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How a Team of Geeks Cracked the Spy Trade
drunken_boxer777 sends us to The Wall Street Journal for a lengthy article on a small tech company, Palantir Technologies, that is making the CIA, Pentagon, and FBI take notice. The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is." "One of the latest entrants into the government spy-services marketplace, Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks. The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do. That means an analyst who is following a tip about a planned terror attack, for example, can more quickly and easily unearth connections among suspects, money transfers, phone calls and previous attacks around the globe. ... With Palantir's software 'you can actually point to examples where it was pretty clear that lives were saved.'"
But what is the reference?
> ..a small tech company, Palentir Technologies..
> ..Palantir Technologies has..
> The submitter adds, "And yes, their company name is a reference to what you think it is."
A spellcheck company?
It was the seeing stone that Sauron used in Lord of the Rings.
That is the tool the evil guy used to control the world. Sounds appropriate.
With a name like Palentir, it sounds like trojan spy program, not a Google like search tool.
"He's lost in a 'floyd hole"
Palantir Technologies has designed what many intelligence analysts say is the most effective tool to date to investigate terrorist networks
What? a crystal ball to fight the terrorist:
A palantír (sometimes translated as Seeing Stone but actually meaning "Farsighted" or "One that Sees from Afar") is a stone that functions somewhat like a crystal ball.
Slashdot ya no es que lo era!
The actual product seems MUCH more interesting than the silly summary. It compartamentalizes secret info, so if you are classified for level 5, you can still search and find info that is level 6, even if the file also has level 4 information. It can also tag information so that if your level 5 clearance is not enough to tell you how person A is connected to person B, you can still know that the connection exists.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
What happens when you aim the same tool at ordinary people like Slashdotters? You will discover sexual orientation, adultery, etc.
In other words, the same tool saving us from the terrorists can also defeat the last barriers protecting our privacy. If an intelligence officer in the government hated a particular SlashDotter (due to her articles in this forum), that officer could easily identify her address, her friends, her bank accounts, her adulterous lover, etc. Can you say, "blackmail"?
Hayden Panettiere ?
Ok, well thats the first thing that came to my mind...
No, it's a Tolkien reference. IOW, they really are geeks.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
"Hi, I'm Alex Karp," Mr. Karp said, offering his hand. No response. "I didn't know you really don't ask their names," he says now.
Real spies have fake names and ids. There's no reason not to give the guy a name, as long as everyone in the room isn't named "Bob".
All ideas^H^H^H^H^Hprocesses in this post are Patent Pending. (as well as the process of patenting all postings)
There has been this notion that somehow if you can shove a bunch of data through algorithms that somehow you can catch terrorist networks.
More likely you're just wasting time and here's why: terrorists don't act or usually exhibit predictable and trackable behavior like normal people. Typically they deal with disposable cell phones, cash and other "untrackables".
These guys have managed to come up with Yet Another Terrorist Tracking Tool®
... we hatesss it, Preciousss, yesss we doesss.
The correlation between ignorance of statistics and using "correlation is not causation" as an argument is close to 1.
After all, all the Seeing Stones are not yet accounted for. Who knows who might be watching?
Cool, so they just invented Splunk! Cool. Is it any cheaper than splunk, because if it is, I'll use it.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
In case you forgot the term engineer originally applied to constructors of military engines. Engineers have a long and healthy tradition of being clever and morally bankrupt.
mmmm...forbidden donut
> The software's main advance is a user-friendly search tool that can scan multiple data sources at once, something previous search tools couldn't do
OMG! Did someone finally discover the hidden "UNION" conjunction in SQL?
This sounds similar to Starlight, which the NSA uses for all kinds of "connect the dots" type intelligence activities.
With the first link, the chain is forged.
You mean like Honduras?
What?
CIA and FBI computer systems are infamously way, way behind. They only got wikis in 2006. Now they can finally google something.
Good guys used it too. To defeat Sauron AND to "keep the world safe".
In fact... Good guys made all 7 Palantir mentioned in LotR.
Sauron got his hands on one of those and used it to corrupt Saruman and Denethor.
So... No. It is not "the tool the evil guy used to control the world."
The message would be that "power corrupts". In this case - power in the form of knowledge or information.
