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Palantir, the War On Terror's Secret Weapon

Posted by Soulskill on from the i-blame-the-elves dept.

hessian tips a story in BusinessWeek about Palantir, a system designed to aggregate disparate data points gathered by intelligence agencies and weave them into a more useful narrative. The article summarizes it thus: "Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantir’s technology is either creepy or heroic." "The day Fikri drives to Orlando, he gets a speeding ticket, which triggers an alert in the CIA's Palantir system. An analyst types Fikri's name into a search box and up pops a wealth of information pulled from every database at the government's disposal. There's fingerprint and DNA evidence for Fikri gathered by a CIA operative in Cairo; video of him going to an ATM in Miami; shots of his rental truck's license plate at a tollbooth; phone records; and a map pinpointing his movements across the globe. All this information is then displayed on a clearly designed graphical interface that looks like something Tom Cruise would use in a Mission: Impossible movie."

5 of 276 comments (clear)

  1. Very coo that... by dotancohen · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...the submitter linked to the one-page printer version. The full version of TFA spreads out over six page. I went through those six pages looking for a screenshot of the software, but there were none. So if you are going to read it (I must be new here) then stick to the printer version as submitted.

    Thanks, hessian!

    --
    It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong.
  2. Re:Hello by Opyros · · Score: 5, Informative

    Nay! He does not use his right name, nor permit it to be spelt or spoken.

  3. Hmm, sounds familiar... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Informative

    Wasn't Palantir Technologies one of the slimy corprospook outfits(along with the notorious H.B. Gary Federal and Berico technologies) commissioned to do a little proposal for some dirty-tricks work against Wikileaks after Bank of America decided to lawyer up(with a little advice from the DOJ... How's that for a public defender?)

    Oh yes, yes they were...

    Fuck these guys and the horse they rode in on. Compared to a few pitiful fanatics who want to bomb everybody back to the 12th century, where they can feel at home, fine outfits like this are a much more serious threat to the aspects of our society worth saving.

  4. Re:Practical use by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    Actually, yes. There's a free-to-use Palantir instance set up that lets you do just that.

    https://www.analyzethe.us/

  5. they were part of Team Themis with Berico + HBGary by decora · · Score: 4, Informative

    look up any of the stories on Team Themis, Bank of America, Glenn Greenwald, etc. they were planning to character-assassinate people who were sympathetic to anonymous, including journalists.