5 ms·

Could you specify the things Palantir does that Tableu and other data analysis tools do not?

by ng12 7y ago

somethingtosay 7y ago
I said it already. They make software specifically for tracking populations. Their user manuals were leaked by vice recently. You can look it up. Trying to equate the software described in those manuals, and what we know of their other contracts and products with Tableau is nonsense.
- ng12 7y ago
  > They make software specifically for tracking population They make software for modeling objects. A popular object to model is a person. As technologists we should be a little more immune to the FUD spread by Vice et al.
  - somethingtosay 7y ago
    A gas chamber is just a room for dispersing particles very finely. See I can do it too.
    - ng12 7y ago
      That is _exactly_ my point. Using Tableu to track immigrants is really not much different from using Palantir to track them.
      - somethingtosay 7y ago
        You're point is either extremely naive or willfully ignorant.
        ng12 7y ago
        I don't think you quite understand what Palantir does. It's not the imperious machine for evil you think it is -- the government builds all that stuff in-house.
        okmokmz 7y ago
        Yes, I got the same impression from my discussion with him
        dang 7y ago
        Please don't gang up on another user no matter how wrong they are.
        okmokmz 7y ago
        Stating how I felt about my discussion with a user to another user is not ganging up. He seemed to be defending the company as if he had a personal stake and was acting willfully ignorant. That is an important thing to be aware of, particularly in discussions such as this
        dang 7y ago
        Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments and especially please don't cross into personal attack. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and using this site in the intended spirit? We'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
      - somethingtosay 7y ago
        For some reason I cannot reply to your other comment, so I'll use this one. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. I know what Palantir does, because some of what they HAVE built has leaked into the public. Here's a user manual https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neapqg/300-californian-cities-secretly-have-access-to-palantir https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neapqg/300-californian-ci.... This is just one example among many many examples of them developing software specifically for tracking people. Whether they use their generic data model and build atop it or not, they are knowingly building surveillance software and it is being misused. They know. We know. I don't think it's right. You do. We can disagree.
        ng12 7y ago
        Here's my take: if Palantir were to magically disappear tomorrow nothing would change. ICE would still exist, they would still collect this data, and they would find some other way to analyze it and put it to use -- potentially using technology that's more prone to abuse than Palantir's.
      - somethingtosay 7y ago
        So your base argument is: Palantir is innocent because someone else would do the things they're doing if they were gone? I'm not even sure how to respond to that. You seem to have dropped the point about them making surveillance software now that I have provided an example. You're on to excusing them because someone else could do the awful things they do. That is not a strong argument.
        ng12 7y ago
        If you click the timestamp you can respond inline. I never said Palantir is innocent. I didn't weigh in on the morality of it at all, in fact. My point is just that Palantir is just a data consulting company. I posted this comment in another thread concerning your example: > Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance". How hard do you think it would be to replicate that with Oracle, Tableau, and a few half-decent data scientists? Except at least with Palantir I expect them to do a few important things right, e.g. security. I'll leave my final thought here: if you're really concerned about mass surveillance focus your energy on the people doing the mass surveillance and not the people selling them some nice-looking dataviz tools.
        somethingtosay 7y ago
        Thank you for the help! So we agree that Palantir is not innocent. Why then, do we not go after both the people doing the mass surveillance AND the people enabling it? Intent matters.
        ng12 7y ago
        Because going after Palantir is ultimately futile, even if they were to agree to cease all contracts with ICE very little would change. It is my suspicion that people who think otherwise are doing so out of a misunderstanding of what Palantir's technology actually does.
okmokmz 7y ago
Really? Like specifically marketing and providing mass surveillance solutions to governments? That's a pretty major thing that Palantir does that other data analysis tools do not. Sure, if you want to keep being pedantic and trying to play off what Palantir does you can say they're "just" a consulting company, or "just" a data analytics company, but it's incredibly apparent that they primarily assist governments and organizations with mass surveillance, and trying to argue otherwise is disingenuous. You can try to pass the buck, but it isn't fooling anyone
- ng12 7y ago
  What is a "mass surveillance solution"?
  - okmokmz 7y ago
    Solution: a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation Mass surveillance: the distributive close observation of an entire population, or a substantial fraction of the entire population i.e. a means of observation of a population or subset of a population which is exactly what Palantir does, as has been demonstrated by their leaked documents. Sure, you could probably accomplish something similar with the help of other big data analytics companies, but unlike those companies, Palantir's primary business is aiding in mass surveillance https://southfront.org/palantirs-user-guide-mass-surveillance-made-simple/ https://southfront.org/palantirs-user-guide-mass-surveillanc...
    - ng12 7y ago
      Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance".
      - okmokmz 7y ago
        If you want to continue to be disingenuous and try to play off Palantir as a run of the mill big data company that is fine, but their business model is implementing and assissting with mass surveillance and I don't know a single individual in the field that is aware of Palantir that considers them "just a consulting company" or interchangeable with tableau or something similar as you seem to be arguing

Could you specify the things Palantir does that Tableu and other data analysis tools do not?

by ng12 7y ago

Could you specify the things Palantir does that Tableu and other data analysis tools do not?