What Palantir really lacked was a decent firewall. No protection whatsoever.
Very intuitive user interface though. And they were practically indestructible.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Please turn in your geek card.
You obviously didn't READ the books. I could see you missing it if you only saw the movies, since they almost never, if at all, called it by name.
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
It's not like as though the company was named "Rusty Trombones Inc." or something
That would be a Commander Riker reference?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
The only person right now who can make anything out of anything Ozzy is muttering is Sharon. Technology that can translate Ozzybabble would be a huge leap forward.
Palantir is a startup with Clarion (a hedge fund) VC backing. Clarion is now using their connections to showcase their holding via the WSJ. Sounds like Clarion is trying to dump their investment and cash out.
Thankfully, engineering was split into military and civilian engineering a loooong time ago. Software engineering is simply a recent offshoot from civilian engineering which has been split to the vast number of engineering disciplines we know today. As for being clever and morally bankrupt, engineers are clever. As for morally bankrupt, perhaps is not the tool that is morally bankrupt, but rather the uses it is put to. You cannot claim that the design of a passenger aircraft is morally bankrupt, and yet without that design, a lot of bad things would not have happened in they way they happened.
It is acceptable to say that some technological advances have no purpose or meaningful reason to exist other than morally bankrupt ones, but thankfully, they are few and far between.
If only we could fall into a woman's arms without falling into her hands
... a badly written child's fantasy world ....
Now now, Tolkien's Middle-earth was a badly-written ADULT'S fantasy world.
This would be the first time that the US would be acting in the interests of a democratic movement in Latin America rather than in direct opposition. I'm highly skeptical of any action taken by the State Department, but it seems that the Organization of American States support reinstatement of Zelaya with conditions before the elections, as well as the citizens of Honduras itself.
That's why there's no good press. Supporting democracy is protecting the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, and overthrowing governments across the world which have any self-interest that is in opposition to American power. Supporting democracy is declaring war in the outdoor prison in Gaza when they don't vote the way you want them to. Supporting democracy is when you send in guerrilla forces to Latin American countries, where nuns are gang raped for 24 hours while CIA interrogators coach their students on how to get more information, where priests who oppose American sponsored violence are gunned down while they give Mass on Sunday mornings, and where decades of warfare, destruction, and misery are considered progress.
American businesses don't get to make any money when they don't control puppet governments or subsidize weapons to the "freedom fighters" with our tax dollars. So, I remain skeptical on why the State Department wants this guy back in office, but the fact the Fox News is against it gives me some hope.
Exactly.
For those in the US who may have not heard about it, the Honduran conservatives the Army and Congress kidnapped the democratically-elect president and deported him to Costa Rica, taking over the goverment and repressing those who dissented.
Everybody, except the US, is calling it a military coup d'etat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Honduran_constitutional_crisis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reaction_to_the_2009_Honduran_military_coup
No sig for the moment.
Fact B can be Top Secret and
Fact C can be confidential
Sometimes taking C and then correlating to something with A+B (with the B removed) will then result in TS (same as B). So, I'd think it's a touchy area. In the 90s a similar "classification by association," was commonly referred to as Elements of Essential Friendly Information (EEFIs), such as a recall roster and leave schedules. If the enemy has the recall roster and suddenly one particular part of a unit gets a 3-ring recall to report for duty, you've got a tip off and good information on what's likely to happen. For example, I knew when the 2nd Gulf War was going to start (within a small window) when I saw something I'd never seen before: A large number of stealth bombers out of their hangars, and taking off in Missouri. You'll notice we now keep some deployed overseas so there's not as easy of a single telling point. With intel, it's the same.
