CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

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CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby 2012 Countdown » Thu Dec 22, 2011 4:33 pm



Data-mining: terrorism prevention or social control?
Submitted by sosadmin on Thu, 12/22/2011 - 12:11

You may or may not have heard of the CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir, which currently operates out of Facebook's old offices in Palo Alto, California. But you likely have heard something about data mining software more generally; it's supposed to be the silver bullet that solves the data-flood problem for the world's spy agencies, which can't seem to know enough about our every movement, thought, purchase, communication, etc.

Software like Palantir is meant to make sense out of the mass of swirling data that clogs databases at the FBI, CIA, DOD, NYPD, LAPD, and increasingly state and local police fusion centers. Those databases contain intimate information about all of us --- and yet the vast majority of us aren't plotting violent schemes, but simply going about our quotidian, daily lives. Palantir and like-programs, the story goes, solve the drowning-in-data problem by "connecting the dots," piecing together seemingly unrelated data points to help intelligence and law enforcement agents distinguish between those people who are planning to bomb something, and those who are not. Palantir does something besides highlight the supposedly dangerous among us, however. As Businessweek reports in a lengthy piece on the company:

An organization like the CIA or FBI can have thousands of different databases, each with its own quirks: financial records, DNA samples, sound samples, video clips, maps, floor plans, human intelligence reports from all over the world. Gluing all that into a coherent whole can take years. Even if that system comes together, it will struggle to handle different types of data—sales records on a spreadsheet, say, plus video surveillance images. What Palantir (pronounced Pal-an-TEER) does, says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner (IT), is “make it really easy to mine these big data sets.” The company’s software pulls off one of the great computer science feats of the era: It combs through all available databases, identifying related pieces of information, and puts everything together in one place.

"Everything together in one place." Sounds creepy, right? It is. And contrary to claims made by Palantir, the CIA and even the Businessweek piece, it doesn't succeed in preventing terrorism. It can't, because data mining and data analysis programs rely on patterns of suspicious behavior in order to determine who is a 'risk'. But as a Homeland Security funded study showed in 2008, predictive terrorism modeling does not work. Why? There is no particular risk profile for people who are likely to commit heinous acts of violence. And furthermore, those people intent on doing real harm will go out of their way to study the latest law enforcement approach, and work diligently to get around it.

We've all heard the basic patterns to look out for: paying cash for one way plane tickets; young men traveling alone; buying large quantities of fertilizer far from a farm, etc. But the 9/11 attacks were so successful precisely because they were so unexpected. What makes the CIA think that the next round of spectacular attacks --- if indeed it comes --- will be anything like what it has seen before? In other words, how do you model for an infinite number of possible approaches?

You can't. So Palantir won't stop terrorism, full stop. But on the other hand, data-mining software like Palantir is very useful for maintaining social control over people who are not constantly trying to evade the surveillance state, who are simply going about their normal lives under it's ever-watchful eye.

The ways in which Palantir can be deployed as a tool for social control are seemingly limitless:

Using Palantir technology, the FBI can now instantly compile thorough dossiers on U.S. citizens, tying together surveillance video outside a drugstore with credit-card transactions, cell-phone call records, e-mails, airplane travel records, and Web search information.

If the police want to know what you are doing and where you are going, they can. But towards what end? Can they really discern from your captured images and web reading habits if you are a threat to society? Could Palantir have predicted and therefore stopped Jared Loughner from taking a gun to the shopping mall in Arizona and shooting it up, killing and injuring many? If so, why didn't it?

Even though DHS found in 2008 that data mining used to predict terrorism doesn't work and is too great an assault on personal privacy even if it did, there are even more basic questions we should ask ourselves before we consent to giving up our most basic rights to privacy and personal integrity to the state.

Foremost among these questions is: Can the government keep us safe from all harm at all times? Furthermore, do we want to live in a society wherein we give up all of our privacy, trading our sacred human dignity for (false) promises of personal safety? And if the true aim of the CIA's use of programs like Palantir is public safety, can the government use the technology to prevent car accidents and domestic homicides, which kill tens of thousands more Americans every year than terrorism?

The answers to these questions are obvious. It's time to say 'no' to the culture of fear that promotes the police state ideology.

Democracy has its risks; we either accept them, or we instead accept the rise of the creeping police state. We cannot have both.

--
http://privacysos.org/node/407
George Carlin ~ "Its called 'The American Dream', because you have to be asleep to believe it."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=acLW1vFO-2Q
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Wombaticus Rex » Thu Dec 22, 2011 4:37 pm

Remarkable that Palantir emerged from PayPal's collection department.

The origins of Palantir go back to PayPal, the online payments pioneer founded in 1998. A hit with consumers and businesses, PayPal also attracted criminals who used the service for money laundering and fraud. By 2000, PayPal looked like “it was just going to go out of business” because of the cost of keeping up with the bad guys, says Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder.

The antifraud tools of the time could not keep up with the crooks. PayPal’s engineers would train computers to look out for suspicious transfers—a number of large transactions between U.S. and Russian accounts, for example—and then have human analysts review each flagged deal. But each time PayPal cottoned to a new ploy, the criminals changed tactics. The computers would miss these shifts, and the humans were overwhelmed by the explosion of transactions the company handled.

PayPal’s computer scientists set to work building a software system that would treat each transaction as part of a pattern rather than just an entry in a database. They devised ways to get information about a person’s computer, the other people he did business with, and how all this fit into the history of transactions. These techniques let human analysts see networks of suspicious accounts and pick up on patterns missed by the computers. PayPal could start freezing dodgy payments before they were processed. “It saved hundreds of millions of dollars,” says Bob McGrew, a former PayPal engineer and the current director of engineering at Palantir.

After EBay (EBAY) acquired PayPal in 2002, Thiel left to start a hedge fund, Clarium Capital Management. He and Joe Lonsdale, a Clarium executive who’d been a PayPal intern, decided to turn PayPal’s fraud detection into a business by building a data analysis system that married artificial intelligence software with human skills. Washington, they guessed, would be a natural place to begin selling such technology. “We were watching the government spend tens of billions on information systems that were just horrible,” Lonsdale says. “Silicon Valley had gotten to be a lot more advanced than government contractors, because the government doesn’t have access to the best engineers.”


via http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/pa ... age_2.html
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby MinM » Tue May 09, 2017 2:18 am

Some words on Peter Thiel, chairman and largest shareholder of Palantir.

Founder of Paypal, Thiel is also a director of Facebook - and he's a special adviser to the Trump administration.

Mussolini defined fascism as when you can't slide a cigarette paper between the interests of big business and the interests of the government. Thiel prefers to say he is a "libertarian".

Sounding like a mentally disturbed teenager, he writes that he "stand(s) against (...) the ideology of the inevitability of the death of every individual". In short, he wants to live forever. What a baby.

But just in case, he is also one of the super-rich loonies who wants their bodies to be cryogenically preserved when they die. Perhaps this desire is related to the fact that he won't father children because he is gay.

He also dislikes women. Is anyone surprised? He writes in sophomoric tones that "(s)ince 1920, the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women — two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians — have rendered the notion of 'capitalist democracy' into an oxymoron".

Listen - this kind of shit isn't new.

I strongly suspect that as well as wanting to live forever, the guy also aims to ensure that many millions of the rest of us all cease to exist for other than natural causes.
posted by Anonymous b : 5:32 PM

Also extremely scary, Jane Mayer's Dark Money - http://bit.ly/2pd2Ouf.
posted by Blogger Caro : 7:42 PM

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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue May 09, 2017 8:56 am

MERCER

Re: Society Is Being Programmed By A Black Box
Postby seemslikeadream » Mon May 08, 2017 8:50 am
... Who’s her father? “Eric Schmidt.” Eric Schmidt – the chairman of Google? “Yes. And she suggested Alexander should meet this company called Palantir.” I had been speaking to former employees of Cambridge Analytica for months and heard dozens of hair-raising stories, but it was still a gobsmacking ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40508&p=637425&hilit=Palantir#p637425


Re: Draining the Swamp
by seemslikeadream » Mon Dec 12, 2016 6:40 pm
TRANSITION ADVISER PETER THIEL COULD DIRECTLY PROFIT FROM MASS DEPORTATIONS Spencer Woodman December 12 2016, 12:13 p.m. PALANTIR TECHNOLOGIES, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40206&p=623039&hilit=Palantir#p623039


The Domestic Conspiracy Is Hiding In Plain Sight Erik Prince
... New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, in December Prince attended the annual “Villains and Heroes” costume ball hosted by Mercer. Dowd wrote that Palantir founder Peter Thiel showed her “a picture on his phone of him posing with Erik Prince, who founded the private military company Blackwater, ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=40315&p=628270&hilit=Palantir#p628270



Probing Peter Thiel
More images plus audio at link: https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how ... ole-world/ How Peter Thiel’s Palantir Helped the NSA Spy on the Whole World Sam Biddle February 22 2017, 3:06 a.m. Donald Trump has inherited ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=34078&p=632248&hilit=Palantir#p632248


Re: TRUMP is seriously dangerous
... of the modern era, with an estimated net worth of $2.7 billion. Thiel is a venture capitalist who co-founded the CIA-backed data-mining firm Palantir in addition to PayPal. He also started a now-withered hedge fund and was the first outside investor in Facebook. He is a Facebook board member ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39115&p=610991&hilit=Palantir#p610991


It's not a serious approach to thought control on twitter simply because nobody involved has the means or scale to do anything. Now, if they were really serious -- and they are -- they'd be plugging the FireHose level API straight into Palantir HQ -- and they probably already have. That arrangement would have obvious mutual benefits.
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=39571&p=589059&hilit=Palantir#p589059


Re: Libya, Syria And Now Ukraine - Color Revolution By Force
... Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and CACI, as well as lesser-known firms such as DynCorp International, which provided training for Afghan police, and Palantir, a technology company founded with the backing of the CIA’s venture-capital arm, In-Q-Tel. Palantir supplied software to U.S. military intelligence ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=37655&p=565101&hilit=Palantir#p565101


Re: How the CIA made Google
... on the board of In-Q-Tel. Apart from Breyer and Zuckerberg, Facebook’s only other board member is Peter Thiel, co-founder of defense contractor Palantir which provides all sorts of data-mining and visualization technologies to US government, military and intelligence agencies, including the ...
viewtopic.php?f=8&t=38742&p=561934&hilit=Palantir#p561934
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed May 10, 2017 7:03 am

Image

Mercer Sued by Hedge Fund Worker Fired After Blasting Trump
by Erik Larson
May 8, 2017, 8:49 AM CDT May 8, 2017, 3:04 PM CDT
David Magerman says Renaissance co-CEO went on racist rant
Policy prohibits employees from publicly criticizing company

Trump's New Advisors Offer Link to Big Money Donor
Hedge fund mogul Robert Mercer, one of the biggest financial backers of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, was sued by a former employee who claims he was fired for calling Mercer racist and publicly criticizing his support of Trump.

The complaint by David Magerman, a research scientist who worked at Renaissance Technologies LLC for two decades, alleges he was wrongfully fired April 29 after his relationship with Mercer and his family became toxic. For example, Magerman alleges that Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah Mercer, a member of Trump’s transition team, called him “pond scum” at a celebrity poker tournament.

The confrontation "just shows the hostility that the Mercers had toward Mr. Magerman because he dared to challenge their political views," his lawyer, H. Robert Fiebach, said in a phone call on Monday.

Mercer, a major investor in Trump-friendly Breitbart News, advised the president to hire two of the Mercer family’s longtime political advisers, Stephen Bannon and Kellyanne Conway. Mercer’s politics have "tainted" the hedge fund, while internal policies that prohibit "politely" speaking out against the company in public are "unfair and untenable," Magerman said in the complaint, filed May 5 in federal court in Philadelphia.

A spokesman for Renaissance had no immediate comment. Mercer emerged as one of the most influential Republican donors in the 2016 election, giving at least $2 million to Make America Number 1, a political action committee that began backing Trump in July. Rebekah Mercer was named to Trump’s transition team in November.

Wrong Direction

The dispute started on Jan. 16 when Magerman called Mercer and asked to have a conversation about his support of Trump, according to the complaint. During the chat, Mercer said the U.S. had started going in the wrong direction “after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in the 1960s,” according to the complaint. Mercer also said that black Americans “were doing fine” in the late 1950s and are the “only racist people remaining in the U.S.,” according to the complaint.

“Magerman was stunned by these comments and pushed back,” according to the complaint. Reminded of the racial segregation that existed at the time, Mercer allegedly responded by saying those issues weren’t important.

After the phone call, Magerman complained about Mercer’s comments to Co-Chief Executive Officer Peter Brown, who "expressed disbelief" and urged the two men to speak again, according to the complaint. Magerman agreed and called Mercer back on Feb. 5.

"I hear you’re going around saying I’m a white supremacist," Mercer said, according to the complaint. During the call, Mercer "scoffed" at the idea that segregation was degrading and destructive, Magerman said.

Magerman later criticized Mercer’s support for Trump in a story published in the Wall Street Journal on Feb. 23. Magerman said he had sent an email advising the hedge fund’s general counsel, Carla Porter, and its chief financial officer, Mark Silber, about what he intended to tell the newspaper and was told by Silber that it was permissible under company policy. He was suspended a day later, he said.

Poker Tournament

On April 20, Magerman attended a celebrity poker tournament in New York City, where many Renaissance staffers were present, according to the suit. Magerman told the Wall Street Journal that he attended the event to repair his frayed relationship with the firm, according to an April 28 article.

