4 ms·

So wait. Are they the big bad all-present panopticon, or are they incompetent, inexperienced muppets?

crispyambulance 7y ago
> big bad all-present panopticon, or are they incompetent, inexperienced muppets? Sadly both are possible at the same time in a large well-funded company. If they succeed in getting these contracts from scared governments, they'll be better positioned in the future for more such work. Privacy and freedom "mishaps" will be chalked up to "oh, it was an emergency, we had to do what we had to do."
beagle3 7y ago
No inside knowledge, but by all accounts they seem to be both, and there’s no conflict. An incompetent customer facing layer can enable a competent layer to act with full data and less visibility. The incompetent layer also helps extract finances.
nabnob 7y ago
If a platform involves tracking huge amounts of personal data and then making decisions off of that data, incompetence makes it more dangerous, not less. LAPD has been using Palantir to track people in poor and working class neighborhoods in LA - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel... >The LAPD uses Palantir’s Gotham product for Operation Laser, a program to identify and deter people likely to commit crimes. Information from rap sheets, parole reports, police interviews, and other sources is fed into the system to generate a list of people the department defines as chronic offenders, says Craig Uchida, whose consulting firm, Justice & Security Strategies Inc., designed the Laser system. The list is distributed to patrolmen, with orders to monitor and stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets. At each contact, officers fill out a field interview card with names, addresses, vehicles, physical descriptions, any neighborhood intelligence the person offers, and the officer’s own observations on the subject. >The platform is supplemented with what sociologist Sarah Brayne calls the secondary surveillance network: the web of who is related to, friends with, or sleeping with whom. One woman in the system, for example, who wasn’t suspected of committing any crime, was identified as having multiple boyfriends within the same network of associates, says Brayne, who spent two and a half years embedded with the LAPD while researching her dissertation on big-data policing at Princeton University and who’s now an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Anybody who logs into the system can see all these intimate ties,” she says. To widen the scope of possible connections, she adds, the LAPD has also explored purchasing private data, including social media, foreclosure, and toll road information, camera feeds from hospitals, parking lots, and universities, and delivery information from Papa John’s International Inc. and Pizza Hut LLC. The LAPD have been careful not to cite information from this software in court documents so that its constitutionality cannot be challenged.
- tristor 7y ago
  > The LAPD have been careful not to cite information from this software in court documents so that its constitutionality cannot be challenged. Parallel construction strikes again, sadly.
- tsss 7y ago
  > stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets So organized targeted harassment of innocent people.
  - csb6 7y ago
    Yeah this is some dystopian stuff. Guarantee that people on here will (rightly) criticize non-Western countries for doing stuff like this, but will ardently defend Palantir doing similar stuff because they’re “innovative” or a “tech company”.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
whatshisface 7y ago
Competent when their interests are at stake, muppets when yours are.
GuB-42 7y ago
Having worked with one of their products, as far as I'm concerned, it is the latter. To the point that I am wondering if their "big bad" reputation is not just a publicity stunt to attract wannabe big brothers.

> big bad all-present panopticon, or are they incompetent, inexperienced muppets? Sadly both are possible at the same time in a large well-funded company. If they succeed in getting these contracts from scared governments, they'll be better positioned in the future for more such work. Privacy and freedom "mishaps" will be chalked up to "oh, it was an emergency, we had to do what we had to do."

beagle3 7y ago

No inside knowledge, but by all accounts they seem to be both, and there’s no conflict. An incompetent customer facing layer can enable a competent layer to act with full data and less visibility. The incompetent layer also helps extract finances.

nabnob 7y ago

If a platform involves tracking huge amounts of personal data and then making decisions off of that data, incompetence makes it more dangerous, not less. LAPD has been using Palantir to track people in poor and working class neighborhoods in LA - https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel... >The LAPD uses Palantir’s Gotham product for Operation Laser, a program to identify and deter people likely to commit crimes. Information from rap sheets, parole reports, police interviews, and other sources is fed into the system to generate a list of people the department defines as chronic offenders, says Craig Uchida, whose consulting firm, Justice & Security Strategies Inc., designed the Laser system. The list is distributed to patrolmen, with orders to monitor and stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets. At each contact, officers fill out a field interview card with names, addresses, vehicles, physical descriptions, any neighborhood intelligence the person offers, and the officer’s own observations on the subject. >The platform is supplemented with what sociologist Sarah Brayne calls the secondary surveillance network: the web of who is related to, friends with, or sleeping with whom. One woman in the system, for example, who wasn’t suspected of committing any crime, was identified as having multiple boyfriends within the same network of associates, says Brayne, who spent two and a half years embedded with the LAPD while researching her dissertation on big-data policing at Princeton University and who’s now an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Anybody who logs into the system can see all these intimate ties,” she says. To widen the scope of possible connections, she adds, the LAPD has also explored purchasing private data, including social media, foreclosure, and toll road information, camera feeds from hospitals, parking lots, and universities, and delivery information from Papa John’s International Inc. and Pizza Hut LLC. The LAPD have been careful not to cite information from this software in court documents so that its constitutionality cannot be challenged.

tristor 7y ago
> The LAPD have been careful not to cite information from this software in court documents so that its constitutionality cannot be challenged. Parallel construction strikes again, sadly.
tsss 7y ago
> stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets So organized targeted harassment of innocent people.
- csb6 7y ago
  Yeah this is some dystopian stuff. Guarantee that people on here will (rightly) criticize non-Western countries for doing stuff like this, but will ardently defend Palantir doing similar stuff because they’re “innovative” or a “tech company”.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

whatshisface 7y ago

Competent when their interests are at stake, muppets when yours are.

GuB-42 7y ago

Having worked with one of their products, as far as I'm concerned, it is the latter. To the point that I am wondering if their "big bad" reputation is not just a publicity stunt to attract wannabe big brothers.