However, getting back to the article, I'm 100% supporting them. I'm a Defense Contractor and I'm tired of incompetent retired mid-/senior officers who get a paycheck for their former rank and do nothing to really make an acquisition program work. On the same note, you've got officers in Program Offices as a PM who will never be held accountable or benefit from his decisions. I could go on with examples, but I think this company has a hard battle ahead but likely brings a great, fresh, greatly needed new perspective. Our government is hurting badly in many areas, and this is a small step to help make a small part of it better. If we can just get more of these going...
i'm guessing you thing Twilight and Harry Potter are works of genius?
i'm surprised more people haven't taken your flamebait.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Except that the president himself violated the constitution, an act that called for his removal from power (even though a means of removal from power was not defined in the constitution). He did this to remove term limits and instill himself as president for life, subverting democracy in the process. Did you know that the referendum he called for had ballots stuffed with winning number of vote? Even though the referendum was never actually voted on? How about that the nations democratically elected congress and legitimate supreme court were the ones to call on the military to remove Zelaya for his crimes? The issue here is that the Honduran constitution was self contradictory, calling for removal of a president without a formal impeachment process.
So is this a civilian version of ECHELON? Or a tool to sort through all the data that ECHELON collects?
They've plastered the Pentagon with banners practically claiming they single-handedly brought down GhostNet when they were at best on the periphery of the rather large collection of organizations responsible for it.
"Thankfully, engineering was split into military and civilian engineering a loooong time ago."
You are high, right? Smoking something really strange? There is as much separation between military and civilian engineering as there is between military and civilian written languages. That is to say, there is precious little that can't be interchanged.
Trick question: In a group of people including a waitress, a secretary, a construction worker, a doctor, and a professional wrestler, who is likely to know the simplest, fastest, and easiest way to kill a human being?
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
The president's opponents claim he intended to remove reelection limits, but there is no proof at all of this.
The fact that the Honduran constitution had no impeachment procedures is just another proof of the fact that it needed to be revised and rewritten!
No sig for the moment.
Well, I'm not sure WHY it's a requirement, but it has become one, de facto. You don't have to think it's great, or even like it at all, but just about every 'geek' has read it, regardless of what they thought about it.
And I WOULD say it's a child's fantasy world. It was written with his son in mind partly while he was in the trenches in WW1. Additionally he was a good friend of C.S. Lewis, who also wrote what I would call children's books.
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ch/news/2003/aug29.html
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
I read the books... 8 years ago.
/. must turn in their geek cards.
Seeing as how the first 3 comments (including mine) are of the form "What's the reference?" and the 4th is of the form "The reference is..." I believe you're requiring %90 of
Either that or kdawson is an epic troll.
regardless of his intention (and yes there is evidence he was intenting to change term limits, see the ballot boxes stuffed with fake votes), it was illegal for him to have called for any referendum to change the constitution while in office. He had to be removed.
And yes, you are very much right about the constitution needing a provision to remove a criminal president from power. Sometimes even that is not enough, as the first 8 years of this century have shown in the US.
I thought it went down differently than that. Zelaya was trying to rewrite the constitution to allow him more than two terms as president, a step in the direction of dictatorship.
A judge issued a warrant for his arrest because he had no right to call a vote to rewrite the constitution. The military followed the Judge's order but expelled him from the country instead of arresting him. They later said they did this to prevent his followers from getting access to Zelaya.
The military was never in charge of the government.. with the order for removal of the President, the Vice President was promoted to full president. The current president of Honduras did not claim power, it was thrust upon him by the line of succession.
The same thing could happen in the United States.. the Military swears an oath to the Constitution FIRST, then the president. The process to remove the president from power would be different though. He would have to be impeached.. which again comes from the judicial side of the house. The Chief Justice would preside over it and congress would do the voting.
http://soylentnews.org/~tibman
Please turn in your geek card.
No, that would be nerd card. Geeks have social skills.
You obviously didn't READ the books.
neither did I. I tried - I really tried.. but they were so horribly boring and long-winded it was impossible for me to make it through even part of the first one.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A by Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.
Actually their software works like this:
1: Announce software that will bust terrorist networks.
2: Only terrorists buy software to test out their own network security.
3: Software phones home.
4: PROFIT!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Just be careful not to have your name mentioned in the same document with a bad guy's name in it. This technology really is that simple and that dangerous.
Kriston
Was Mohammed Atta a sovereign nation? Because he's the type this is aimed at.
I prefer rogues to imbeciles because they sometimes take a rest.
There is a particularly entertaining game mentioned in the video called "Turbo Hearts", which rules.
I found this good explanation of how to play:
http://ericanderson.us/2009/09/04/how-to-play-turbo-hearts/
Or perhaps children's and adult's fantasy worlds are not really that different.