Rebekah Mercer allegedly confronted Magerman, calling him "pond scum" and saying karma "is a bitch," according to the complaint.

Magerman was fired April 29, according to the suit. Magerman seeks "substantial damages," his lawyer said.

Renaissance’s employee handbook bars workers from disparaging the hedge fund or any of its workers, though such policies are "illegal and unenforceable," according to the complaint.

Magerman said he designed mathematical and statistical algorithms to direct Renaissance’s investment decisions on international financial markets, resulting in billions of dollars in revenue for the hedge fund.

Based in East Setauket, New York, Renaissance was started in 1982 by Jim Simons, a former military code cracker. He stepped away from the business at the end of 2009. Mercer and Brown took over the following year.

Private sector employees are generally not protected from political discrimination, said Robert Young, an employment lawyer with Bowditch & Dewey LLP in Boston. But Magerman may have a claim if he can prove he was retaliated against for complaining about race bias by Mercer.

"That may be the more viable of the two claims because there does seem to be a connection between objecting to those comments and termination,” Young, who isn’t involved in the case, said in a phone call.

The case is Magerman v. Mercer, 17-cv-02083, U.S. District Court, Eastern District of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia)
https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/arti ... #pq=UUbzpC
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby elfismiles » Thu Aug 10, 2017 11:59 am

Not familiar with this YouTube channel ...

Exploring Palantir with Quinn Michaels
12,293 views 3 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0RPn9Ikh0A

Streamed live on Aug 6, 2017

Buddhist bot-master and AI guru Quinn Michaels schools us on Palantir, Trump's shadow president and new insights into Seth Rich's possible role in the DNC leaks. George phones in from Ohio.


https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC8Cl9Q ... jP7pP4BBQ/



There's A Fight Brewing Between The NYPD And Silicon Valley's ...
https://www.buzzfeed.com/.../theres-a-f ... ilicon-v...
Jun 28, 2017 - Big data helped New York's cops bust Bobby Shmurda. But as the NYPD's contract with tech giant Palantir comes to an end, things could get ...

NYPD struggles to move crime analysis from Palantir to home-grown ...
https://gcn.com/Articles/2017/07/06/NYP ... lysis.aspx
Jul 6, 2017 - Since at least 2012, NYPD has used software from Palantir, a data mining firm with several federal contracts, for crime analysis. The system ...

NYPD is canceling its Palantir contract | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14674460
Jul 1, 2017 - Palantir has an outdated software stack (Java/Swing). Their genius lied in creating "mythical image" and cleverly overselling it to the less ...

NYPD Is Ending Its Contract With the Tech Company That Assisted in ...
www.complex.com/.../nypd-ending-contrac ... -bust-bo...
Jun 28, 2017 - The NYPD will end its contract with Palantir Technologies, a tech company that has helped the department collect and analyze data.

Report: The NYPD Is Ending Their Contract With The Silicon Valley ...
www.thefader.com/2017/06/28/nypd-palant ... rda-report
Jun 28, 2017 - The NYPD is ending its contract with Palantir Technologies, a $20 billion Silicon Valley company that the department has used to collect and ...

What does the fight between palantir & nypd mean for your data ...
www.iheavy.com/2017/07/06/what-fight-pa ... ship-saas/
Jul 6, 2017 - In a recent buzzfeed piece, NYPD goes to the mat with Palantir over their data. ... In the case of Palantir, they claim to be an open system.

Palantir and NYPD face off over disputes – Crime Technology Weekly
https://fightfinancialcrimes.com/2017/0 ... -disputes/
Jun 29, 2017 - The shine is most definitely coming off the Palantir brand. Here's a fascinating story about NYPD and Palantir, and how the former is kicking the ...

Palantir Contract Dispute Exposes NYPD's Lack of Transparency | Just ...
https://www.justsecurity.org/.../palant ... ranspare...
Jul 20, 2017 - New Yorkers have learned more about the NYPD's relationship with Palantir through this dust-up over a contract dispute than after years of ...

How Palantir Is Taking Over New York City - Gizmodo
gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-city-1786738085
Sep 22, 2016 - Co-founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, Palantir's inner workings .... The NYPD—whose record on privacy and civil liberties includes ...

NYPD Attempts to Block Surveillance Transparency Law With ...
https://theintercept.com/.../nypd-surve ... nsparenc...
Jul 7, 2017 - According to a recent report by BuzzFeed, the NYPD paid Palantir $3.5 million annually for its services, which are reportedly being terminated.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Mon Jul 15, 2019 7:14 am

Billionaire investor Peter Thiel reportedly says the FBI and CIA should investigate Google
Saheli Roy Choudhury
Published Sun, Jul 14 2019 11:30 PM EDT
Updated an hour ago
CNBC: Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel, American entrepreneur, venture capitalist, and hedge fund manager.
Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Billionaire investor Peter Thiel said Sunday that the FBI and the CIA should investigate if Google has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence, according to a report from Axios.

Thiel, a Facebook board member, was speaking at the National Conservatism Conference in Washington, D.C. and his speech focused on three questions that should be presented to the tech giant, Axios said.

“Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI (artificial intelligence)?” Thiel reportedly asked. “Number two, does Google’s senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?”

He said those questions “need to be asked by the FBI, by the CIA.”

Thiel also blasted Alphabet-owned Google for its work in China.

“Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military,” Thiel said, according to Axios.

Google did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comments.

Last year, Google came under fire after it was revealed that the company was working on a controversial project to launch a censored search service in China.

It was said to be an attempt to get back into the country’s web search market following years of absence. Hundreds of employees protested against the project, known as Dragonfly. A report last December said Google had ended its work on the search project.

Another report said Google would not renew a contract with the U.S. Department of Defense that expired earlier this year. The partnership was said to help the Pentagon analyze and interpret drone videos via artificial intelligence.

Read the full Axios report about Peter Thiel’s criticism of Google here.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/15/peter-t ... oogle.html


Peter Thiel says FBI, CIA should probe Google
David McCabe10 hours ago
Peter Thiel, billionaire investor and Facebook board member, on Sunday night said that Google should be federally investigated for allegedly aiding the Chinese military.

Why it matters: Thiel is the tech industry's highest-profile Trump supporter, and one of the most powerful players in Silicon Valley.

Thiel spoke at the National Conservatism Conference, a new event that bills itself as being focused on Trump-era nationalism, with part of his speech focusing on "three questions that should be asked" of Google:

"Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI?
Number two, does Google's senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence?
Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military... because they are making the sort of bad, short-term rationalistic [decision] that if the technology doesn't go out the front door, it gets stolen out the backdoor anyway?"
He also added that those questions "need to be asked by the FBI, by the CIA, and I'm not sure quite how to put this, I would like them to be asked in a not excessively gentle manner."

Thiel did not specifically mention Facebook, but it likely will be mentioned by later speakers at the conference, including Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who has agitated against big tech on the air, and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who is seeking to strip major web platforms of certain legal protections.
https://www.axios.com/peter-thiel-says- ... e5d8c.html
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Tue Jul 16, 2019 5:04 am

Tech investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel thinks Elizabeth Warren is the most ‘dangerous’ Democratic candidate
Matt RosoffPublished Mon, Jul 15 2019 9:49 PM EDT
CNBC: Peter Thiel Squawk Box
Early Facebook investor and Trump supporter Peter Thiel weighed in on the Democrats taking on the president in 2020.

“I’m most scared by Elizabeth Warren,” he said on Monday on Fox News’ “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

“She’s the one that’s actually talking about the economy, which is the thing that matters most,” Thiel told Carlson. He said the others were “equally unimpressive” as they all were embracing “one form of identity politics or another.”

Thiel also reiterated his call for the FBI and CIA to investigate Google to see if the Facebook rival’s A.I. research has been infiltrated by Chinese espionage.

Noting that Google has called its research “a Manhattan Project for A.I,” he added. “I would naturally think this would draw the attention of foreign intelligence agencies.”

He also said he believes some Google employees ideologically think that the U.S. is worse than China.

Thiel has generally stayed out of the spotlight, but emerged in 2016 to endorse Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and speak at the Republican National Convention, a rare move in Silicon Valley. Last year, Thiel donated to the Republican National Committee as Trump was gearing up for his re-election campaign.

He has also spoken out about Google’s monopoly power in the past.

Facebook, which competes with Google for billions in online advertising dollars, is also under scrutiny for having too much power over the tech industry.

Representatives from both companies, alongside those from Apple and Amazon, will testify before the House Judiciary Committee about antitrust issues on Tuesday, and Facebook is also appearing before House and Senate committees this week to defend its plan to facilitate a new digital currency called Libra.

WATCH: Peter Thiel gives his first six-figure donation of midterm campaign cycle to RNC
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/16/peter-t ... trump.html


Trump: We 'will take a look' into Peter Thiel's claims of Google working with China
Todd Haselton

President Trump on Tuesday morning said his administration will “take a look” into Google following statements made earlier this week by billionaire tech investor Peter Thiel. Shares of Alphabet were slightly lower in pre-market trading.

“Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason,” Trump said in a tweet. “He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government... A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone! The Trump Administration will take a look!”

A White House spokesperson declined to comment on Trump’s tweet.


Donald J. Trump

@realDonaldTrump
“Billionaire Tech Investor Peter Thiel believes Google should be investigated for treason. He accuses Google of working with the Chinese Government.” @foxandfriends A great and brilliant guy who knows this subject better than anyone! The Trump Administration will take a look!

40.1K
6:46 AM - Jul 16, 2019
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On Sunday, Thiel, a Facebook board member, said that the FBI and the CIA should investigate Google to see if it has been infiltrated by Chinese intelligence.

“Number one, how many foreign intelligence agencies have infiltrated your Manhattan Project for AI (artificial intelligence)?” Thiel said, according to Axios. “Number two, does Google’s senior management consider itself to have been thoroughly infiltrated by Chinese intelligence? Number three, is it because they consider themselves to be so thoroughly infiltrated that they have engaged in the seemingly treasonous decision to work with the Chinese military and not with the US military,” Thiel said during the National Conservatism Conference in Washington.

On Tuesday, fellow Palantir co-founder Joe Londsdale echoed Thiel’s comments on CNBC.

“Google is not a patriotic company,” he said. “Everyone in [Silicon] Valley knows that the Chinese government is very involved,” Lonsdale told “Squawk Alley” in an interview, though he didn’t point to any clear evidence. “It’s something we don’t talk about a lot. It was very courageous of [Thiel] to talk about it.”

“As we have said before, we do not work with the Chinese military,” Google said this week in response to Thiel’s comments. It reiterated that statement on Tuesday.
https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/16/trump-a ... china.html




George Joseph

Verified account

@georgejoseph94

SCOOP: @PalantirTech has tried to distinguish its work with ICE from deportations. But internal emails prove ICE agents are **actively** deploying Palantir tech during workplace raids:


Data Company Directly Powers Immigration Raids in Workplace

| WNYC News | WNYC
Palantir, a secretive data-mining firm co-founded by Trump adviser Peter Thiel, is facing mounting criticism for its work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In response, the company has tried to distance itself from ICE’s controversial treatment of undocumented immigrants.

But now, emails obtained by WNYC show that Palantir software has directly powered ICE’s accelerating workplace raids.

In the final weeks of 2017, special agents in ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations’ division were planning a worksite blitz across New York City. As part of their preparation, an ICE supervisor notified staff that they needed to use a Palantir program, called FALCON mobile, for the operation.

“[REDACTION] we want all the team leaders to utilize the FALCON mobile app on your GOV iphones,” wrote the agent, after mentioning several “assignment” locations across all five New York City boroughs.


The email, obtained by WNYC under the federal Freedom of Information Act, continues: “We will be using the FALCON mobile app to share info with the command center about the subjects encountered in the stores as well as team locations."

FALCON mobile allows agents in the field to search through a fusion of law enforcement databases that include information on people’s immigration histories, family relationships, and past border crossings.

The email was sent in preparation for a worksite enforcement briefing on January 8, 2018. Two days later, ICE raided nearly a hundred 7-Elevens across the country, including at least sixteen in New York City. At the time, the raids constituted the largest operation against a single employer in the Trump era.

Other records in the release show just how looped in Palantir employees are with ICE operations, at worksites and otherwise.

In one email from April of last year, a Palantir staffer notifies an ICE agent that they should test out their FALCON mobile application because of his or her “possible involvement in an upcoming operation.” Another message, in April 2017, shows a Palantir support representative instructing an agent on how to classify a datapoint, so that Palantir’s Investigative Case Management [ICM] platform could properly ingest records of a cell phone seizure.

Advocates say the use of Palantir software in these raids contradict the company’s public attempts to draw a clean line between its work and the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants.

“What these records show is that Palantir’s programs are being used in the field everyday when ICE is conducting their raids,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, field director with Mijente, an immigrants’ rights group. “Everywhere you go you see people, average families, going to work and being detained in the raids, and it’s all because of Palantir’s FALCON and ICM product.”

From October 2017 to 2018, ICE workplace raids nationwide led to 1,525 administrative worksite-related arrests for civil immigration violations, compared to just 172 the year prior. One of the largest of these raids came last April, when ICE agents stormed into a Tennessee meatpacking plant and put 54 workers in immigrant detention.

Palantir declined WNYC’s requests for comment. Citing law enforcement “sensitivities,” ICE also declined to comment on how it uses Palantir during worksite enforcement operations.

But former ICE HSI agents familiar with Palantir’s capabilities say the data-mining software offers significant support for workplace investigations.

