Palantir, the War On Terror's Secret Weapon

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."

Comments

Hello

[Titan1080]

Big Brother.

Re:Hello

[EdIII]

What's creepy and deeply ironic is the name.

The Palantir were created by good to accomplish communication and ostensibly protection similar to satellite photography. However, they were appropriated by evil and used to lie, distort the truth, and fill the world with oppression.

Privacy advocates (such as myself) are rightly worried about such technology for exactly the reason their name implies.

That's creepy.

Deeply creepy

[Jawnn]

...and the cries of an outraged populace are stunning in their absence. Sad days, for sure.

Love the use of the name....

[Shivetya]

can't wait to see the all seeing eye, can only be around the corner.

Who would have thought that the US Government was Sauron? The same monster which consumes over four trillion dollars of our work certainly is a monster of epic proportion. No wonder that they now even feel the need to take mythic names for what they do.

Who needs Skynet when we have all sorts of fantasy names to assign the latest abuse of our rights by our government. The US defeated (or outlasted) communism of the Soviet Union for what, a Soviet Union style government masquerading as a Republic. From control exerted over industry to health care its nearly complete, we even get the same choice in our elections, which is to say none. Vote for whomever the government has approved from these two sides of the same coin.

Oh, ignore the guy behind the curtain; in your bedroom.

Occupy Wall Street was too many miles North of where it should been, and targeting the wrong foe. Just as the Tea Party figured out and OWS was only hinting at, the real problem in the US isn't the rich and corporations but the politicians who use their position to empower the rich and corporations all the while securing themselves their position

Been going that way for a while.

[khasim]

I think the summary is wrong in one aspect.

The article summarizes it thus: "Depending where you fall on the spectrum between civil liberties absolutism and homeland security lockdown, Palantirâ(TM)s technology is either creepy or heroic."

Fuck "homeland security lockdown". Think more about who has access to that information and whether you trust THEM with this kind of information about your daughter.

Do you believe that there are more terrorists in the USofA than there are perverts who would have access to that system?

Re:Been going that way for a while.

[artor3]

Do you believe that there are more terrorists in the USofA than there are perverts who would have access to that system?

Yes. Yes, I do. The whole "pervert around every corner just waiting to rape YOUR DAUGHTER!" argument is every bit as exploitative and dishonest as terrorism scare-mongering.