I'm with you, and I love fantasy and sci-fi books (I've read the entire Wheel of Time, Swort of Truth, Hitchhiker, Foundation, Interview w/ the Vampire...but after reading LOTR, I couldn't find the motivation to pick up another one.
PS. "The Name of the Wind" is a good book I just finished.
If you ignore all the "catch terrorists" mambo jumbo, this is probably the most advanced and outright awesome data mining tool I've ever seen.
Take a look at the videos on their blogs - the "Palentir Financial" videos are particularly worth it.
FWIW, LOTR is easy to read if you skip the songs, the chants, and the history lessons. It's a relatively small part of the bulk, but nearly 100% of the purple prose.
...and the battles. When I saw the movies and the battles started rolling, I had a vivid memory of how boring I had found these in the book too (and that was 25 years in the past)
Hah, a friend of mine built the red light and bubble machine. Neat to see it on the WSJ.
http://www.bobdylan.com/#/songs/masters-war
http://www.masturbateforpeace.com/
So, the Good Parts version?
I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Please turn in your geek card.
No, that would be nerd card. Geeks have social skills.
You obviously didn't READ the books.
neither did I. I tried - I really tried.. but they were so horribly boring and long-winded it was impossible for me to make it through even part of the first one.
Q: Why did the chicken cross the road?
A by Tolkein: The chicken, sunlight coruscating off its radiant yellow-white coat of feathers, approached the dark, sullen asphalt road and scrutinized it intently with its obsidian-black eyes. Every detail of the thoroughfare leapt into blinding focus: the rough texture of the surface, over which countless tires had worked their relentless tread through the ages; the innumerable fragments of stone embedded within the lugubrious mass, perhaps quarried from the great pits where the Sons of Man labored not far from here; the dull black asphalt itself, exuding those waves of heat which distort the sight and bring weakness to the body; the other attributes of the great highway too numerous to give name. And then it crossed it.
You left out the part where the chicken bursts into a song for 5 pages.
Construction worker.
Drop a bridge on 'em.
Are you sure you're not mistaking Wheel of Time with Lord of the Rings? Really the basic trilogy are pretty thin books considering what all gets accomplished. Now a Wheel of Time book can take 1000 pages to tell you one day's worth of events. Or a whole chapter to describe a dress.
It's called Limeware, or Frostwire FTE
"Along with the safe house location, the LimeWire networks also disclosed presidential motorcade routes, as well as sensitive but unclassified document that listed details on every nuclear facility in the country." - http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/07/29/205207
Try "Bored of the Rings."
Sorry, but I stopped taking people seriously who mention them.
Everyone who can't remember that in the same freaking week that 9/11 happened, tenthousands of Indians died in a landslide: Don't *dare* to ever mention "terrorist attacks" again!
Or how about the banking scam attack that threw the whole global economy in a recession? Or do you still think that was no deliberate attack?
Etc, etc, etc.
I think we have bigger things to fix, than to use "terrorist attacks" as an excuse to create attacks on our nations values, so big that those terrorist attacks look like freaking jokes in comparison!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I was going to say that I'm really getting tired of the 'geek' and 'nerd' terms. But after reading several of these posts, never mind. :) Anyway, I don't understand why we still put up with those labels. The Palantir team is making a contribution. More than I can say for the WSJ geeks. Hell, they can't even make money off of advertising.
Now a Wheel of Time book can take 1000 pages to tell you one day's worth of events. Or a whole chapter to describe a dress.
While I would agree in general with your assertion, I've read the first 10 books of The Wheel of Time, twice, and could NOT get through the first 200 pages of Fellowship. It's the difference in the writing style that gets me. Robert Jordan wrote with an almost Southern (U.S.) style of description, very laid back, not thick enough that you need waders to get through. Tolkein's was very stiff and British.
What drove me nuts was when he (Jordan) would describe a character and then bring the character back several books later and you were supposed to remember who it was, what they had done, and things they had said all based on a physical description. THAT was annoying. "Wait, this old, bald dude sitting on the barrel is apparently someone we are supposed to remember since there is so much focused on him... now, which book was he in last time?"