Claude Arnold, a former ICE HSI special agent in Los Angeles, praised Palantir’s ability to connect the dots for law enforcement. “It was just amazing how stuff would get linked by this phone number, by this address. And not only linking, but it would show you who or what is at the center of all that,” said Arnold, who retired in 2015.

James T. Hayes, Jr., former Special Agent in Charge at New York’s HSI office, said the ability to look up unknown subjects with Palantir’s mobile app in the field could also crack open investigations.

“When you encounter individuals through an enforcement operation, whether they’re targets of the operation or not, you’re going to make an effort to question those people,” he said. “If you are looking for a particular individual on site at that time, they might know where they are. They might know other places they work.”

In addition to arrests for civil immigration violations, ICE worksite enforcement operations also led to over seven hundred criminal arrests in the fiscal year 2018. But the majority of these charged were undocumented workers, not their employers.

News of Palantir’s role in workplace raids come at a critical time for the firm. In May, Bloomberg reported that the company may be planning to go public next year. At the same time, it is facing considerable backlash, internally and externally, for its work with ICE.

In May, a coalition of tech workers protested Palantir after Mijente, the immigrants’ advocacy group, pointed to documents showing how Palantir software may have been used to investigate the parents of unaccompanied minors who crossed the border.

For years, Palantir’s contracts with federal agencies like ICE went under the radar, and helped keep the company growing. But today its shadowy reputation has sometimes made sales harder, especially in the Trump era. “There are lots of customers globally and some domestically who feel they do not want to be affiliated with a company that powers the clandestine agencies of the world,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp told the Wall Street Journal last year.

Activists are doing their best to publicize Palantir’s record in an effort to get the firm to cut ties with ICE. “Big industries and big companies and big banks are saying, ‘I will not invest in private prisons. I will not invest in private detention centers. I will not help strengthen this infrastructure,’” said Gonzalez. “Palantir should take notice because investors are going to notice as well.”

Palantir’s latest software development efforts could further improve ICE’s attempts to identify undocumented immigrants. Last July, the company filed a patent application for a mobile image recognition program.The outline describes how users could take a picture of a subject’s face in the field and then run that face against a database, identifying possible facial matches.

George Joseph can be emailed securely with a protonmail email account at gmjoseph@protonmail.com. You can also text him, via the encrypted phone app Signal or otherwise, at 929-486-4865.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/palantir-dir ... ails-show/



George Joseph

2/ Under Trump, workplace raids have exploded. Palantir mobile software can help agents rapidly share info on workers they find:

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3/ The date and context of these emails suggest Palantir powered ICE’s 2018 raids on nearly a hundred 7-Elevens nationwide, which hit 16 stores in NYC (more from @lauren_etter @SmithMarkets here):



4/ Palantir’s PR team has pointed out it works for ICE HSI which leads many kinds of criminal investigations. But HSI’s worksite raids also mean its software is powering mass criminal and civil detention for undocumented workers (via @rdevro @alicesperi)

The Day After Trump’s ICE Raid in a Small Tennessee Town, 550 Kids Stayed Home From School
April 10 2018, 3:51 p.m.
The rural community of Morristown, Tennessee, is reeling following the largest raid by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on a business in a decade. On Thursday, agents with ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations wing, also known as HSI, stormed the Southeastern Provision meatpacking plant and detained scores of people.

In a reflection of the ongoing toll the raid has taken on Morristown’s immigrant community, Jeffrey Perry, superintendent of the Hamblen County school district, which includes Morristown, told The Intercept that hundreds of students did not show up to school following the operation. “The school district is not in the business of establishing policy at the national level or state level but we are focused on helping out students and families, so right now the staff and administration are focused on what we can do for our students and what we can do for our families,” Perry said. “In these situations everybody becomes a counselor.”
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The War on Immigrants
Read Our Complete CoverageThe War on Immigrants


Jessica Hahn, a labor attorney with the National Immigration Law Center in Washington, said, “This kind of large scale worksite immigration raid is incredibly disruptive to local communities, leaving children stranded without their parents, terrifying entire communities, and devastating local economies. The effects are going to be felt for years to come.”

Advocates on the ground in Tennessee, meanwhile, said disturbing stories of ICE’s tactics last week continue to surface, including claims that the immigration enforcement agency separated workers at the facility by ethnicity and loaded them into vans without asking questions about their work or legal status, leaving a trail of devastated families wondering when they will see their loved ones again.

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Artwork by the children and family members of workers detained in the ICE raid at Southern Provisions meatpacking plant is seen on April 7, 2018.
Photo: Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition
According to ICE, HSI agents “encountered 97 individuals who are subject to removal from the United States” during its execution of a federal criminal search warrant at the meatpacking plant. “Ten of those encountered were arrested on federal criminal charges, one was arrested on state charges and 86 were arrested on administrative charges,” ICE said in an email to The Intercept. “Of the 86 administrative arrests placed in removal proceedings, ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) placed 54 in detention and 32 were released from custody.” The 10 cases of federal criminal charges were all related to immigrants who had re-entered the United States after being deported or failed to heed deportation orders, according to the Knoxville News Sentinel, a local newspaper.

In the wake of the raid, a combination of local religious and legal advocacy groups have been working around the clock to provide services to impacted families. They conducted scores of interviews with workers and members of their families. The accounts call into question the government’s portrayal of an orderly operation.

Stephanie Teatro, co-executive director of the Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition, or TIRRC, told The Intercept that her organization has conducted roughly 80 intake interviews since ICE descended on the Southeastern Provision slaughterhouse, as well as approximately 15 eyewitness interviews focused on the actions of the law enforcement officers and agents involved in the operation. The intake interviews, she said, are intended to design legal support around the needs of specific families and individuals. The interviews focused on law enforcement’s actions are aimed at establishing what exactly happened during the raid. Those interviews, Teatro explained, have been consistent on multiple points that raise serious concerns about the government’s conduct.

In a statement to the press, the Department of Justice said HSI, the Internal Revenue Service, and the Tennessee Highway Patrol all took part in the raid. Interviewees described local authorities surrounding the meatpacking plant. “Some workers described them as blocking exits but not actually participating in the action itself,” Teatro said. With roads around the plant blocked off and a helicopter monitoring the situation from above, witnesses recalled “ICE storming in” from multiple entrances, according to Teatro. “It was like the building was just taken over by ICE.”

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The Southern Provisions meatpacking plant is seen on April 7, 2018.
Photo: Julieta M. Martinelli/WPLN
Though ICE claimed all 97 of the workers it arrested were eligible for deportation, advocates said the interviews conducted over the last week indicated the potential arrests of individuals who had authorization to work, as well as indiscriminate targeting of workers who appeared to be Latino. “We’re still, of course, verifying and documenting everything, but the emerging narrative is that actually they weren’t asked any questions,” Teatro said. “Nobody was given a chance to know why they, in particular, were being arrested or what they were being arrested for.”

Rather, advocates said, individuals were told to climb aboard white vans and transported to a National Guard armory. According to the advocates, a group of lawyers, working out of a nearby school that stayed open through the night, volunteered to take up cases. The lawyers presented the government with documentation expressing their intent to provide representation, the advocates said, but were denied access to the detainees inside the armory as they were processed and moved to detention centers in the region. (ICE declined to comment on whether lawyers were denied access to detainees or non-deportable, work-eligible immigrants were arrested.)

Andrew Free, a Nashville immigration and civil rights attorney, told The Intercept that the use of the National Guard armory marked a “dramatic escalation in the militarization of the war on immigrants.”

“I’d be very concerned as to the fact that it might be a harbinger of things to come,” he added, noting that the use of the National Guard facility in Tennessee came less than a week after President Donald Trump announced that he would deploy the reserve military force to the U.S. border with Mexico. “My fear — and I hope that this is not realized — is that once you cross this line between domestic interior immigration enforcement and military personnel, military facilities, military material, it’s hard for that line to then not get crossed again, and crossed further and further and further.”

ICE officials said the National Guard was not involved in the operation and that the armory was “the most appropriate government building to support the law enforcement action.” The National Guard did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

“We need to be concerned about this,” Free said. “We’re going to look back and we’re going to see last week as the beginning of something very new.”

“Every worker that we talked to said that they arrested everybody, but several have said that they left all of the white managers and supervisors.”
According to Teatro, advocates are working to confirm repeated claims that, instead of asking questions to determine whether an individual was eligible for arrest and deportation, ICE instead took people into custody based on their ethnicity. “This is a follow-up question we have,” Teatro said. “Every worker that we talked to said that they arrested everybody, but several have said that they left all of the white managers and supervisors.”

She added, “Multiple people have said they arrested everybody, all the workers; they arrested all the brown people; or they left behind the white supervisors.”

In an affidavit for a search warrant filed last week, Nicholas Worsham, a special agent with the criminal division of the IRS, laid out the government’s justification for the raid, which followed a monthslong investigation of the family-run cattle-slaughtering business. Worsham accused Southeastern Provision of evading taxes, filing false tax returns, and illegally employing undocumented workers.

The affidavit names James Brantley, the plant’s president and general manager, as well as his wife, daughter, and another employee as targets of the investigation. But, unlike dozens of their workers, the Brantleys were not detained during the search conducted under the warrant, and they have not yet been charged. According to public records, the case that led to the Tennessee raid has been closed, suggesting that if the managers of the plant are charged, it will be in a separate case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Tennessee said in a statement that it does not comment on ongoing investigations or pending litigation, and ICE did not respond an inquiry about why the targets of the affidavit were not arrested.

Though the administration has talked tough on worksite enforcement, some in the immigration advocacy community question the president’s willingness to go after managers of businesses that exploit undocumented immigrants. As an example, they point to Trump’s decision to commute the prison sentence of the owner of an Iowa slaughterhouse that was the site of the largest immigration raid in recent history, with nearly 400 arrests. (The man was serving time for fraud; the immigration-related charges had been dropped.)

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Supporters of immigration reform walk through downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on Friday, May, 10, 2013, to mark the five-year anniversary of the immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville. (AP photo/Ryan J. Foley)
Supporters of immigration reform walk through downtown Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on May 10, 2013 to mark the five-year anniversary of the immigration raid at the Agriprocessors plant in Postville.
Photo: Ryan J. Foley/AP
The investigation into Southeastern Provision began after authorities learned of large amounts of cash withdrawn by the business on a weekly basis — more than $25 million over the last decade. In 2016, bank staff visited the business and were told that “the employees were Hispanic and were paid weekly with cash,” according to the filing.

Then, last year, a confidential informant got a job at the plant and reported that they had not been asked for an ID or other documentation. The informant, who spent four days at Southeastern Provision, also reported that employees were required to work overtime but were not paid for it and that they were made to work with extremely harsh chemicals, including bleach mixed with other cleaning agents, without appropriate protective eyewear. According to the affidavit, the informant, who later returned to the plant and covertly filmed it, believed “Southeastern Provisions exploited these employees because they were illegal aliens and have no legal recourse for workplace mistreatment.”

However, Hahn, of the National Immigration Law Center, said raids like the one in Tennessee can contribute to unsafe working conditions. “It was already difficult to get immigrant workers to speak publicly about labor violations at their jobs,” she said. “The draconian enforcement we are seeing from this rogue ICE agency under the Trump administration is going to make that nearly impossible.”

Advocates said the workers who were released appeared to fall into three categories: mothers with young children, individuals with serious medical conditions, and, potentially, individuals with legal authorization to work. If any detainees had work authorization, Teatro said, they “should not have been arrested in the first place.” She added that the exception for individuals with serious medical conditions appears to have been applied inconsistently, pointing to claims from families that there are individuals in ICE custody who have serious medical issues, but have not been released. (ICE did not respond to questions about its rationale for releasing detainees.)

One interviewee, Teatro said, “got a call from a family member in detention who said she hasn’t had her medicine since Thursday” and that employees at the detention center where she is being held “were denying her her medicine.” In another case, advocates say a woman who was at the plant claimed authorities did not believe her when she said she has diabetes. She was forced to roll up her sleeve and give herself an insulin shot to prove it. “That’s what we’ve been told by the woman — that they didn’t believe her that she had diabetes, and so they made her do it in front of everyone,” Teatro said. (ICE declined to comment on the charge that the woman was made to inject insulin to prove her illness.)

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A woman whose husband was detained during an immigration raid at an East Tennessee meatpacking plant is joined by her five children in calling for authorities to allow her family to be reunited, at a press conference on April 7, 2018.
Photo: Julieta M. Martinelli/WPLN
Beyond the trauma experienced by the families involved, what happened in Morristown is also a story of how community groups are tailoring their responses to immigration enforcement operations in the Trump era.

Worksite enforcement raids were common under the George W. Bush administration, but scaled back under Barack Obama — much to the disappointment of then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Ala., now the U.S. attorney general, and other hard-line immigration hawks. Since Trump came to office, immigration advocates have been bracing for the raids to return. In January, ICE’s Acting Director Thomas Homan indicated that efforts were already underway, telling a crowd at a border security conference that he had directed HSI agents to increase worksite enforcement operations by 400 percent.

“For the last year, we’ve really been building community-based infrastructure to be able to respond.”
In a dynamic that has played out in cities and towns across the country, the response in Tennessee featured collaboration between local legal advocacy organizations, faith groups, and educators. Teatro said her statewide organization was among those anticipating a crackdown from the Trump administration. “We expected these kind of large-scale raids much sooner,” Teatro said. “So for the last year, we’ve really been building community-based infrastructure to be able to respond.”

