knows that the potential of the "smart cities" market is deep and vast. So that's why its initial deals with NYC -- and what better marquee client to have? -- are priced at teaser rates.

brainfire 10y ago
Sorry, it's hyperbole.