Welcome to DU!
The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards.
Join the community:
Create a free account
Support DU (and get rid of ads!):
Become a Star Member
Latest Breaking News
General Discussion
The DU Lounge
All Forums
Issue Forums
Culture Forums
Alliance Forums
Region Forums
Support Forums
Help & Search
General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsPalantir Knows Everything About You
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/?utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organicBy Peter Waldman, Lizette Chapman, and Jordan Robertson
April 19, 2018
...
Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The companys engineers and products dont do any spying themselves; theyre more like a spys brain, collecting and analyzing information thats fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sourcesfinancial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postingsand searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs. U.S. spies and special forces loved it immediately; they deployed Palantir to synthesize and sort the blizzard of battlefield intelligence. It helped planners avoid roadside bombs, track insurgents for assassination, even hunt down Osama bin Laden. The military success led to federal contracts on the civilian side. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services uses Palantir to detect Medicare fraud. The FBI uses it in criminal probes. The Department of Homeland Security deploys it to screen air travelers and keep tabs on immigrants.
Police and sheriffs departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles have also used it, frequently ensnaring in the digital dragnet people who arent suspected of committing any crime. People and objects pop up on the Palantir screen inside boxes connected to other boxes by radiating lines labeled with the relationship: Colleague of, Lives with, Operator of [cell number], Owner of [vehicle], Sibling of, even Lover of. If the authorities have a picture, the rest is easy. Tapping databases of drivers license and ID photos, law enforcement agencies can now identify more than half the population of U.S. adults.
...
The police, on autopilot with Palantir, are driving Rios toward his gang friends, not away from them, worries Mariella Saba, a neighbor and community organizer who helped him get off meth. When whole communities like East L.A. are algorithmically scraped for pre-crime suspects, data is destiny, says Saba. These are systemic processes. When people are constantly harassed in a gang context, it pushes them to join. They internalize being told theyre bad.
In Chicago, at least two immigrants have been detained for deportation by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers based on erroneous information in gang databases, according to a pair of federal lawsuits. Chicago is a sanctuary city, so it isnt clear how ICE found out about the purported gang affiliations. But Palantir is a likely link. The company provided an intelligence management solution for the Cook County Sheriffs Office to integrate information from at least 14 different databases, including gang lists compiled by state and local police departments, according to county records. Palantir also has a $41 million data mining contract with ICE to build the agencys investigative case management system.
One of the detained men, Wilmer Catalan-Ramirez, a 31-year-old body shop mechanic, was seriously injured when six ICE agents burst into his familys home last March without a warrant. Hed been listed in the local gang database twicein rival gangs. Catalan-Ramirez spent the next nine months in federal detention, until the city of Chicago admitted both listings were wrong and agreed to petition the feds to let him stay in the U.S. ICE released him in January, pending a new visa application. These cases are perfect examples of how databases filled with unverified information that is often false can destroy peoples lives, says his attorney, Vanessa del Valle of Northwestern Universitys MacArthur Justice Center.
... go have a read.
InfoView thread info, including edit history
TrashPut this thread in your Trash Can (My DU » Trash Can)
BookmarkAdd this thread to your Bookmarks (My DU » Bookmarks)
4 replies, 905 views
ShareGet links to this post and/or share on social media
AlertAlert this post for a rule violation
PowersThere are no powers you can use on this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
ReplyReply to this post
EditCannot edit other people's posts
Rec (9)
ReplyReply to this post
4 replies
= new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight:
NoneDon't highlight anything
5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
Palantir Knows Everything About You (Original Post)
swag
Apr 2018
OP
swag
(26,488 posts)1. I hope Michael Lewis writes the book n/t
RandomAccess
(5,210 posts)2. Palantire is some seriously scary shit --
I encountered this video when I was deeply immersed in the Snowden revelations -- and while I haven't looked at it in a while (and I really should), it's my understanding that THIS is what can be done with metadata-- the kind of info in your phone records, which don't require a search warrant. If you go to the YouTube page for the video, there's lots more info.
Yo_Mama_Been_Loggin
(108,167 posts)4. Pretty scary shit