Because of that preparation, Teatro said her network was able to begin setting a response in motion within an hour and a half of the raid being launched. “Our first step was setting up an intake system,” Teatro explained. That system was designed to collect information on the individuals who were detained and distribute interview forms for eyewitnesses. In the early stages, TIRRC conducted the intake work from its Nashville office, with undocumented youth making phone calls and “getting information from people who, four hours away, were experiencing this raid,” Teatro said.

Teatro arrived in Morristown just after midnight Thursday and worked through the night compiling data from the roughly 80 intake interviews conducted in the preceding hours. She, along with scores of other volunteers, have been working on the case ever since.

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Hamblen County teachers gather to brainstorm ways to support the families of students and share thoughts and resources on April 8, 2018 after hundreds of students didn’t show up to school the day after the raid.
Photo: Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition
By Friday, the support network had set up a command center inside St. Patrick Parish Center, a Catholic church where a majority of the workers impacted by the raid attend services. “There’s rooms overflowing with food for people to take,” Teatro said, as well as attorneys on hand to help families begin the process of fighting their immigration cases in court. So far, the volunteers have helped families fill out roughly 200 power of attorney forms, Teatro said, “to insure custody for their kids, depending on what happens with the cases of this raid, but also [for] other people in the community who are afraid of subsequent enforcement actions.”

Perry, the Hamblen County superintendent, told The Intercept that about 550 children were absent from school the day after the raid — 20 percent of the county’s Hispanic student population, according to the Citizen Tribune, a local newspaper. Perry said 177 of those students remained absent on Monday. (ICE declined to comment on the raid’s impact on the local school district.)

Perry said that teachers and other school staff have been doing their best to help students cope with the loss of family members “and some of the anxiety and frustration and uncertainty that they are experiencing.”

“Administrators are trying to be particularly understanding of these particular students because they are indeed innocent in the whole situation,” Perry added, his voice cracking. “We have a lot of good people in our community who care deeply about children and families, and several people have come together to make sure that all the children are taken care of.”

Jordyn Horner, a library media specialist with the district, wrote on Facebook over the weekend that her students were “in tears, upset, angry, and afraid.”

“I spent Friday trying to find ways to answer many tough questions, giving lots of hugs, and making sure that my students felt safe in my library,” Horner wrote. “This community has been completely torn apart.”

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WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 20: President Donald Trump (C) holds a law enforcement roundtable on sanctuary cities, in the Roosevelt Room at the White House on March 20, 2018 in Washington, D.C. Trump was joined by Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen (L) and Thomas Homan, acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. (Photo by Kevin Dietsch-Pool/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump holds a law enforcement roundtable with acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement Thomas Homan, right, at the White House on March 20, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
Whether ICE’s arrests were lawful remains to be seen and could become the subject of legal wrangling. According to a passage in an internal HSI special agent manual pertaining to the agency’s view of its authorities in conducting the execution of criminal search warrants, ICE allows itself a degree of flexibility in detaining individuals during operations such as the raid in Tennessee.

A special agent “executing a criminal search warrant has the authority to briefly detain any individuals present at the location of the enforcement site,” reads the manual, dated October 2007, which was obtained by The Intercept. “Included within this authority are individuals attempting to leave the enforcement site in the presence of [special agents] arriving and individuals who arrive or attempt to obtain access to the enforcement site. An individual may be detained at the enforcement site for as long as deemed necessary by the [special agents] during the execution of the criminal search warrant.” (ICE declined to comment on whether the 2007 guidance was still in effect.)

Tactics aside, for immigrant families in Morristown, a small community in eastern Tennessee, the impact of Thursday’s raid was devastating. In a video interview TIRRC posted Sunday, Raul, a 16-year-old, explained that every adult in his life was arrested during the raid — including his mother, his uncle, and his aunt. The teenager described the anguish of facing his 2-year-old sister, knowing that their mother was gone and not knowing when, if ever, she would return. “I don’t know what to tell her,” Raul said, in Spanish. (Raul’s aunt, who has an 8-month-old baby, has since been released, Teatro said).

In an interview with a local ABC News affiliate, Reymunda Lopez said she and her co-workers were herded together among the cattle at the slaughterhouse, told to place their hands behind their heads, and not to resist. “When we got taken to the bathroom, the police officer did a full body scan, searched even under the undergarments,” Lopez said through a translator. Lopez added that she came to Morristown 18 years ago seeking medical care for her son. She said she was released due to her diabetes and blood pressure, but that she was tormented by the fact that she was let go when others were not.

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Community members gather in Knoxville, Tennessee to support individuals arrested in the ICE raid as they fight their deportations on April 9, 2018.
Photo: Tennessee Immigrant and Refugee Rights Coalition
The psychological impact of Thursday’s operation runs deep in Morristown, and likely will for some time. “Yesterday, as we were doing some intake work, a woman was just breaking down, saying she couldn’t stop seeing her co-workers faces, she couldn’t sleep,” Teatro said, adding that the woman’s account spoke to the “lack of dignity” that multiple witnesses recalled experiencing at the hands of the authorities. “Some of the folks that got detained have worked in the factory or the clients for 15 years,” she added, and many are the breadwinners for their families.

While the arrestees included longtime employees of the meatpacking plant, one of the women taken into custody last week was reporting for her first day of work. “They came out of nowhere and started taking people,” the woman, named Maria, said in an interview with TIRRC after she was released. “They didn’t care about the situation, or what they were doing or who they were — they simply took them.”

Top photo: Esmeralda Baustista holds her daughter and a photograph of her brother Luis Bautista-Martinez, one of the workers detained when ICE raided Southeastern Provisions, at a prayer vigil on April 9, 2018 at Hillcrest Elementary School in Morristown, Tennessee.
https://www.wnyc.org/story/palantir-dir ... ails-show/




5/ The emails also show how Palantir reps help agents dump data, like cell phone seizures, into their system for subsequent analysis. Ex-ICE HSI agents praise Palantir’s ability to connect the dots:

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Palantir employee helped build the Cambridge Analytica data harvesting scheme. Will someone please report on Palantir’s Census Bureau contracts and the concerns that they also provide services to DHS/CPB/ICE/JFC


Replying to @georgejoseph94 @qjurecic @PalantirTech
Uh huh.

Palantir Knows Everything About You
By Peter Waldman, Lizette Chapman, and Jordan Robertson
April 19, 2018
July 2, 2019
Peter Thiel’s data-mining company is using War on Terror tools to track American citizens. The scary thing? Palantir is desperate for new customers.

High above the Hudson River in downtown Jersey City, a former U.S. Secret Service agent named Peter Cavicchia III ran special ops for JPMorgan Chase & Co. His insider threat group—most large financial institutions have one—used computer algorithms to monitor the bank’s employees, ostensibly to protect against perfidious traders and other miscreants.

Aided by as many as 120 “forward-deployed engineers” from the data mining company Palantir Technologies Inc., which JPMorgan engaged in 2009, Cavicchia’s group vacuumed up emails and browser histories, GPS locations from company-issued smartphones, printer and download activity, and transcripts of digitally recorded phone conversations. Palantir’s software aggregated, searched, sorted, and analyzed these records, surfacing keywords and patterns of behavior that Cavicchia’s team had flagged for potential abuse of corporate assets. Palantir’s algorithm, for example, alerted the insider threat team when an employee started badging into work later than usual, a sign of potential disgruntlement. That would trigger further scrutiny and possibly physical surveillance after hours by bank security personnel.


Over time, however, Cavicchia himself went rogue. Former JPMorgan colleagues describe the environment as Wall Street meets Apocalypse Now, with Cavicchia as Colonel Kurtz, ensconced upriver in his office suite eight floors above the rest of the bank’s security team. People in the department were shocked that no one from the bank or Palantir set any real limits. They darkly joked that Cavicchia was listening to their calls, reading their emails, watching them come and go. Some planted fake information in their communications to see if Cavicchia would mention it at meetings, which he did.

It all ended when the bank’s senior executives learned that they, too, were being watched, and what began as a promising marriage of masters of big data and global finance descended into a spying scandal. The misadventure, which has never been reported, also marked an ominous turn for Palantir, one of the most richly valued startups in Silicon Valley. An intelligence platform designed for the global War on Terror was weaponized against ordinary Americans at home.

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 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. 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 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. 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 driver’s license and ID photos, law enforcement agencies can now identify more than half the population of U.S. adults.

JPMorgan was effectively Palantir’s R&D lab and test bed for a foray into the financial sector, via a product called Metropolis. The two companies made an odd couple. Palantir’s software engineers showed up at the bank on skateboards. Neckties and haircuts were too much to ask, but JPMorgan drew the line at T-shirts. The programmers had to agree to wear shirts with collars, tucked in when possible.

As Metropolis was installed and refined, JPMorgan made an equity investment in Palantir and inducted the company into its Hall of Innovation, while its executives raved about Palantir in the press. The software turned “data landfills into gold mines,” Guy Chiarello, who was then JPMorgan’s chief information officer, told Bloomberg Businessweek in 2011.

The founder of Palantir is extremely well connected. Here’s how his life might appear in the company’s model.


Former operator of

Former operator of

Former operator of

Former operator of

Former operator of

Chart: Dorothy Gambrell

Cavicchia was in charge of forensic investigations at the bank. Through Palantir, he gained administrative access to a full range of corporate security databases that had previously required separate authorizations and a specific business justification to use. He had unprecedented access to everything, all at once, all the time, on one analytic platform. He was a one-man National Security Agency, surrounded by the Palantir engineers, each one costing the bank as much as $3,000 a day.

Senior investigators stumbled onto the full extent of the spying by accident. In May 2013 the bank’s leadership ordered an internal probe into who had leaked a document to the New York Times about a federal investigation of JPMorgan for possibly manipulating U.S. electricity markets. Evidence indicated the leaker could have been Frank Bisignano, who’d recently resigned as JPMorgan’s co-chief operating officer to become CEO of First Data Corp., the big payments processor. Cavicchia had used Metropolis to gain access to emails about the leak investigation—some written by top executives—and the bank believed he shared the contents of those emails and other communications with Bisignano after Bisignano had left the bank. (Inside JPMorgan, Bisignano was considered Cavicchia’s patron—a senior executive who protected and promoted him.)

JPMorgan officials debated whether to file a suspicious activity report with federal regulators about the internal security breach, as required by law whenever banks suspect regulatory violations. They decided not to—a controversial decision internally, according to multiple sources with the bank. Cavicchia negotiated a severance agreement and was forced to resign. He joined Bisignano at First Data, where he’s now a senior vice president. Chiarello also went to First Data, as president. After their departures, JPMorgan drastically curtailed its Palantir use, in part because “it never lived up to its promised potential,” says one JPMorgan executive who insisted on anonymity to discuss the decision.

The bank, First Data, and Bisignano, Chiarello, and Cavicchia didn’t respond to separately emailed questions for this article. Palantir, in a statement responding to questions about how JPMorgan and others have used its software, declined to answer specific questions. “We are aware that powerful technology can be abused and we spend a lot of time and energy making sure our products are used for the forces of good,” the statement said.

Much depends on how the company chooses to define good. In March a former computer engineer for Cambridge Analytica, the political consulting firm that worked for Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, testified in the British Parliament that a Palantir employee had helped Cambridge Analytica use the personal data of up to 87 million Facebook users to develop psychographic profiles of individual voters. Palantir said it has a strict policy against working on political issues, including campaigns, and showed Bloomberg emails in which it turned down Cambridge’s request to work with Palantir on multiple occasions. The employee, Palantir said, worked with Cambridge Analytica on his own time. Still, there was no mistaking the implications of the incident: All human relations are a matter of record, ready to be revealed by a clever algorithm. Everyone is a spidergram now.

Peter Thiel Thiel addresses the 2016 Republican National Convention. Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images
Thiel, who turned 50 in October, long reveled as the libertarian black sheep in left-leaning Silicon Valley. He contributed $1.25 million to Trump’s presidential victory, spoke at the Republican convention, and has dined with Trump at the White House. But Thiel has told friends he’s had enough of the Bay Area’s “monocultural” liberalism. He’s ditching his longtime base in San Francisco and moving his personal investment firms this year to Los Angeles, where he plans to establish his next project, a conservative media empire.

As Thiel’s wealth has grown, he’s gotten more strident. In a 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, he railed against taxes, ­government, women, poor people, and society’s acquiescence to the inevitability of death. (Thiel doesn’t accept death as inexorable.) He wrote that he’d reached some radical conclusions: “Most importantly, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” The 1920s was the last time one could feel “genuinely optimistic” about American democracy, he said; since then, “the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to women—two constituencies that are notoriously tough for libertarians—have rendered the notion of ‘capitalist democracy’ into an oxymoron.”

Thiel went into tech after missing a prized Supreme Court clerkship following his graduation from Stanford Law School. He co-founded PayPal and then parlayed his winnings from its 2002 sale to EBay Inc. into a career in venture investing. He made an early bet on Facebook Inc. (where he’s still on the board), which accounts for most of his $3.3 billion fortune, as estimated by Bloomberg, and launched his career as a backer of big ideas—things like private space travel (through an investment in SpaceX), hotel alternatives (Airbnb), and floating island nations (the Seasteading Institute).

He started Palantir—named after the omniscient crystal balls in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy—three years after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. The CIA’s investment arm, In-Q-Tel, was a seed investor. For the role of chief executive officer, he chose an old law school friend and self-described neo-Marxist, Alex Karp. Thiel told Bloomberg in 2011 that civil libertarians ought to embrace Palantir, because data mining is less repressive than the “crazy abuses and draconian policies” proposed after Sept. 11. The best way to prevent another catastrophic attack without becoming a police state, he argued, was to give the government the best surveillance tools possible, while building in safeguards against their abuse.

