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Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose

Demonstrate how those programs do keep the country safe. Just because someone wants to do it doesn't mean that it's actually valuable work. ------ "Karp, whose Palo Alto, California-based company provides services to the Defense Department, CIA and FBI, blasted tech companies that refuse work with the federal government to keep the country safe."

zdragnar 8y ago
It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course, he was independent and so had to rely on the publicly available twitter searches, where the expectation is that tweets are public. The good - and terrible - things that could be done with access to what people expect to be private is a far more challenging prospect to justify. And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors.
- toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
  And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.
    - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
      The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in considering the specific unsupported claim you’ve made. Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.
      - zdragnar 8y ago
        Every system is unique, so citing statistics for one won't apply very well to another. Finding the statistics in the first place is going to be a problem as well. It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge. Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human: a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.
- bilbo0s 8y ago
  Just as a matter of optics, some advice would be to provide more "national security" based anecdata. It's just a fact that people are going to look more and more askance at these technologies when they believe that the best example uses involve apparent street level drug dealers as opposed to, say, international terrorists with dirty bombs. And to be fair to layman, one is a law enforcement issue, the other is a national security issue. So if we're talking about using these things for national security, that's one thing in the minds of the critics. (The reasonable critics anyway.) But if we're talking about giving it to every joe blow cop on the street, people are going to be, understandably, uncomfortable. Why? Because I always say, there are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations in this nation. There really is no way a regular person can guarantee that they are in compliance with every one of them at all times. So if we're going to, sort of, "automate" the discovery of which crime any given citizen is committing, people can kind of see where that might lead to a dark, dark place. Or, long story short, most people, quite reasonably, believe that tech like this deployed against street level pot dealers will eventually be used against themselves. With all of the societal implications that entails.
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    They did do some national security related work as well, of course, but I was a bit intentional with the policing aspect. Like any tool, it's not inherently good or bad. That means that we should give it extra scrutiny, because the more powerful it is, the more prone to abuse it could be.
- bane 8y ago
  Interesting comment. My question is, how much of what you saw was Palantir and how much of it was just a set of techniques and a way of thinking? Could somebody have done virtually the same thing with other technologies (e.g. Powerpoint, yED and qGIS?)
  - zdragnar 8y ago
    It was someone who runs a competitor to Palantir, and that was kinda my first point. Textual analysis alone isn't sufficient, you ned a human with an ivestigative, analytical mindset. You do need access to the data and a good way to search and visualize the relationships in the data as well, of course. PowerPoint actually did come into play - its how he presented his analysis to clients who hired him directly tather than buy access to the tool itself.
- poisonborz 8y ago
  This is a very valid, but still a very bad example. If we'd have remote mind reading tech, we could solve even more crimes. Everyone has the theoretical ability, therefore a right to protect his digital data.

zdragnar 8y ago

It's not so much the programs as the analysts who use them (and confirm the outputs) I think. I once had the pleasure of watching one use nothing but twitter posts to map out all the gang territories of Chicago. While he was at it, he found evidence in a murder case and found a picture someone posted of themselves holding an RPG in the city. If I remember correctly, he'd put all of this together in 3 days. Of course, he was independent and so had to rely on the publicly available twitter searches, where the expectation is that tweets are public. The good - and terrible - things that could be done with access to what people expect to be private is a far more challenging prospect to justify. And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors.

toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
And, I think that is a debate worth having. However, it is certainly a forgone conclusion that the programs can and do contribute to stopping bad actors. No... it’s not a forgone conclusion, that’s the very point up for debate. That’s a massive claim made without commensurate evidence, and you’re responding to someone specifically making that point!
- zdragnar 8y ago
  Why believe any evidence I present to you? I'm just a screen name on the internet. I've given one example of how quickly data can be synthesized to new intel. These tools do nothing human analysts haven't already been doing for years- aside from shortening the process from weeks down to a day or three. Frankly, the effectiveness of the tools is the least interesting aspect of the debate. The far more interesting and valuable debate to my mind is the extent to which we, the civilian government, should enable the policing and military powers to use the tools, and at what cost to ourselves.
  - toufiqbarhamov 8y ago
    The excellent thing about citing a claim is that it obviates the need for trust, it’s about demonstration. My default position isn’t to assume that because you’re anonymous and online, you’re lying or misleading me, and supporting a claim with evidence only further reinforces your credibility. The absence of that evidence doesn’t make me consider you dishonest either, I’m just not going to put much weight in considering the specific unsupported claim you’ve made. Beyond that, for the debate you want to have (a good one I think) all parties need more information. I can’t judge the efficacy of a system without dats on its past. Maybe the inherent asymmetry in information between TLA’s and the public makes this impossible in all cases, but not to the extent we currently live with.
    - zdragnar 8y ago
      Every system is unique, so citing statistics for one won't apply very well to another. Finding the statistics in the first place is going to be a problem as well. It's a bit of a catch-22. Discussing the effectiveness of one strategy versus another could easily lead to bad actors changing their communication strategies to avoid what is currently effective. It is, in that regard, not much different than the reason why we don't compare the effectiveness of various secret agents and spies and their techniques in public forums; if we know, so too do others. The very effectiveness relies, in part, in not being part of public knowledge. Finally, I think one point (perhaps the most important in this regard) that you didn't address is that these tools aren't necessarily allowing anyone to do anything new, assuming they had the data in the first place. They've taken what intel analysts were previously doing by hand for many years and automating gathering the data and generating views into it. Both of those save a significant amount of time, but I have yet to see a system that generates something that a human: a) didn't need to verify first by inspecting the source data to confirm, and b) couldn't have come up with given time to do the job by hand The products themselves are only novel in their packaging. The amount of analyses that can be performed has also increased due to the broader array of data that can be ingested, but again, that in itself is only a matter of scale, not novelty.
bilbo0s 8y ago
Just as a matter of optics, some advice would be to provide more "national security" based anecdata. It's just a fact that people are going to look more and more askance at these technologies when they believe that the best example uses involve apparent street level drug dealers as opposed to, say, international terrorists with dirty bombs. And to be fair to layman, one is a law enforcement issue, the other is a national security issue. So if we're talking about using these things for national security, that's one thing in the minds of the critics. (The reasonable critics anyway.) But if we're talking about giving it to every joe blow cop on the street, people are going to be, understandably, uncomfortable. Why? Because I always say, there are hundreds of thousands of laws and regulations in this nation. There really is no way a regular person can guarantee that they are in compliance with every one of them at all times. So if we're going to, sort of, "automate" the discovery of which crime any given citizen is committing, people can kind of see where that might lead to a dark, dark place. Or, long story short, most people, quite reasonably, believe that tech like this deployed against street level pot dealers will eventually be used against themselves. With all of the societal implications that entails.
- zdragnar 8y ago
  They did do some national security related work as well, of course, but I was a bit intentional with the policing aspect. Like any tool, it's not inherently good or bad. That means that we should give it extra scrutiny, because the more powerful it is, the more prone to abuse it could be.
bane 8y ago
Interesting comment. My question is, how much of what you saw was Palantir and how much of it was just a set of techniques and a way of thinking? Could somebody have done virtually the same thing with other technologies (e.g. Powerpoint, yED and qGIS?)
- zdragnar 8y ago
  It was someone who runs a competitor to Palantir, and that was kinda my first point. Textual analysis alone isn't sufficient, you ned a human with an ivestigative, analytical mindset. You do need access to the data and a good way to search and visualize the relationships in the data as well, of course. PowerPoint actually did come into play - its how he presented his analysis to clients who hired him directly tather than buy access to the tool itself.
poisonborz 8y ago
This is a very valid, but still a very bad example. If we'd have remote mind reading tech, we could solve even more crimes. Everyone has the theoretical ability, therefore a right to protect his digital data.