4 ms·

So basically it's an Orwellian surveillance tool that justifies it's own existence based upon remnants of an unjust war on drugs created by Nixon? I'm so sick

So basically it's an Orwellian surveillance tool that justifies it's own existence based upon remnants of an unjust war on drugs created by Nixon? I'm so sick and tired of Palantir's advertising tactics of doing good. We should enable the government to create massive databases of peoples lives and communication, then link those ... so that we can stop kids from doing ecstacy or "catch terrorists". Give me a break. Palantir is basically like PRISM ... except it came out of the minds of Silicon Valley (from whom I would expect much more) ... than the NSA/CIA

manfredo 6y ago
The main use case or illicit drug detection that I as aware of was detecting fraudulent pharmacies selling shitloads of legal opiods. Which primarily affects rural white people - I don't think that's part of Nixon's drug war which primarily targeted inner city people. And the drug detection use case is only one example. IIRC anti-terror work was the first big use case for Palantir Gotham. As far as whether or not it's an Orwellian tool, one thing to be aware of is that Palantir doesn't collect any data or have access to government data. The ingested data is still administered by the agency. I don't think they can even legally transfer it to 3rd parties. Palantir builds tools to browse and make correlations with the data that government agencies already have. It's more of an investigation tool, not a surveillance tool. There's a substantial latency between something happening and being able to actually see it in Palantir - it needs to first be logged and recorded, and then go through the ingestion pipeline. Sure, it's a valid position to be against government collection of things like pharmacy purchases and financial transactions. But that strikes me more of a moral position against government data collection rather than something specific to Palantir.
- obiye 6y ago
  Why do you want to carve out space to make this okay? What makes you want to say “oh but it’s just...”. It’s wrong for the government to have that data and it’s wrong for Palantir to help them use it. There is so much blame to go around, and Palantir deserves a lot of it.
iheartnetwork 6y ago
That's a weird comment. From what the OP described, the software is a data visualization tool. Palantir the company doesn't hold the data based on what the OP said. The govt or whoever gathered the data would be the owner of the data. It doesn't appear the Palantir software itself does the original data gather.
- stanfordkid 6y ago
  Right. But the data tool is designed to be integrated across municipalities via a shared schema -- this fundamentally changes the efficacy of the data -- it makes the data more valuable. Palantir Gotham is used by the LA police department and the data integration creates new capabilities -- even if they keep the data. At the end of the day there will always be a trade-off between crime and surveillance. Palantir explicitly sides with surveillance. It really doesn't matter who owns the data etc. The moral position of Palantir is very clear: that it supports surveillance.
  - iheartnetwork 6y ago
    Not sure why you're specifically against Palantir. Tableau basically does the same thing. Excel did it before either product. Police, NSA, CIA, FBI use Excel, AWS, GCP, Oracle, twitter, tor, bitcoin (insert any tech product) etc... If Palantir supports surveillance because their product can be integrated with municipal data, then virtually every tech company supports a surveillance state because any tool can be leveraged by these law enforcement entities to surveil a population more effectively.
    - stanfordkid 6y ago
      what type of double speak is this? They literally sell data integration products with a specific focus on defense and police departments. What you're implying is that someone that sells uranium to people that build bombs is just "a chemical supplier" .... like yeah the essence of what they are doing is the same, but the implications are totally different.
paul_f 6y ago
Using the example presented, Palantir is helping stop the opiod crisis which causes over 50,000 unnecessary deaths in the US each year. Hardly Orwellian.
- stanfordkid 6y ago
  It’s basically saying: forget the systemic issues (big pharma) and focus on the petty ones by surveilling everyone.

manfredo 6y ago

The main use case or illicit drug detection that I as aware of was detecting fraudulent pharmacies selling shitloads of legal opiods. Which primarily affects rural white people - I don't think that's part of Nixon's drug war which primarily targeted inner city people. And the drug detection use case is only one example. IIRC anti-terror work was the first big use case for Palantir Gotham. As far as whether or not it's an Orwellian tool, one thing to be aware of is that Palantir doesn't collect any data or have access to government data. The ingested data is still administered by the agency. I don't think they can even legally transfer it to 3rd parties. Palantir builds tools to browse and make correlations with the data that government agencies already have. It's more of an investigation tool, not a surveillance tool. There's a substantial latency between something happening and being able to actually see it in Palantir - it needs to first be logged and recorded, and then go through the ingestion pipeline. Sure, it's a valid position to be against government collection of things like pharmacy purchases and financial transactions. But that strikes me more of a moral position against government data collection rather than something specific to Palantir.

obiye 6y ago
Why do you want to carve out space to make this okay? What makes you want to say “oh but it’s just...”. It’s wrong for the government to have that data and it’s wrong for Palantir to help them use it. There is so much blame to go around, and Palantir deserves a lot of it.

iheartnetwork 6y ago

That's a weird comment. From what the OP described, the software is a data visualization tool. Palantir the company doesn't hold the data based on what the OP said. The govt or whoever gathered the data would be the owner of the data. It doesn't appear the Palantir software itself does the original data gather.

stanfordkid 6y ago
Right. But the data tool is designed to be integrated across municipalities via a shared schema -- this fundamentally changes the efficacy of the data -- it makes the data more valuable. Palantir Gotham is used by the LA police department and the data integration creates new capabilities -- even if they keep the data. At the end of the day there will always be a trade-off between crime and surveillance. Palantir explicitly sides with surveillance. It really doesn't matter who owns the data etc. The moral position of Palantir is very clear: that it supports surveillance.
- iheartnetwork 6y ago
  Not sure why you're specifically against Palantir. Tableau basically does the same thing. Excel did it before either product. Police, NSA, CIA, FBI use Excel, AWS, GCP, Oracle, twitter, tor, bitcoin (insert any tech product) etc... If Palantir supports surveillance because their product can be integrated with municipal data, then virtually every tech company supports a surveillance state because any tool can be leveraged by these law enforcement entities to surveil a population more effectively.
  - stanfordkid 6y ago
    what type of double speak is this? They literally sell data integration products with a specific focus on defense and police departments. What you're implying is that someone that sells uranium to people that build bombs is just "a chemical supplier" .... like yeah the essence of what they are doing is the same, but the implications are totally different.

paul_f 6y ago

Using the example presented, Palantir is helping stop the opiod crisis which causes over 50,000 unnecessary deaths in the US each year. Hardly Orwellian.

stanfordkid 6y ago
It’s basically saying: forget the systemic issues (big pharma) and focus on the petty ones by surveilling everyone.