Legend has it that Stephen Cohen, one of Thiel’s co-founders, programmed the initial prototype for Palantir’s software in two weeks. It took years, however, to coax customers away from the longtime leader in the intelligence analytics market, a software company called I2 Inc.

In one adventure missing from the glowing accounts of Palantir’s early rise, I2 accused Palantir of misappropriating its intellectual property through a Florida shell company registered to the family of a Palantir executive. A company claiming to be a private eye firm had been licensing I2 software and development tools and spiriting them to Palantir for more than four years. I2 said the cutout was registered to the family of Shyam Sankar, Palantir’s director of business development.


As shown in the privacy breaches at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica, the pressure to monetize data at tech companies is ceaseless

I2 sued Palantir in federal court, alleging fraud, conspiracy, and copyright infringement. In its legal response, Palantir argued it had the right to appropriate I2’s code for the greater good. “What’s at stake here is the ability of critical national security, defense and intelligence agencies to access their own data and use it interoperably in whichever platform they choose in order to most effectively protect the citizenry,” Palantir said in its motion to dismiss I2’s suit.

The motion was denied. Palantir agreed to pay I2 about $10 million to settle the suit. I2 was sold to IBM in 2011.

Sankar, Palantir employee No. 13 and now one of the company’s top executives, also showed up in another Palantir scandal: the company’s 2010 proposal for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to run a secret sabotage campaign against the group’s liberal opponents. Hacked emails released by the group Anonymous indicated that Palantir and two other defense contractors pitched outside lawyers for the organization on a plan to snoop on the families of progressive activists, create fake identities to infiltrate left-leaning groups, scrape social media with bots, and plant false information with liberal groups to subsequently discredit them.

After the emails emerged in the press, Palantir offered an explanation similar to the one it provided in March for its U.K.-based employee’s assistance to Cambridge Analytica: It was the work of a single rogue employee. The company never explained Sankar’s involvement. Karp issued a public apology and said he and Palantir were deeply committed to progressive causes. Palantir set up an advisory panel on privacy and civil liberties, headed by a former CIA attorney, and beefed up an engineering group it calls the Privacy and Civil Liberties Team. The company now has about 10 PCL engineers on call to help vet clients’ requests for access to data troves and pitch in with pertinent thoughts about law, morality, and machines.

During its 14 years in startup mode, Palantir has cultivated a mystique as a haven for brilliant engineers who want to solve big problems such as terrorism and human trafficking, unfettered by pedestrian concerns such as making money. Palantir executives boast of not employing a single sales­person, relying instead on word-of-mouth referrals.

The company’s early data mining dazzled venture investors, who valued it at $20 billion in 2015. But Palantir has never reported a profit. It operates less like a conventional software company than like a consultancy, deploying roughly half its 2,000 engineers to client sites. That works at well-funded government spy agencies seeking specialized applications but has produced mixed results with corporate clients. Palantir’s high installation and maintenance costs repelled customers such as Hershey Co., which trumpeted a Palantir partnership in 2015 only to walk away two years later. Coca-Cola, Nasdaq, American Express, and Home Depot have also dumped Palantir.

Karp recognized the high-touch model was problematic early in the company’s push into the corporate market, but solutions have been elusive. “We didn’t want to be a services company. We wanted to do something that was cost-efficient,” he confessed at a European conference in 2010, in one of several unguarded comments captured in videos posted online. “Of course, what we didn’t recognize was that this would be much, much harder than we realized.”

Palantir’s newest product, Foundry, aims to finally break through the profitability barrier with more automation and less need for on-site engineers. Airbus SE, the big European plane maker, uses Foundry to crunch airline data about specific onboard components to track usage and maintenance and anticipate repair problems. Merck KGaA, the pharmaceutical giant, has a long-term Palantir contract to use Foundry in drug development and supply chain management.

Deeper adoption of Foundry in the commercial market is crucial to Palantir’s hopes of a big payday. Some investors are weary and have already written down their Palantir stakes. Morgan Stanley now values the company at $6 billion. Fred Alger Management Inc., which has owned stock since at least 2006, revalued Palantir in December at about $10 billion, according to Bloomberg Holdings. One frustrated investor, Marc Abramowitz, recently won a court order for Palantir to show him its books, as part of a lawsuit he filed alleging the company sabotaged his attempt to find a buyer for the Palantir shares he has owned for more than a decade.

As shown in the privacy breaches at Facebook and Cambridge Analytica—with Thiel and Palantir linked to both sides of the equation—the pressure to monetize data at tech companies is ceaseless. Facebook didn’t grow from a website connecting college kids into a purveyor of user profiles and predilections worth $478 billion by walling off personal data. Palantir says its Privacy and Civil Liberties Team watches out for inappropriate data demands, but it consists of just 10 people in a company of 2,000 engineers. No one said no to JPMorgan, or to whomever at Palantir volunteered to help Cambridge Analytica—or to another organization keenly interested in state-of-the-art data science, the Los Angeles Police Department.

Gotham program Screenshots of Palantir’s Gotham program, from a promotional video. Source: Youtube
Palantir began work with the LAPD in 2009. The impetus was federal funding. After several Sept. 11 postmortems called for more intelligence sharing at all levels of law enforcement, money started flowing to Palantir to help build data integration systems for so-called fusion centers, starting in L.A. There are now more than 1,300 trained Palantir users at more than a half-dozen law enforcement agencies in Southern California, including local police and sheriff’s departments and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.

The LAPD uses Palantir’s Gotham product for Operation Laser, a program to identify and deter people likely to commit crimes. Information from rap sheets, parole reports, police interviews, and other sources is fed into the system to generate a list of people the department defines as chronic offenders, says Craig Uchida, whose consulting firm, Justice & Security Strategies Inc., designed the Laser system. The list is distributed to patrolmen, with orders to monitor and stop the pre-crime suspects as often as possible, using excuses such as jaywalking or fix-it tickets. At each contact, officers fill out a field interview card with names, addresses, vehicles, physical descriptions, any neighborhood intelligence the person offers, and the officer’s own observations on the subject.

The cards are digitized in the Palantir system, adding to a constantly expanding surveillance database that’s fully accessible without a warrant. Tomorrow’s data points are automatically linked to today’s, with the goal of generating investigative leads. Say a chronic offender is tagged as a passenger in a car that’s pulled over for a broken taillight. Two years later, that same car is spotted by an automatic license plate reader near a crime scene 200 miles across the state. As soon as the plate hits the system, Palantir alerts the officer who made the original stop that a car once linked to the chronic offender was spotted near a crime scene.

The platform is supplemented with what sociologist Sarah Brayne calls the secondary surveillance network: the web of who is related to, friends with, or sleeping with whom. One woman in the system, for example, who wasn’t suspected of committing any crime, was identified as having multiple boyfriends within the same network of associates, says Brayne, who spent two and a half years embedded with the LAPD while researching her dissertation on big-data policing at Princeton University and who’s now an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “Anybody who logs into the system can see all these intimate ties,” she says. To widen the scope of possible connections, she adds, the LAPD has also explored purchasing private data, including social media, foreclosure, and toll road information, camera feeds from hospitals, parking lots, and universities, and delivery information from Papa John’s International Inc. and Pizza Hut LLC.

The Constitutionality Question

Why the courts haven’t ruled on whether Palantir’s analytical tools are legal

Civil rights advocates say the compilation of a digital dossier of someone’s life, absent a court warrant, is an unlawful intrusion under the U.S. Constitution. Law enforcement officials say that’s not the case. For now, the question is unsettled, and that may be no accident. Civil liberties lawyers are seeking a case to challenge the constitutionality of Palantir’s use, but prosecutors and immigration agents have been careful not to cite the software in evidentiary documents, says Paromita Shah, associate director of the National Lawyers Guild’s National Immigration Project. “Palantir lives on that secrecy,” she says.

Since the 1970s, the Supreme Court has differentiated between searching someone’s home or car, which requires a warrant, and searching material out in the open or shared with others, which doesn’t. The justices’ thinking seems to be evolving as new technologies rise.

In a 2012 decision, U.S. v. Jones, the justices said that planting a GPS tracker on a car for 28 days without a warrant created such a comprehensive picture of the target’s life that it violated the public’s reasonable expectation of privacy.

Similarly, the court’s 2014 decision in Riley v. California found that cellphones contain so much personal information that they provide a virtual window into the owner’s mind, and thus necessitate a warrant for the government to search. Chief Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion, wrote of cellphones that “with all they contain and all they may reveal, they hold for many Americans ‘the privacies of life.’” Justice Louis Brandeis, 86 years earlier, wrote a searing dissent in a wiretap case that seems to perfectly foresee the advent of Palantir.

“Ways may someday be developed,” Brandeis warned, “by which the government, without removing papers from secret drawers, can reproduce them in court, and by which it will be enabled to expose to a jury the most intimate occurrences.”
—Peter Waldman

The LAPD declined to comment for this story. Palantir sent Bloomberg a statement about its work with law enforcement: “Our [forward-deployed engineers] and [privacy and civil liberties] engineers work with the law enforcement customers (including LAPD) to ensure that the implementation of our software and integration of their source systems with the software is consistent with the Department’s legal and policy obligations, as well as privacy and civil liberties considerations that may not currently be legislated but are on the horizon. We as a company determine the types of engagements and general applications of our software with respect to those overarching considerations. Police Agencies have internal responsibility for ensuring that their information systems are used in a manner consistent with their policies and procedures.”

Operation Laser has made L.A. cops more surgical—and, according to community activists, unrelenting. Once targets are enmeshed in a spidergram, they’re stuck.

Manuel Rios, 22, lives in the back of his grandmother’s house at the top of a hill in East L.A., in the heart of the city’s gang area. Tall with a fair complexion and light hair, he struggled in high school with depression and a learning disability and dropped out to work at a supermarket.

He grew up surrounded by friends who joined Eastside 18, the local affiliate of the 18th Street gang, one of the largest criminal syndicates in Southern California. Rios says he was never “jumped in”—initiated into 18. He spent years addicted to crystal meth and was once arrested for possession of a handgun and sentenced to probation. But except for a stint in county jail for a burglary arrest inside a city rec center, he’s avoided further trouble and says he kicked his meth habit last year.

In 2016, Rios was sitting in a parked car with an Eastside 18 friend when a police car pulled up. His buddy ran, pursued by the cops, but Rios stayed put. “Why should I run? I’m not a gang member,” he says over steak and eggs at the IHOP near his home. The police returned and handcuffed him. One of them took his picture with a cellphone. “Welcome to the gang database!” the officer said.

Since then he’s been stopped more than a dozen times, he says, and told that if he doesn’t like it he should move. He has nowhere to go. His girlfriend just had a baby girl, and he wants to be around for them. “They say you’re in the system, you can’t lie to us,” he says. “I tell them, ‘How can I be in the hood if I haven’t got jumped in? Can’t you guys tell people who bang and who don’t?’ They go by their facts, not the real facts.”

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 they’re 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 isn’t 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 Sheriff’s 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 agency’s “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 family’s home last March without a warrant. He’d been listed in the local gang database twice—in 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 people’s lives,” says his attorney, Vanessa del Valle of Northwestern University’s MacArthur Justice Center.


When whole communities are algorithmically scraped for pre-crime suspects, data is destiny

Palantir is twice the age most startups are when they cash out in a sale or initial public offering. The company needs to figure out how to be rewarded on Wall Street without creeping out Main Street. It might not be possible. For all of Palantir’s professed concern for individuals’ privacy, the single most important safeguard against abuse is the one it’s trying desperately to reduce through automation: human judgment.

As Palantir tries to court corporate customers as a more conventional software company, fewer forward-deployed engineers will mean fewer human decisions. Sensitive questions, such as how deeply to pry into people’s lives, will be answered increasingly by artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms. The small team of Privacy and Civil Liberties engineers could find themselves even less influential, as the urge for omnipotence among clients overwhelms any self-imposed restraints.

Computers don’t ask moral questions; people do, says John Grant, one of Palantir’s top PCL engineers and a forceful advocate for mandatory ethics education for engineers. “At a company like ours with millions of lines of code, every tiny decision could have huge implications,” Grant told a privacy conference in Berkeley last year.

JPMorgan’s experience remains instructive. “The world changed when it became clear everyone could be targeted using Palantir,” says a former JPMorgan cyber expert who worked with Cavicchia at one point on the insider threat team. “Nefarious ideas became trivial to implement; everyone’s a suspect, so we monitored everything. It was a pretty terrible feeling.” —With Michael Riley




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This figures...Peter Thiel is cofounder of this software company Palantir that specializes in big data analytics & helped CA harvest FB data...which helped DT.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Elvis » Tue Jul 16, 2019 12:55 pm

“She’s the one that’s actually talking about the economy, which is the thing that matters most,” Thiel told Carlson.


(Even Thiel pretends Bernie doesn't exist. :x )
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Marionumber1 » Tue Jul 16, 2019 3:45 pm

Elvis » Tue Jul 16, 2019 9:55 am wrote:
“She’s the one that’s actually talking about the economy, which is the thing that matters most,” Thiel told Carlson.


(Even Thiel pretends Bernie doesn't exist. :x )


Well he wouldn't want to run the risk of endorsing -- or rather anti-endorsing -- Bernie Sanders.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Elvis » Wed Jul 17, 2019 2:49 am

Marionumber1 wrote: anti-endorsing -- Bernie Sanders.


Ah yes! Those are great, thanks.

I was wondering where Thiel went, I thought he might get some kind of White House post, and hoped to see some discussion of a UBI, which Thiel advocates (and I now oppose). But I see now he's got people in there, he's got people.