I said it already. They make software specifically for tracking populations. Their user manuals were leaked by vice recently. You can look it up. Trying to equate the software described in those manuals, and what we know of their other contracts and products with Tableau is nonsense.

ng12 7y ago
> They make software specifically for tracking population They make software for modeling objects. A popular object to model is a person. As technologists we should be a little more immune to the FUD spread by Vice et al.
- somethingtosay 7y ago
  A gas chamber is just a room for dispersing particles very finely. See I can do it too.
  - ng12 7y ago
    That is _exactly_ my point. Using Tableu to track immigrants is really not much different from using Palantir to track them.
    - somethingtosay 7y ago
      You're point is either extremely naive or willfully ignorant.
      - ng12 7y ago
        I don't think you quite understand what Palantir does. It's not the imperious machine for evil you think it is -- the government builds all that stuff in-house.
      - okmokmz 7y ago
        Yes, I got the same impression from my discussion with him
        dang 7y ago
        Please don't gang up on another user no matter how wrong they are.
        okmokmz 7y ago
        Stating how I felt about my discussion with a user to another user is not ganging up. He seemed to be defending the company as if he had a personal stake and was acting willfully ignorant. That is an important thing to be aware of, particularly in discussions such as this
      - dang 7y ago
        Maybe so, but please don't post unsubstantive comments and especially please don't cross into personal attack. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and using this site in the intended spirit? We'd be grateful. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - somethingtosay 7y ago
      For some reason I cannot reply to your other comment, so I'll use this one. I think we're going to have to agree to disagree. I know what Palantir does, because some of what they HAVE built has leaked into the public. Here's a user manual https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neapqg/300-californian-cities-secretly-have-access-to-palantir https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/neapqg/300-californian-ci.... This is just one example among many many examples of them developing software specifically for tracking people. Whether they use their generic data model and build atop it or not, they are knowingly building surveillance software and it is being misused. They know. We know. I don't think it's right. You do. We can disagree.
      - ng12 7y ago
        Here's my take: if Palantir were to magically disappear tomorrow nothing would change. ICE would still exist, they would still collect this data, and they would find some other way to analyze it and put it to use -- potentially using technology that's more prone to abuse than Palantir's.
    - somethingtosay 7y ago
      So your base argument is: Palantir is innocent because someone else would do the things they're doing if they were gone? I'm not even sure how to respond to that. You seem to have dropped the point about them making surveillance software now that I have provided an example. You're on to excusing them because someone else could do the awful things they do. That is not a strong argument.
      - ng12 7y ago
        If you click the timestamp you can respond inline. I never said Palantir is innocent. I didn't weigh in on the morality of it at all, in fact. My point is just that Palantir is just a data consulting company. I posted this comment in another thread concerning your example: > Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance". How hard do you think it would be to replicate that with Oracle, Tableau, and a few half-decent data scientists? Except at least with Palantir I expect them to do a few important things right, e.g. security. I'll leave my final thought here: if you're really concerned about mass surveillance focus your energy on the people doing the mass surveillance and not the people selling them some nice-looking dataviz tools.
        somethingtosay 7y ago
        Thank you for the help! So we agree that Palantir is not innocent. Why then, do we not go after both the people doing the mass surveillance AND the people enabling it? Intent matters.
        ng12 7y ago
        Because going after Palantir is ultimately futile, even if they were to agree to cease all contracts with ICE very little would change. It is my suspicion that people who think otherwise are doing so out of a misunderstanding of what Palantir's technology actually does.

okmokmz 7y ago

Really? Like specifically marketing and providing mass surveillance solutions to governments? That's a pretty major thing that Palantir does that other data analysis tools do not. Sure, if you want to keep being pedantic and trying to play off what Palantir does you can say they're "just" a consulting company, or "just" a data analytics company, but it's incredibly apparent that they primarily assist governments and organizations with mass surveillance, and trying to argue otherwise is disingenuous. You can try to pass the buck, but it isn't fooling anyone

ng12 7y ago
What is a "mass surveillance solution"?
- okmokmz 7y ago
  Solution: a means of solving a problem or dealing with a difficult situation Mass surveillance: the distributive close observation of an entire population, or a substantial fraction of the entire population i.e. a means of observation of a population or subset of a population which is exactly what Palantir does, as has been demonstrated by their leaked documents. Sure, you could probably accomplish something similar with the help of other big data analytics companies, but unlike those companies, Palantir's primary business is aiding in mass surveillance https://southfront.org/palantirs-user-guide-mass-surveillance-made-simple/ https://southfront.org/palantirs-user-guide-mass-surveillanc...
  - ng12 7y ago
    Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance".
    - okmokmz 7y ago
      If you want to continue to be disingenuous and try to play off Palantir as a run of the mill big data company that is fine, but their business model is implementing and assissting with mass surveillance and I don't know a single individual in the field that is aware of Palantir that considers them "just a consulting company" or interchangeable with tableau or something similar as you seem to be arguing