The article is implying there's more to be worried about than there actually is - they didn't mention anything actually "disturbing" but want us all to be concerned about the vague threat of city surveillance nonetheless.
What does Palantir do?
“integrate[s] disparate data sets and conduct[s] rich, multifaceted analysis across the entire range of data.”
How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards, fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana.
So the data already existed in NYC databases and the crimes they're enforcing already existed.
And yet:
"the potential for that kind of outright abuse is less disturbing than the ways in which Palantir’s tech is already being used. The city’s embrace of Palantir, outside of law enforcement, has quietly ushered in an era of civil surveillance so ubiquitous as to be invisible." -- total hyperbole!
If anything the most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir which is frequently lauded as one of the most elite, selective startups for software engineering positions. It seems to operate in small change relative to all the hype.
I wouldn't be surprised if Palantir was paying Gizmodo to publish this article. It's basically a giant advertisement for the image of Palantir as some awesome software company. The reality is the software, once groundbreaking, is now mediocre, and they are a services company which happens to have a software product.
Talking about how the NYC government is using it to invade privacy makes it out as if ANY data blending/visualization software couldn't do the same thing. We all know that it could, and that Palantir is bullshit.
I have wondered on more than one occasion if Palantir wasn't simply made up of a bunch of people who know how to "work the data/analytics machine" well, supported by people who know how to get government & big business contracts REALLY well.
By "work the data/analytics machine", I mean putting together the full spectrum of data analysis tools & people - something that anybody with enough money/time/staff can do - anything from the ETL/stream processing, integrating across different databases, big data processing systems, BI tools/analytical tools, graph processing, search tech, conventional data mining, recurrent/convolutional neural networks, etc. etc. etc.
Partially, I say this out of personal experiences, having observed how government & big business is often quite motivated to spend some money, when seeing what they perceive to be "cool" and advanced data/analytics capabilities.
That's not saying Palantir doesn't have advanced tech, I am sure they built some pretty cool proprietary stuff. But, just that maybe what they do isn't such a mystery to people who understand how it is done anyway.
They seem to push the notion that they are the proprietors of amazing software for data analysis.
Then when you buy them, a bunch of "forward deployed engineers" come in and carefully comb through all your data sources and figure out how to get it all ingested and linked in their software.
Which, of course, is actually the hard part of doing data analysis at large organizations! By default, in any large org, important data is fragmented and sitting in silos--and departments defend it that way. Being able to see all that data come together would seem like magic. But it's mostly because of the manual work upfront.
Maybe the right way to think about Palantir is a data-aggregating operation that uses marketing to convince large organizations to allow them to aggregate data.
That's not a secret. Ask anyone at the company and they will say Palantir is primarily an integration company. The reason the demand so much money in for this integration is simply because no one else will actually do it despite the constant refrain of it being "only" data integration.
I actually hear this a lot. Companies with data/analytics problems that aren't being served, or, may have internal politics or technology challenges preventing them from doing the obvious data integration tasks that would benefit them. Plus, for the longest time, government and "data" work was viewed as a nightmare, boring and not "hip or cool". I've always seen that as an opportunity, one Palantir clearly has done well with.
One key role of the "forward deployed engineers" is a political one. Once you've let them tie up all your data into their platform, you're already pouring some insane amounts of money into this. Now, whatever the results, you certainly don't want to "start again with another promising solution". That's one of the reasons Palantir makes so much money out of their business.
The really hard part is creating a company that gets all of the data sources like the camera readers and videos from police cars that go to Palantir. Having that data (+ more that I don't know about) pretty much locks out other vendors because Palantir can bring more to the table besides processing the cities data.
I don't know if you can say it locks out vendors. Earlier this year, the reports were that Palantir had problems retaining commercial contracts. With their "forward deployed engineers", the image that's emerged is that Palantir is a contractor house with a patina of spies.
If NYC has data that has not previously been used for surveillance and Palantir is enabling them to use it for surveillance ("you're violating the fire code!") then it is ushering in an era of civil surveillance. I don't see what the hyperbole is.
I would argue that the surveillance isn't in how the data is used, but rather in the fact that NYC has that data at all.
Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis. What would you say if a human had reached the same conclusion as Palantir by analyzing the same data?
> Limits on acceptable data collection are more straightforward, enforceable, and fair than limits on acceptable data analysis.
I strongly disagree. In this electronic age, it is unreasonable to to expect companies and agencies not to store data electronically. Isolated, these data points are not illegal - the USPS knows your address, the IRS knows where you work, the DOT knows your license plate - these are all necessary for these agencies to do their jobs. Private companies know stuff too - your phone company knows about calls you make, your ISP knows about sites you visit, your bank knows about purchases you make. Some of these can be forgotten, some are necessary to do business.
The problem comes when someone cross-references innocent data to a level that results in an invasve unwarranted intrusion into your privacy.
Should we penalize Facebook for keeping our photos? No, that's what we use it for. Should we penalize shopkeeper for recording security videos of their store to help analyze thefts? No, that's within his rights. Should anyone be allowed to correlate all the images with all the security footage to have a camera-by-camera record of the motions of everyone in the city? No, that's a dystopian horror story in the making. The criminal intent is in the analysis, not the storage.
Why is it quiet when IBM does it, but horrific when Palantir/Big Bad Thiel does it?
It's either: a) no one cares about what IBM does anymore, because they're seen as "old school", or b) no one was paying attention before and only now caught wind of it?
Today, fake cigarettes and fire code violations. Tomorrow, aggregating the 1M+ or so surveillance cams around the city. Cross-referenced with facial recognition databases, cell tower logs, social media droppings, what have you.
Total hyperbole!
It's not hyperbole at all.
The most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir
It's called "a foot in the door." Palantir knows that the potential of the "smart cities" market is deep and vast. So that's why its initial deals with NYC -- and what better marquee client to have? -- are priced at teaser rates.
I used to be an organic chemist. These fake marijuana substitutes are pretty horrific: unscrupulous vendors read the scientific literature for newly developed cannabinoid receptor activating chemicals. These are then sold, without proper testing in humans usually.
The side effect profile of these compounds is worse than natural cannabis, with high incidence of psychotic symptoms.
No it's a reference to K2 which has actually been a huge problem in NYC. A month or two ago there were like a couple dozen people hospitalized in a single morning
I thought the numbers seemed small as well, it's probably a foot-in-the-door kind of deal for Palantir. If they can sign NYC, municipal governments follow.
What does Palantir do? “integrate[s] disparate data sets and conduct[s] rich, multifaceted analysis across the entire range of data.”
How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards, fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana.
So the data already existed in NYC databases and the crimes they're enforcing already existed.
And yet: "the potential for that kind of outright abuse is less disturbing than the ways in which Palantir’s tech is already being used. The city’s embrace of Palantir, outside of law enforcement, has quietly ushered in an era of civil surveillance so ubiquitous as to be invisible." -- total hyperbole!
If anything the most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of money being made by Palantir which is frequently lauded as one of the most elite, selective startups for software engineering positions. It seems to operate in small change relative to all the hype.