Also see Probing Peter Thiel
“The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.” ― Joan Robinson
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Wed Jul 17, 2019 7:19 am

Barrett Brown Retweeted

Barrett Brown


@BarrettBrown_
14h14 hours ago
More
Replying to @ConMijente
This is the third major scandal Palantir has been caught lying about since 2011’s Themis affair, followed by their denials of role in Cambridge Analytica undermining of 2016 election via Facebook scraping. Pictured: their associate @AaronBarr digs into children for Themis clients
Image
https://twitter.com/BarrettBrown_
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Grizzly » Wed Jul 17, 2019 9:27 am

Image

Anyone here got a bloomberg account? to get the rest of this article?

Image
Image
Palantir's seventh Government Conference is only a week away and is on track to be our largest event yet! Seating is limited and we encourage you to register now to reserve your spot.

Our guest speakers will be former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Assistant Executive VP Linda Krieg and Executive Director Michael Geraghty, and The Institute for the Study of War Deputy Director Marisa Sullivan and Senior Fellow LTG James Dubik.

Palantir engineering talks will hightlight features of our latest software release Version 3.5, infrastructure and analytical advancements for addressing massive-scale data operations, the new Palantir Video Analysis application, and much more.

GovCon 7 will offer an exceptional view into the recent product innovations and deployment successes that continue to demonstrate how Palantir provides customers with unparalleled analytical capabilities, especially in times of fiscal austerity.

For additional details and to view a complete agenda, visit our conference website.


External Links

How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade 4.11.2009

Palantir’s third black eye: i2 lawsuit settled 16.2.2011

Palantir raises $50mil from unknown investors 5.5.2011

Palantir’s $2.5 Billion Mystery, Solved 7.10.2011

Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon - 22.11.2011

Kellogg of Service Salesforce.com blogging on Palantir - 27.6.2011

Palantir's YouTube Channel

Text of e-mail announcement of 7th annual Palantir Government Conference, featuring former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff as speaker

Interview with Palantir CEO on Charlie Rose

Palantir; The vanguard of cyberterror security

Global surveillance industry gets a new toy Palantir's seventh Government Conference is only a week away and is on track to be our largest event yet! Seating is limited and we encourage you to register now to reserve your spot.

Our guest speakers will be former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Assistant Executive VP Linda Krieg and Executive Director Michael Geraghty, and The Institute for the Study of War Deputy Director Marisa Sullivan and Senior Fellow LTG James Dubik.

Palantir engineering talks will hightlight features of our latest software release Version 3.5, infrastructure and analytical advancements for addressing massive-scale data operations, the new Palantir Video Analysis application, and much more.

GovCon 7 will offer an exceptional view into the recent product innovations and deployment successes that continue to demonstrate how Palantir provides customers with unparalleled analytical capabilities, especially in times of fiscal austerity.

For additional details and to view a complete agenda, visit our conference website.


External Links

How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade 4.11.2009

Palantir’s third black eye: i2 lawsuit settled 16.2.2011

Palantir raises $50mil from unknown investors 5.5.2011

Palantir’s $2.5 Billion Mystery, Solved 7.10.2011

Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon - 22.11.2011

Kellogg of Service Salesforce.com blogging on Palantir - 27.6.2011

Palantir's YouTube Channel

Text of e-mail announcement of 7th annual Palantir Government Conference, featuring former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff as speaker

Interview with Palantir CEO on Charlie Rose

Palantir; The vanguard of cyberterror security

Global surveillance industry gets a new toy


Palantir's seventh Government Conference is only a week away and is on track to be our largest event yet! Seating is limited and we encourage you to register now to reserve your spot.

Our guest speakers will be former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Assistant Executive VP Linda Krieg and Executive Director Michael Geraghty, and The Institute for the Study of War Deputy Director Marisa Sullivan and Senior Fellow LTG James Dubik.

Palantir engineering talks will hightlight features of our latest software release Version 3.5, infrastructure and analytical advancements for addressing massive-scale data operations, the new Palantir Video Analysis application, and much more.

GovCon 7 will offer an exceptional view into the recent product innovations and deployment successes that continue to demonstrate how Palantir provides customers with unparalleled analytical capabilities, especially in times of fiscal austerity.

For additional details and to view a complete agenda, visit our conference website.


External Links

How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade 4.11.2009

Palantir’s third black eye: i2 lawsuit settled 16.2.2011

Palantir raises $50mil from unknown investors 5.5.2011

Palantir’s $2.5 Billion Mystery, Solved 7.10.2011

Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon - 22.11.2011

Kellogg of Service Salesforce.com blogging on Palantir - 27.6.2011

Palantir's YouTube Channel

Text of e-mail announcement of 7th annual Palantir Government Conference, featuring former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff as speaker

Interview with Palantir CEO on Charlie Rose

Palantir; The vanguard of cyberterror security

Global surveillance industry gets a new toy


TRYING TO GET ALL THIS, WIKI, SINCE IT'S PROLLY BEEN SCRUBBED


Palantir

Palantir Technologies is a major component of the intelligence contracting system, producing cutting-edge software and services for a range of government and private sector clients. The firm was founded in 2004 by a small group including Peter Thiel and Dr. Alex Karp (as well as Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings) with $30,000,000 from Thiel's investment body The Founders Fund as well as $2,000,000 from In-Q-Tel - the latter being the de facto investment arm of the CIA, having been formed for the purpose of encouraging the development of new technologies and capabilities of potential use to the U.S. intelligence community. Each year, the firm holds a conference on related technologies; the 2011 affair quite tellingly featured former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff as a speaker despite the company's prior, notorious conduct, described below.

Palantir is an entity of interest in large part by virtue of its involvement with HBGary and Berico under the rubric of Team Themis, assembled for the purpose of providing intelligence capabilities to those firms willing to pay for them. Although plans were drawn up at the request of Bank of America and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce by which to target Wikileaks, left-wing activist groups, and the journalist Glenn Greenwald for various forms of online attacks, the plot was unveiled when an Anonymous team took control of HBGary's servers in early February of 2011 and released over 70,000 e-mails, including some to and from Palantir employees Matthew Steckman and Eli Bingham, revealing details of Palantir's involvement in the plot. At least one contract pursuant to the Team Themis conspiracy is signed by Palantir general counsel Matt Long, and several e-mails refer to aspects of the proposed deal having been approved up the chain of command to Dr. Karp himself. Nonetheless, Palantir has claimed to have had no knowledge of what was being done by two of its employees in concert with two corporate partners on behalf of two major corporate clients.

Aside from Steckman, Bingham, and Long, several other Palantir employees are known to have been involved in the firm's work on Team Themis; this e-mail shows that employees Shyam Sankar and Sean Stenstrom were also heavily involved in the efforts for which Steckman alone was suspended.

Palantir has also been connected to the secretive intelligence contractor Endgame Systems through Steckman, who is mentioned by an executive at that firm as having been working with them on projects as of early 2010 (see Endgame entry for details).

Palantir hired former National Counterterrorism Center Director Michael Leiter as a senior counselor in December of 2011.[1]

The document below was prepared by Anonymous participants in late February; it provides a comprehensive analysis of the e-mails in question and facts surrounding the case.

Note that the anonleaks links no longer work; emails can be searched @ Par-AnoIA - Papers ۞ 22:30, 21 December 2012 (UTC)
Contents

1 Introduction
1.1 List of emails TO Matthew Steckman RE: Wikileaks
1.2 List of emails FROM Matthew Steckman RE: Wikileaks=
1.3 List of emails TO/FROM Aaron Barr RE: Anonymous Research and/or Anonymous Connections to Wikileaks
1.4 List of emails TO/FROM Other HBGary Employees RE: Wikileaks and/or Anonymous
1.5 "The Wikileaks Threat" (Original Document) Discussed in Listed Emails
2 Background Brief
2.1 Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction
2.2 Privatization’s Pretensions
2.3 Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism
2.4 On the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism
3 451 Group Report via Penny Leavy-Hoglund (Dated July 2 2010)
3.1 Context
3.2 Products
3.3 Technology
3.4 Strategy
3.5 Competition
3.6 SWOT analysis
4 Products
4.1 Palantir Government
4.1.1 AnalyzeThe.US
4.2 Palantir Finance
4.2.1 JoyRide
4.3 GovCon
5 External Links

Introduction

The following emails clearly establish Matthew Steckman's involvement in the creation of the leaked presentation/proposal entitled, "The Wikileaks Threat," including content allegedly considered unethical by the Internet security firm, Palantir, and possibly illegal under U.S. law. According to emails sent and received by Steckman, Matthew Steckman:

Was the first to correspond with Bank of America's legal representation, Hunton & Williams regarding Wikileaks, a publisher allegedly holding leaked documents from Bank of America;
Was aware that Hunton & Williams had been recommended to Bank of America by the U.S. Department of Justice;
Solicited the involvement of the security firms Berico and HBGary, in addition to his own firm, Palantir;
Outlined the format of the presentation to be made to Hunton & Williams by Palantir, Berico and HBGary, including the number of slides and the possible content of slides;
Received and approved suggestions for the proposal from representatives from HBGary, Berico and Palantir, including HBGary CEO Aaron Barr;
Specifically approved suggestions for the proposal, made by Aaron Barr, regarding strategic "attacks" on journalist Glenn Greenwald and others in the media for the purpose of undermining Wikileaks' support in the media;
Specifically approved suggestions for the proposal, made by Aaron Barr, regarding the exploitation of weaknesses in Wikileaks' infrastructure, including its network of staff, volunteers and leakers; its submission servers; its finances; its founder, Julian Assange; etc;
Incorporated the above-described suggestions for the proposal, made by Aaron Barr, into the finished proposal;
Personally created, formatted, revised, edited, approved and distributed the presentation document in question.
Listed emails also detail correspondance between employees of the firms HBGary and Palantir (including Aaron Barr and Matthew Steckman) among others, concerning the internet movement called Anonymous, its alleged connections to Wikileaks, and Aaron's Barr's research on Anonymous, including its alleged connections to Wikileaks.


List of emails TO Matthew Steckman RE: Wikileaks

John Woods (Hunton for BoA) requests slides for a presentation to a "large US bank" re: Wikileaks.
Eli Bingham (Palantir) requests for sec reps from Palantir, Berico and HBGary to join a conference call regarding the "large US bank" opportunity discussed above.
Aaron Barr informs Matthew Steckman that he cannot open a file attachment from Steckman's previous email (linked):
Aaron Barr discusses sending analysis information to Matthew Steckman, regarding BoA/Wikileaks. Barr mentions "mapping" [speculation: the analysis maps seen in the presentation made to Hunton for BoA]:
Aaron Barr, to Matthew Stuckman, explicitly lays out potential "attack" strategies against Wikileaks' "weak points," citing Wikileaks' volunteers, staff, finances, submission servers, Julian Assange, the perceived security of leakers, etc.
Aaron Barr introduces Matthew Steckman to the idea of attacking Glenn Greenwald specifically, and makes a case for strategically undermining Wikileaks' support in the "liberal" media. Barr explicitly uses the word "attack" in relation to organizations/individuals supporting Wikileaks.
Aaron Barr informs Matthew Steckman that he cannot open a file attachment sent by Steckman. Attachment appears to be a draft of the presentation to be made to Hunton for BoA.
Aaron Barr agrees with Matthew Steckman that they should find out "later" on whose end is the technical issue keeping Barr from accessing Steckman's BoA/Wikileaks proposal file attachments.


List of emails FROM Matthew Steckman RE: Wikileaks=

Matthew Steckman invites Aaron Barr (and reps from Palantir and Berico) to join a conference call about an opportunity from a "large US bank" re: Wikileaks (mentioned in previous email).
Matthew Steckman summarizes, for Palantir, Berico and HBGary sec reps, a phonecall from Hunton and Williams; outlines BoA/Wikileaks opportunity as "internal investigation;" mentions BoA seeking injunction against wikileaks; mentions US Department of Justice's recommendation of Hunton & *Williams, specifically Richard Wyatt, whom steckman refers to as "the emperor," to BoA's general counsel; mentions roles of Palantir, Berico and HBGary; mentions potential prosecution of Wikileaks/
Matthew Steckman outlines possible presentation slides for proposal to Hunton for BoA, and organizes logistics of upcoming conference call.
Matthew Steckman sends "a cleaned up version" of a document for sec reps to "work from" [original attachment is not included at listed link, document is an early draft of the BoA proposal.] Steckman informs sec reps from HBGary, Palantir and Berico that he is only collecting information for the time being, regarding the BoA/WIkileaks proposal.
Matthew Steckman sends Berico and HBGary reps another "cleaned up version to work from".
Matthew Steckman informs John Woods (Hunton for BoA) that the three firms (Palantir, Berico, HBGary) will have coordinated an early proposal by "tonight" [Dec 02, 2010].
Matthew Steckman and John Woods (Hunton for BoA) organize logistics of morning conference call.
Matthew Steckman sends "working draft" of BoA/Wikileaks proposal to sec reps from Berico, Palantir and HBGary.
Matthew Steckman sends conference call details [date, time, phone number] to John Woods (Hunton for BoA) and Berico, Palantir and HBGary sec reps.
Matthew Steckman sends proposal notes ["document"] for upcoming conference call/presentation to John Woods (Hunton for BoA) and Berico, Palantir and HBGary sec reps.
Matthew Steckman informs Aaron Barr that he approves of Barr's earlier suggestions regarding Wikileaks' strengths/weaknesses and that he plans to "spotlight" an attack on Glenn Greenwald in the upcoming presentation, also per Barr's earlier suggestion [see earlier emails TO Steckman].
Matthew Steckman informs Aaron Barr that Barr's suggestions have been added to the updated proposal and thanks Barr for his suggestions [detailed in emails/synopses above].
Matthew Steckman sends Aaron Barr a "Pfd" [sic] and suggests that they need to work out Barr's technical difficulties opening steckman's email attachments "afterwards".


