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Palantir is much larger than just Prism, and its collection of "solutions" sound frighteningly suitable for surveillance operations. From their "what we do" sta
by obstacle1 13y ago
Palantir is much larger than just Prism, and its collection of "solutions" sound frighteningly suitable for surveillance operations. From their "what we do" statement [1]:
>We build software that allows organizations to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data. We solve the technical problems, so they can solve the human ones. Combating terrorism. Prosecuting crimes. Fighting fraud. Eliminating waste.
They evidently do enough business with the government to warrant an office in McLean, VA. Incidentally, McLean is also home to the CIA Headquarters and the office of the Director of National Intelligence [2].
Palantir's seed funding included $2mm from In-Q-Tel, the CIA's investment arm. [3]
The company was part of a consortium called "Team Themis" along with HBGary and Berico. The team was approached by a law firm hired by the US Chamber of Commerce and BoA to attack WikiLeaks and WikiLeaks supporters. [4]
In 2011, Palantir hired Michael Leiter, former Director of US National Counter-terrorism Center. Leitner served under both the Bush and Obama administrations. [5]
The company is known to work directly with GOOG on security-related data mining projects [6]:
>Google Ideas task force, teaming with Palantir Technologies and Salesforce.com (CRM) to build the first data-sharing platform to identify global patterns on how the human-trafficking trade operates and how to better protect the victims.
>The Google announcement [of this partnership] came on the same day the White House called for more data-sharing among federal agencies to help disrupt these criminal human-trafficking networks.
Make of all this what you will.
[1] - http://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/ http://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/
[2] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean,_Virginia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McLean,_Virginia
[3] - http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/In-Q-Tel
[4] - http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Team_Themis http://wiki.echelon2.org/wiki/Team_Themis
[5] - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Leiter http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Leiter
[6] - http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-10/google-turns-to-big-data-to-unmask-human-traffickers http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-10/google-turns...