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Palantir Knows Everything About You (bloomberg.com)
Palantir, a data-mining company created by Peter Thiel, is aiding government agencies by tracking American citizens using the War on Terror, Bloomberg reports. From the report: The company's engineers and products don't do any spying themselves; they're more like a spy's brain, collecting and analyzing information that's fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources -- financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings -- and searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs.
[...] 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 sheriff's departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles have also used it, frequently ensnaring in the digital dragnet people who aren't suspected of committing any crime.
[...] 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 sheriff's departments in New York, New Orleans, Chicago, and Los Angeles have also used it, frequently ensnaring in the digital dragnet people who aren't suspected of committing any crime.
But does it know the length of the US Coastline?
The next totalitarian government will use it to dispose of dissidents before they can group into any sizeable opposition.
I am interested to see how you would enforce that.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
For a man who claims to be a Libertarian, Peter Thiel is awfully willing to help authoritarians ruin people's lives and abuse their power. Even if you 100% believe in the US justice system (I don't), this software is probably for sale to China, Burma, Saudi, and a whole bunch of other repressive regimes.
Agreed, HP, IBM, Oracle has had identity management suites that do this for a while now. Analyst's Notebook was picked up by IBM and does nearly the same thing. The Army's bigger System DCGS also does this but on a greater scale aka TIA (Total Information Awareness) Was based on Analyst's Notebook and Lockheed's Information Sharing Environment solution. If you look at LE (Law Enforcement) use cases, they're totally dominated by Microsoft's Power BI (Business Intelligence) or Data Integration platforms similar to SoftwareAG. The only reason you don't hear anything about these guys is because they create a platform so large and pervasive that Journalists can't wrap their heads around how big data works.
Palantir is today's buzz word, and they're getting tons of free advertising from these muckrack[tm] journalists. It makes you wonder if the Journalists are being paid by sponsors to hype up these companies to make them into not just a big name in Data Analysis, but a household name. Next thing you know, Slack, Mattersmost, Discord, and Twitch are going to be dragged through the muck.
* https://blogs.microsoft.com/firehose/2016/03/04/how-predictive-analytics-can-help-law-enforcement-fight-crime/
* http://www1.softwareag.com/corporate/images/SAG_Terracotta_US_Law_Enforcement_RS_Mar16_WEB_tcm16-107904.pdf
* https://washingtontechnology.com/articles/2017/03/16/lockheed-cyber-crime-contract.aspx
* http://www-03.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/crimefighting/
Either these journalists are under someone's dime, or they're really really misinformed.
Look at Discord, they just made $50 mill today:
* https://discordapp.com/privacy
** Developers: Developers using our SDK or API will have access to their end users’ information, including message content, message metadata, and voice metadata. Developers must use such information only to provide the SDK/API functionality within their applications and/or services.