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New Orleans ends its relationship with tech firm Palantir
- zitterbewegung 9y agoI wonder if all they did was parallel reconstruction . None of what was in the article was doable or feasible. Predicting crime like they said they could is just probably another form of profiling but just automated instead . Figuring out influencers in a social network is hard from my experience as an undergraduate researcher and community detection can be done but to predict people’s behavior is quite another. I wonder if any other customers of Palantir will have more fallout if people find out what they are doing ? http://leitang.net/presentation/Community%20Detection%20in%20Social%20Networks.pdf http://leitang.net/presentation/Community%20Detection%20in%2... https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260598010_PREDICTING_INFLUENCE_IN_SOCIAL_NETWORKS https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260598010_PREDICTIN...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- tptacek 9y agoFirst, it's "parallel construction", not "parallel reconstruction". Second, that term refers to the use of SIGINT (or, more likely, aggregates) collected by intelligence agencies to inform law enforcement but not add to evidence available to prosecutors. Despite the scary name, Palantir is not in fact a signals intelligence agency. There is a lot to be concerned about with police department gang member databases, but police departments predict crime routinely. It's a core part of what it means to run a large city police department. You don't allocate patrols uniformly across the city; that makes no sense.
- evan_ 9y agomaybe "parallel construction" is not the right term for this but I think the suggestion is, the investigators may have found the evidence through an illegal method that would not stand up in court and then made it seem like they arrived at the evidence using Palintir or some other legal method.
- tedunangst 9y agoBut the article suggests the opposite? The prosecutor denied using Palantir in that case. That's not the way to whitewash some evidence.
- ineedasername 9y agoNot only that, but there's no indication that use of Palantir would have been illegal in any way in the case, only that if analysis leading to the conviction was obtained with Palantir, then it was withheld from the defendant. Conversely, they argue, if Palantir held no such analytical evidence, then its absence is proof of innocence. That later part if very much a stretch though, as it implies a level of sophistication, if not omniscience, that is not in reality possible.
- bigiain 9y agoIsn't that _exactly_ how parallel construction works? "No, your honour, we didn't use any of those grey-area or outright illegal surveillance technologies, we just got lucky in a random traffic stop. Again. Amazing how all these gang bosses drive around with tail lights out, isn't it?"
- tedunangst 9y agoI could believe that they used illegal Palantir and retconned a search warrant. I could believe they did an illegal search and retconned a Palantir insight. But I'd like to know which claim is being made. Is Palantir the crime or the coverup?
- bigiain 9y agoThese bits of the article stand out to me: "Hickerson, who was sentenced to 100 years in prison, has accused prosecutors of suppressing analytic evidence obtained through the use of Palantir, arguing he had a right to view the evidence if his name surfaced as being affiliated with a gang, or if his name was absent from any analytic data related to 3-N-G." and 'Ken Daley, a spokesman for the Orleans Parish District Attorney's Office, said in a statement Wednesday, however, that Palantir "played no role whatsoever in Mr. Hickerson's indictment and prosecution."' The defence is claiming the investigators used "analytic evidence" obtained from Palantir but are refusing to allow him to view it. The prosecution are claiming Palantir played no role - which is exactly what you'd expect if parallel construction were being used. Related - cynical me considers 'no role whatsoever in Mr. Hickerson's indictment and prosecution' to be exactly the sort of weasel-worded denial you'd use if you had used Palantir information to construct a story explaining how you'd indicted and prosecuted someone based on _other_ evidence that you wouldn't have known about without the unacknowledged Palantir-sourced evidence you'd want to hide from judicial scrutiny...
- rhizome 9y agoSecond, that term refers to the use of SIGINT (or, more likely, aggregates) collected by intelligence agencies to inform law enforcement but not add to evidence available to prosecutors It's not this narrow. Stingrays have been used to create a map of behavior and stuff that is later executed upon. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180110/14482038982/report-shows-us-law-enforcement-routinely-engages-parallel-construction.shtml https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180110/14482038982/repor...