List of emails TO/FROM Aaron Barr RE: Anonymous Research and/or Anonymous Connections to Wikileaks

Aaron Barr contacts John Woods (Hunton for BoA) about Barr's research on Anonymous. Barr claims to have information about Anonymous that possibly no one else has regarding "organization operations and communications infrastructure as well as key players by name." Barr mentions possible application of this information to another "opportunity" previously discussed with Woods, but does not elaborate.
Aaron Barr and Matthew Steckman discuss sharing Barr's research on Anonymous.
Aaron Barr and Matthew Stechman discuss meeting and sharing Barr's research on Anonymous.
Aaron Barr contacts Dawn Meyerriecks (Office of the Director of National Intelligence) and informs her of his research on Anonymous. Barr claims to have put together "a significant data set" and offers to discuss his "results, methodologies, and significance of social media for analysis and exposure".
Aaron Barr corresponds with John Woods (Hunton) and claims that he has mapped out 80-90% of Anonymous' leadership. *Barr claims to be meeting with "govies" [speculation: government officials] "next week" [dated 01/31/2011.] Follow-up to email in which Barr alleges ties between Anonymous and Wikileaks.
Aaron Barr discusses with Bill Wansley (Booz, Allen, Hamilton) the possibility of researching ties between Anonymous and Wikileaks; Barr claims there are "many" such ties.


List of emails TO/FROM Other HBGary Employees RE: Wikileaks and/or Anonymous

Bob Slapnik (HBGary) recounts to HBGary's sales department a recent conversation at a "customer site" about potential markets created by the Wikileaks release (i.e. China's resultant access to classified US security intelligence and the US's subsequent need for new sec.) Slapnik stresses the importance of targeted language when proposing such products.
David Willson informs Ted Vera (HBGary) that the Bank of America/Wikileaks news has been broken by FOX.

"The Wikileaks Threat" (Original Document) Discussed in Listed Emails

The document provides what the authors believed was an overview of the structure and organisation of Wikileaks (some of the information is inaccurate) and promotes the potential role of Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies against the 'Wikileaks threat'.

From the 'Response Tactics' section:

"Speed is crucial!
There is no time to develop an infrastructure to support this investigation
The threat demands a comprehensive analysis capability now
Combating this threat requires advanced subject matter expertise in cybersecurity, insider threats, counter cyberfraud, targeting analysis, social media exploitation.
Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies represent deep domain knowledge in each of these areas
They can be deployed tomorrow against this threat as a unified and cohesive investigative analysis cell."


From the 'Potential Proactive Tactics' section:

"Feed the fuel between the feuding groups. Disinformation. Create messages around actions to sabotage or discredit the opposing organization. Submit fake documents and then call out the error.
Create concern over the security of the infrastructure. Create exposure stories. If the process is believed to not be secure they are done.
Cyber attacks against the infrastructure to get data on document submitters. This would kill the project. Since the servers are now in Sweden and France putting a team together to get access is more straightforward.
Media campaign to push the radical and reckless nature of wikileaks activities. Sustained pressure. Does nothing for the fanatics, but creates concern and doubt amongst moderates.
Search for leaks. Use social media to profile and identify risky behavior of employees."


From the 'Conclusion' section:

"WikiLeaks is not one person or even one organization; it is a network of people and organizations acting in concert for the sole purpose of “untraceable mass document leaking.”
Together, Palantir Technologies, HBGary Federal, and Berico Technologies bring the expertise and approach needed to combat the WikiLeaks threat effectively.
In the new age of mass social media, the insider threat represents an ongoing and persistent threat even if WikiLeaks is shut down.
Traditional responses will fail; we must employ the best investigative team, currently employed by the most sensitive of national security agencies."


There are two versions of the document:

WikiLeaks Response v5
WikiLeaks Response v6
Differences between drafts/versions:
Organizational breakdown expanded
White space changed
Minor wording changes
The rest seems to be identical

Background Brief

Based on what I’ve seen of their corporate positioning, Palantir seem to be invested in the idea that they are one of the good guys. They claim to offer technology which better distinguishes and discriminates amongst information acquired via mass-surveillance, and to permit the ‘tagging’ of this information so that it is accessible only to those with the appropriate clearance and jurisdiction.

“ dedicated to working for the common good and doing what’s right”

“That deeply felt commitment has been clear since the company’s inception and is evident in the company’s roster of advisors, leaders, engineers, and technology experts.” White Paper: ‘Privacy and Civil Liberties are in Palantir’s DNA’

“Dam it feels good to be a gangsta...”
-Matthew Steckman

(worthwhile background: positioned as trying to make a bad system better NPR: A Tech Fix For Illegal Government Snooping?)

They’re also pretty high profile, with a market capitalisation of over $1 billion (mostly courtesy of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel) - i.e., they’re a little more serious than HBGary.

Forbes: Names You Need to Know in 2011: Palantir Technologies

All of which makes it likely that they’re going to be looking to isolate Steckman, emphasizing the disparity between their corporate values and his conduct. Obviously, having their emails would make it easier to determine just how much upper management knew about his work without having to actually ask them only to receive the standard incredulous insistence of virtue. Either way, probing this is likely to give some insight into the scale of the threat as they presently perceive it.

On that threat, I think the safest thing to say at the moment is that nobody is quite sure where all of this is going to end up. Equally safe is that whatever we might be able to reduce the ‘Anonymous’ position to, it will likely be directly contrary to Palantir and their ilk – they want this to be a momentary blip, we want it to be the chink that proves the undoing of this sick machine we’ve all ended up serving and despising. The following is intended to describe bigger picture in the form of some choice excerpts from authoritative sources. This will hopefully yield insights into particular pressure points, fissures and weaknesses to be exploited.
Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction

December 28, 2006 Kevin R. Kosar. Congressional Reporting Service. CRS: Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction

Furthermore, the movement of an activity from the governmental sector to the private sector, or vice versa, has significant ramifications. Most obviously, the behavior of the entity carrying out the task will differ because each sector has different incentives and constraints. One public administration scholar has suggested that the incentives amount to this: a government entity may do only what the law permits and prescribes; a private entity may do whatever the law does not forbid.

Government agencies, unlike private firms, usually operate under complex accountability hierarchies that include multiple and even conflicting goals. Federal agencies, for example, are subject to the corpus of federal management laws. These laws serve as means for keeping executive branch agencies accountable to Congress, the President, and the public. They also embody principles of democratic justice, such as the allowance for public participation and government transparency.

Thus, in shifting an activity from the governmental to the private sector, the nature of government oversight is transformed. As the components of government provision of goods and services are privatized, the jurisdiction of federal management laws, Congress, the President, and the courts is reduced.
Privatization’s Pretensions

Jon D. Michaels. [77:717 2010] The University of Chicago Law Review

Workarounds provide outsourcing agencies with the means of accomplishing distinct policy goals that—but for the pretext of technocratic privatization—would either be legally unattainable or much more difficult to realize.

Consider the following scenario: Exploiting Legal-Status Differentials. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would like to establish a data mining operation to gather intelligence on potential terrorist threats. Bristling under stringent federal privacy laws imposed on government officials—laws that inhibit DHS’s ability to collect and analyze personal information without court authorization—policymakers turn to private contractors. Contractors, like most other private individuals, are largely beyond the scope of these federal laws. For the most part, these laws were enacted well before contractors were hired with great regularity to assist with law enforcement and counterterrorism initiatives. Now, in an era where outsourcing is the norm, DHS may use the statutes’ narrowness to its advantage and award government contracts to the unencumbered private data brokers. The contractors can then acquire the information more liberally on their own and submit raw data or synthesized intelligence to the government. DHS thus gets the benefit of more sweeping, intrusive searches than would otherwise be permitted of government officials, short of their first obtaining warrants or securing legislative change.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

Martin Scheinin. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, Thirteenth session. A/HRC/13/37 28 December 2009 http://www2.ohchr.org/english/bodies/hr ... -13-37.pdf

[20]States that previously lacked constitutional or statutory safeguards have been able to radically transform their surveillance powers with few restrictions. In countries that have constitutional and legal safeguards, Governments have endangered the protection of the right to privacy by not extending these safeguards to their cooperation with third countries and private actors, or by placing surveillance systems beyond the jurisdiction of their constitutions.

[41]The Special Rapporteur notes that since September 2001 there has been a trend towards outsourcing the collection of intelligence to private contractors... [raising concerns about] lack of proper training, the introduction of a profit motive into situations which are prone to human rights violations, and the often questionable prospect that such contractors will be subject to judicial and parliamentary accountability mechanisms
On the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism

Martin Scheinin. HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL, Tenth session. A/HRC/10/3 4 February 2009 http://www2.ohchr.org/english/issues/te ... C.10.3.pdf

B. Recommendations For legislative assemblies 65. The Special Rapporteur recommends that any interference with the right to privacy, family, home or correspondence by an intelligence agency should be authorized by provisions of law that are particularly precise, proportionate to the security threat, and offer effective guarantees against abuse. States should ensure that competent authorities apply less intrusive investigation methods than special investigation techniques if such methods enable a terrorist offence to be detected, prevented or prosecuted with adequate effectiveness. Decision-making authority should be layered so that the greater the invasion of privacy, the higher the level of necessary authorization. Furthermore, in order to safeguard against the arbitrary use of special investigative techniques and violations of human rights, the use of special investigative techniques by the intelligence agencies must be subject to appropriate supervision and review. 66. There should be a domestic legal basis for the storage and use of data by intelligence and security services, which is foreseeable as to its effects and subject to scrutiny in the public interest. The law should also provide for effective controls on how long information may be retained, the use to which it may be put, and who may have access to it, and ensure compliance with international data protection principles in the handling of information. There should be audit processes, which include external independent personnel, to ensure that such rules are adhered to.

67. The Special Rapporteur also recommends the adoption of legislation that clarifies the rights, responsibilities, and liability of private companies in submitting data to government agencies.

For the executive power 71. The executive should have effective powers of control, provided for in law, over the intelligence agencies and have adequate information about their actions in order to be able to effectively exercise control over them. The minister responsible for the intelligence and security services should therefore have the right to approve matters of political sensitivity (such as cooperation with agencies from other countries) or undertakings that affect fundamental rights (such as the approval of special investigative powers, whether or not additional external approval is required from a judge).
451 Group Report via Penny Leavy-Hoglund (Dated July 2 2010)

If 'data is the new oil,' as the saying goes, think of Palantir as a refinery. Those of you who read our 451 ESP report on e-crime have heard about Palantir, which has become the poster child for powerful data-analytics tools that can ferret out advanced attacks and otherwise make sense of the hodgepodge of data collected by modern, layered security deployments.

We were not surprised by the new funding round, but were taken aback by the dollar amount – a whopping $90m. For starters, Palantir's platform, though powerful, is hardly turnkey. Pricing starts in the mid six figures and deployments can run to well over $1m. The main selling point, according to folks we've talked to, is its incredible flexibility in connecting isolated bits of data to spot patterns of behavior or anomalous/suspicious activity. However, infinite flexibility also carries with it a heavy burden of knowhow and customization that most organizations can't muster. In the case of Palantir, customers need to define their own data ontology to leverage the power of the platform – no mean task.

For now, the company isn't saying much about what it will do with its newfound lucre. We'd recommend a push to develop a hosted version of its platform that would make it easier to go down market from the government and very large enterprise space, and allow Palantir to start building products or feature sets across verticals.
Context

Palo Alto, California-based Palantir was founded in 2004 by PayPal alums Karp and CTO Nathan Gettings. The core idea behind the company was to create a pluggable data-analytics platform that could be used by organizations that need to ferret out intelligence from massive volumes of information – in particular, government and financial services organizations. Palantir was initially funded with seed money from the founders, as well as three prior rounds of investment from the Founders Fund, In-Q-Tel and Reed Elsevier Ventures. Palantir has not disclosed the amount of those rounds. On June 24, Palantir announced that it had raised $90m in a series D funding round. The vendor said that its latest round gives it a valuation of $735m.

For partnerships, Palantir has collaborated with forensics vendor HBGary to integrate HBGary's threat intelligence data to Palantir's information-analysis platform. The integration allows analysts to perform more granular analysis of found threats using HPGary's Malware Genome database (pdf @ publicintelligence.net). There have also been whispers of a partnership between Palantir and network forensics player NetWitness, though nothing has been forthcoming from that.

Palantir now claims 250 employees, up from 200 in the fourth quarter of 2009 and 150 a year ago. The company maintains two divisions: Palantir Government, which designs products for the company's government, defense and intelligence customers; and Palantir Finance, which builds on the same platform, but with an eye toward the needs of large financial services organizations. We can't verify that, but the roster of A-list media appearances that Karp has landed, including NPR, The Wall Street Journal and The Charlie Rose Show – not to mention the latest TechCrunch exclusive – suggests that somebody at the firm has a way with the media.