- tptacek 9y agoRegardless of whether IMSI Catchers constitute according-to-Hoyle "parallel construction" or not, Palantir is database software. It's not a SIGINT source.
- rhizome 9y agoThat was just an example about rank and file law enforcement participating in the practice. I don't think "db vs SIGINT" is as distinguishing as you do, not to mention that surveillance work is rife with the words "query" and "selector."
- bigiain 9y agoSeems to me the major ethical problem with "parallel construction" isn't whether or not the information used to identify and detain the suspect comes from a signals intelligence agency, it's the intentional deception by law enforcement investigators and prosecutors of how and why they acquired and discovered evidence. If the NSA illegally (or "legally" as they'd no doubt claim) intercepts private communications, and tells local traffic cops to find a pretext to pull over a particular car and search it - telling the defence and the court that the drugs were discovered in a routine traffic stop is parallel construction. If the tip off comes from Palantir instead of the NSA, and the investigators and prosecutors deceive the court and defence about that involvement - I'd argue it's still parallel construction.
- tptacek 9y agoNo, the problem with parallel construction is that it involves the introduction of tainted evidence into the law enforcement process. The fundamental protection we have against the abuse of surveillance and searches is the Exclusionary Rule, which dictates that the entire chain of evidence that begins with unconstitutional search is off-limits in prosecution. Parallel construction sidesteps that by avoiding the introduction of tainted evidence into cases at all, while still taking advantage of it during investigation. But Palantir is a mechanism for collecting and analyzing evidence, not generating new evidence. It's database software. Policing has been predictive for decades; without Palantir, the police just use even dumber predictive methods.
- Retric 9y agoYour argument assumes absolutely none of the information that Palantir uses is tainted. That's a surprisingly difficult thing to demonstrate, and based on the amount of data analyzed highly unlikely. Thus, the impetus to use parallel construction to sidestep these issues.
- tptacek 9y agoThis is a little like saying that a police department's use of Postgres might be a sign that there's parallel construction happening.
- forapurpose 9y ago> police departments predict crime routinely. It's a core part of what it means to run a large city police department. You don't allocate patrols uniformly across the city; that makes no sense. Predicting crime at the geographic level is much different than predicting it at the individual level, in terms of people's freedom and rights. EDIT: And even on the geographic level, it leads to many abuses including 'stop and frisk'.
- tptacek 9y agoThe problematic policy in "stop and frisk" is the stopping and frisking, not the prediction.
- mulmen 9y agoI'm not sure if I have parsed this correctly. My understanding of stop and frisk is that there is a significant racial bias involved. To me this seems like part of the prediction. In my mind both aspects of stop and frisk are problematic.
- wfo 9y agoI think most opponents of stop and frisk disagree with you: it's both. Police routinely "predict" that black and brown people are criminals, and stop and frisk allows them to act on these predictions without evidence. I think the argument here is that systems like Palantir quickly and easily become a technological proxy for these "predictions" and makes permanent the biases and racism used to create the data sets that drive them. If NYPD set up patrols on wall street to stop and frisk bankers on their way home from work searching for cocaine or evidence of fraud it would be a very different issue.
- akira2501 9y ago> You don't allocate patrols uniformly across the city; that makes no sense. And simply concentrating on areas with "high _reported_ crime" isn't a winning strategy, either.
- zitterbewegung 9y agoOk, the experience I had with Palantir was I saw them at Reflections Projections when they were hiring for a software engineering position. They gave me the impression that not only they performed data collection using an ontology but they also performed inference and also analysis on that ontology. When I also interacted with their software as a trial user their marketing material made it seem like they not only performed data storage of semantic data but also they gave insight to that data. From my impression they not only created databases but also aided in the analysis of the resulting data. I must have been mistaken in my analysis and interaction and they fleeced me. Thank you for correcting me. (Also for the typo correction). I appreciate your insight in this matter also.
- ggg9990 9y agoJust because you weren’t able to identify influencers in social networks as an undergraduate researcher doesn’t mean that Palantir hasn’t figured it out.
- jstarfish 9y agoLink analysis of criminal organizations is something literally every detective knows how to do. I don't understand the difficulty here unless they think finding good marketing candidates on Instagram is anything like a criminal investigation. Cops keep track of your associations (hence why they can no longer force you to show them the contents of your phone; your contact history is juicy intel that used to reveal lots of links!). Modern technology just makes it easier.
- everdev 9y agoIt's amazing how companies can get so big predicting the future. The process is a glorified dart throw, especially in social systems. The variables are always changing, and the effect of reacting to a prediction (like increasing police presence) changes the expected outcome, so predictions become elusive even if initially correct. Also, when the variables like homicides are relatively low numbers, there are huge percentage swings that happen naturally. Macro indicators like weather and per capita income have long been known to be correlated with crime, but trying to predict and proactively reduce it is much harder. The promise of AI and predictive analytics is huge, but it misses the mark in non-closed systems.
- darawk 9y agoAll of those things are true x10 in the stock market, but people still seem to be able to consistently make money. I think you're overstating the difficulty of the problem a bit. There's a lot you can do with simple models to predict crime - they're not perfect, but as long as their users understand that, that's fine.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- drb91 9y agoNobody is more confident than a hedge fund trying to get your cash. It’s still a zero sum game and not really an applicable metaphor here.
- darawk 9y agoThere are a number of quant funds that consistently make money. Most of them are not trying to take anyone's money, because they're not open to the public, because they don't need more AUM.
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago> It’s still a zero sum game Stock markets aren't a zero sum game.
- aresant 9y agoThis article suggests that the Palantir software, regardless of method, was in fact instrumental in identifying a gang leader who was subsequently sentenced to 100 years in prison. And that the reason that it was cancelled was largely due to the public's discomfort with the program, as raised by a previous Verge article, that laid out the potential for civil liberties violations and potential macro ineffectiveness of Palantir's identification methodology. With that in mind it seems like Palantir's largest risk forward is running afoul of due-process for their criminality / policing divisions, not that municipalities won't fall over themselves to hand them billions in fees in the name of efficiency.
- segmondy 9y agoRookie cops making $30k a year have also identified such criminals. Bring sentenced to 100 yrs means nothing and is irrelevant
- geofft 9y agoIt is relevant because that specific conviction caused the public discomfort. (The defendant is claiming that the group he's affiliated with is not a gang, simply a group of acquaintances, and Palantir's analysis caused police to believe it was a gang.)
- ineedasername 9y agoThe article suggests the opposite: The prosecutor contends that Palantir was a non-factor in the conviction, hence its lack of inclusion in material disclosed to the defense. The reason for the contract getting cancelled was also not confirmed or commented on by the city, the article only mentioned "some" that were "leery" of its use because it could be used to connect gang members to others. This is a very vague wording of any concerns about use of Palantir. The article was very light on content here, using words that indicate trepidation but not connected those loaded terms to any explanation. From prior stories about Palantir's lack of efficacy outside of well-resources intelligence and military venue, my guess is that lack of efficacy was the cause for the contract going belly up.
- sly010 9y agoSince we are talking about a technology that basically speculates about people, it's kind of funny that according to the article the "New Orleans Police Department's Director of Analytics" is called Ben Horwitz. Hmm...
- alexilliamson 9y agoWhat are you implying?
- Havoc 9y agoI'd imagine they got the data they needed anyway
- cityofghosts 9y agoand mr palantir got up from his desk, steaming envelopes, and walked down the street, into the future. "ill be a postman" he thought. "wont have to spy on anybody".
- miked 9y agoOf particular concern to some was the use of Palantir as a tool that could aid investigators both in connecting suspected gang members to others in the community, and in identifying people deemed at high risk of either committing gun violence or being the victim of it. ??? Isn't that precisely what the tool is meant to do?