While Palantir's platform marks an innovation, it isn't the only company in the analytics and forensics space, nor is its platform necessary and sufficient in and of itself to do soup to nuts analysis. Before Palantir can do its thing, you need superfast full-packet capture from the likes of Niksun, Endace or Napatech; threat pattern detection from HBGary or Snort (Sourcefire); or forensic analysis from the likes of NetWitness or Solera Networks. So, while the potential applications for Palantir's technology are limitless, the actual applications of it are thus far very limited: defense and intelligence work, and high finance. That's a relatively small pool to fish from. With an average deal size of $400,000, Palantir would need 250 paying customers to bring in the $100m in annual revenue that might justify the valuation quoted in this funding round. The last time we talked with the company (Q4 2009), it had 10.

Which brings us to Palantir's valuation. Our back-of-the-envelope calculations as of Q4 2009, based on average deal size, put revenue at perhaps as high as $16-20m. No doubt the company's client roster has grown considerably since then, but so has its headcount: up 25%. The valuation Palantir has fetched suggests revenue in the range of $100m or more, but we've seen nothing from the company to suggest that it's anywhere near that. We'd love to learn that we're wrong and to hear more about what Palantir will do with its latest round. We'd also love a chance to sit down and run the numbers with the company's new investors. There's obviously a story to tell.
Products

Palantir's eponymous platform comprises a rather complex system of modules for importing, tagging and then conducting investigations or analysis of disparate structured, semi-structured and unstructured data. At the center of the Palantir Platform is the Palantir Dispatch Server, which acts as a kind of management center for the Palantir Platform, handling business logic, policy and user access controls as well as user access to the back end – the Palantir Revisioning Database, which runs Oracle RDBMS 10g. Dispatch Servers can be clustered in large or active deployments, though an additional Lock Server must be deployed in clustered environments to manage in-memory locks on the Revisioning Database. The Search Server is a modified version of the Apache Software Foundation's Lucene and does indexing and full text search of structured and unstructured data. A separate and optional search server dubbed Raptor allows the Palantir Platform to search across internal and external data sources.

Other modules include the Palantir Configuration Server for managing multi-server environments and logging. A Job Server manages imports of 'large' data sets (which Palantir terms any data set larger than 1MB or 100 data sources to the Palantir Revisioning Database, as well as system operations like persistent searches). Palantir leverages a modified version of Apache's Hadoop/MapReduce service for bulk data imports. The Palantir Workspace front end is a browser-based application written in Java that centralizes all elements of investigation, including data management, case creation, analysis and reporting (output in HTML or PowerPoint). The Dynamic Ontology Manager is a Windows application that is used to classify structured and unstructured data to work with Palantir's Dynamic Ontology – a system for managing and accessing data objects within the Palantir Platform.

The company also sells a wide range of additional components to manage and monitor the health of Palantir Platform deployments, extract data from imported objects, and so on. Deployments of the Palantir Platform vary in terms of the number of servers; the size depends on the amount of data that must be imported and managed and the number of analysts that will be accessing the data. As a rule of thumb, the company says one server can support around 12 analysts. Key functions, including the Dispatch Server, Search Server and Configuration, run on separate boxes, as a rule.
Technology

Palantir's core technology resides in its Revisioning Database and comprises methods for providing different views of structured, semi-structured or unstructured data based on different sets of rules or changes to the data set. Palantir's technique, described in its US patent application, allows multiple users to create different versions of the same data object, and then track those changes over time, while allowing users to collaborate on their analysis of the same set of data – tracking changes over time, viewing a history of changes to a data object, or providing access restrictions around certain data objects or even certain 'views' of that data. The Revisioning Database enables the Palantir Platform to easily manipulate disparate data sources for analysis.

Palantir has four other patents pending, including a method for applying object modeling for exploring large data sets, and 'Filter Chains with Associated Views for Exploring Large Data Sets' – a way of tracking a chain of associations between large sets of discrete data elements and an even larger set of related data elements. Within the Palantir Platform, this technology powers the Links feature, which allows the Palantir Platform to graphically represent connections between multiple objects and their properties – that could be relationships between people, temporal events or keywords, for example. Palantir claims it has applications both in intelligence and in the financial services sector for analyzing and graphically representing trends in high-volume trading data.
Strategy

It's hard to discern Palantir's long-term strategy, except to say that the company's founders are very bullish about the potential of their platform and have thus far done an exemplary job getting noticed and, we understand, winning 'mindshare' within the government and defense sectors. We're less clear about Palantir Finance, but the company has shared the names of some impressive accounts in that space, as well. Since its inception, Palantir has pursued a fairly focused strategy of working closely with very large customers in defense, intelligence and high finance to shape its platform for the specific needs of intelligence and financial analysts. The company notes its reliance on agile development methodology, releasing numerous updates to its platform during the year. It says that it leverages that and queues from its customers about what features are needed in its products, rather than trying to bend its platform to fit into some predefined product category.

The Palantir Platform is licensed by the server core, with additional services and support costs of 20% annually. Deal sizes range from $400,000 to $1.5m. In terms of sales, Palantir says it sells direct only to a small number of very large companies, though its CEO has publicly said that the company has been doubling in size annually based just on word of mouth and doesn't plan on investing in sales and marketing, so it will remain an almost entirely engineering-driven firm. That's a quaint idea, but smacks a bit too much of late 1990s dot-com bravado for our tastes. In terms of partnerships, Palantir notes that it has APIs that allow its platform to digest data from a wide range of third-party data sources, including IDS/IPS, SIEM or third-party databases.
Competition

Palantir would no doubt argue that no product does exactly what its platform does and, therefore, that it has no direct competition. It may not be wrong. But there are lots of products that do pieces of what Palantir does. At its root, Palantir is a platform for doing investigations of complex events. In that, it vies with players in both the forensics and e-discovery spaces. That would include companies like Guidance Software, with EnCase, and forensics toolkit vendor AccessData Group. Autonomy Corp is a major player in the e-discovery, government intelligence and financial services markets. Basis Technology and its Rosette multilingual text-analysis platform has been a popular option in government departments for a decade, as was Inxight Software, at least prior to its acquisition by Business Objects (now part of SAP) in May 2007. IBM and SAS Institute each have analytics for both unstructured and structured data and have many customers in government and military intelligence, too. Recommind is strong in e-discovery and has a well-established text-analysis foundation of its own, although not much business in government.

Antifraud comes from the likes of EMC, VeriSign, Guardian Analytics, Oracle, Symantec, NICE Systems, and so on. We also see overlap with network forensics vendors like Solera, NetWitness, Network Instruments and NetScout. In addition, there are firms like Packet Analytics, Niksun, WildPackets, ClearSight Networks, Fluke Networks, CACE Technologies/Wireshark and the newly launched CloudShark, which is a cloud-enabled front end for Wireshark and tshark applications.

Finally, diversified IDS and ESIM vendors could also be considered rivals of Palantir – if only for available budget. We'd note Sourcefire and NitroSecurity, which is both an ESIM and IDS player, as firms with a prolific IDS heritage in addition to ESIM incumbents ArcSight, Q1 Labs, RSA (with its enVision product) and LogLogic, to name but a few.

Palantir will attest (not incorrectly) that its platform can just consume data feeds from those point products to add layers to its analytic capability. But in a constrained capital spending environment, some firms might well decide that SIEM and IDS or network management are enough.
SWOT analysis

Strengths

Palantir has a unique offering and the right provenance, along with some important backers in the government and defense space. The company's platform slots in well with the focus on stopping advanced threats and adaptive persistent adversaries.

Weaknesses

Palantir's platform, while powerful and flexible, still requires significant amounts of customization and comes at a price that limits its reach to all but the largest organizations.

Opportunities

Adaptive persistent adversaries and threats, a flood of data from security point products and, in general, the deluge and complexity of data all bode well for Palantir, presuming it can find a formula to broaden the reach and appeal of its platform.

Threats

While nothing does exactly what Palantir's platform does, lots of companies do pieces of what it does: forensics, e-discovery, fraud and threat detection. Given the cost/complexity of deployments, the company could find it hard to grow its customer base to support a nearly $1b valuation.
Products
Palantir Government

Palantir Government integrates structured and unstructured data, provides advanced search and discovery capabilities, enables knowledge management, and facilitates secure collaboration. The Palantir platform includes the privacy and civil liberties protections mandated by legal requirements such as those in the 9/11 Commission Implementation Act. Palantir’s privacy controls keep investigations focused, as opposed to the expansive data mining techniques that have drawn criticism from privacy advocates concerned about civil liberties protection. Palantir maintains security tags at a granular level such that analysts can only see the specific information they have permission to see.
AnalyzeThe.US

Palantir runs the site AnalyzeThe.US, which allows the public to use Palantir Government to perform analysis on publicly available data from data.gov, usaspending.gov, the Center for Responsive Politics’ Open Secrets Database, and Community Health Data from HHS.gov.
Palantir Finance

Palantir Finance is a software platform for data integration, information management and quantitative analysis. The software connects to commercial, proprietary and public data sets and discovers trends, relationships and anomalies. Palantir Finance is used to study the markets, test and refine trading strategies, and generate complex signals across asset classes.
JoyRide

JoyRide is a public demo of Palantir Finance. It offers training exercises and the data is provided by Thomson Reuters, who markets Palantir's software as QA Studio as of April 2010.
GovCon

Text from an e-mail announcement of recent Palantir Government Convention.

GovCon 7 Is Almost Here!

Palantir's seventh Government Conference is only a week away and is on track to be our largest event yet! Seating is limited and we encourage you to register now to reserve your spot.

Our guest speakers will be former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, National Center for Missing and Exploited Children Assistant Executive VP Linda Krieg and Executive Director Michael Geraghty, and The Institute for the Study of War Deputy Director Marisa Sullivan and Senior Fellow LTG James Dubik.

Palantir engineering talks will hightlight features of our latest software release Version 3.5, infrastructure and analytical advancements for addressing massive-scale data operations, the new Palantir Video Analysis application, and much more.

GovCon 7 will offer an exceptional view into the recent product innovations and deployment successes that continue to demonstrate how Palantir provides customers with unparalleled analytical capabilities, especially in times of fiscal austerity.

For additional details and to view a complete agenda, visit our conference website.


External Links

How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade 4.11.2009

Palantir’s third black eye: i2 lawsuit settled 16.2.2011

Palantir raises $50mil from unknown investors 5.5.2011

Palantir’s $2.5 Billion Mystery, Solved 7.10.2011

Palantir, the War on Terror's Secret Weapon - 22.11.2011

Kellogg of Service Salesforce.com blogging on Palantir - 27.6.2011

Palantir's YouTube Channel

Text of e-mail announcement of 7th annual Palantir Government Conference, featuring former Department of Homeland Security head Michael Chertoff as speaker

Interview with Palantir CEO on Charlie Rose

Palantir; The vanguard of cyberterror security

Global surveillance industry gets a new toy
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby Marionumber1 » Wed Jul 17, 2019 2:50 pm

Grizzly, I happened to archive that Bloomberg article today, so you can read it in its entirety here: http://archive.is/azATj (archive of https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon) And thanks for sharing that Project PM article on Palantir which seems to no longer be on the Internet. Project PM was actually one of the inspirations for the CAVDEF wiki that I still operate. Interesting to see that they're linked to Endgame, which election integrity activists Jim March and Dana Jill Simpson (herself a whistleblower from Karl Rove's fraud operation) wrote an article on in 2013:

[SNIP]

A Hastings/Brown interview almost certainly would have included questions about Brown's research on "black hat" private security firms that work with the official U.S. intelligence community. Some of these outfits also have powerful ties to corporate America via the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Primary among such firms is Endgame, which is based on the seventh floor of the former Biltmore Hotel building in Atlanta.

Before the interview could take place, Hastings was killed when his car exploded, with the engine blown some sixty feet from the wreckage on a Los Angeles street. Were individuals connected to Endgame and the U.S.Chamber--fearing possible exposure in government-sponsored wrongdoing--involved in Michael Hastings' death?

We don't have a solid answer to that question? But a report last week from Alabama attorney Jill Simpson and election-integrity specialist Jim March presents perhaps the most disturbing revelations yet about Endgame and similar private security firms. The report, dated June 24, 2013, is titled "Black Hat Versus White Hat: The Other Side of the Snowden/Hastings/Barrett Brown Cases."

Here is how March summarizes the report in a piece at OpEd News:

This is a look into the world of the private contractors that work in alliance with the official US intelligence community and appear to be state-sanctioned to commit crimes. We focus on one of these shady contractors, Endgame--an Atlanta GA corporation that both Barrett Brown and Michael Hastings were looking at. We show who they are, what they do, what their founders did before, who funds them and who they are connected to. We even filmed and photographed their building and lobby.


[SNIP]

https://legalschnauzer.blogspot.com/2013/07/was-fiery-death-of-journalist-michael.html
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Re: CIA's favorite data analysis company, Palantir

Postby seemslikeadream » Fri Jul 19, 2019 8:36 am

David Gilmour


Twitter has informed me @BarrettBrown_'s account was "suspended in error" and the ban "will be overturned."

The company spokesperson would not comment further on the incident citing "privacy and security reasons."

This is the third time in a month Brown has been permanently banned only to have the suspension lifted.

Twitter confirms that it will lift suspensions against Brown's gf @TessArielWright and @PursuanceProj, also made "in error."

The suspensions began after Brown launched his investigation into links between data firm Palantir and ICE.

https://twitter.com/davidmgilmour/statu ... 1274377221



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Barrett Brown


Here we have the Palantir engineer who was most directly involved in the proposal to track children of labor leaders and intimidate journalists, Matthew Steckman, noting that Alex Karp and the board were fully aware of the Themis scandal they claimed to find shocking.

Image
Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.
They could still get him out of office.
But instead, they want mass death.
Don’t forget that.
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