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.
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.
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.
https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silico...
https://gcn.com/articles/2013/10/04/gcn-award-nyc-databridge...
https://www.accenture.com/t20150719T214424__w__/gb-en/_acnme...
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?
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.
Here's one I was able to dig up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n2UjBO22EI
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.
Seriously? Is fake marijuana an actual problem?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids
They typically cause more severe side-effects than traditional marijuana. There have been a few rounds of subway ads related to synthetic marijuana.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/13/nyregion/k2-synthetic-mari...
The side effect profile of these compounds is worse than natural cannabis, with high incidence of psychotic symptoms.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_cannabinoids
Edit: i completely overlooked rpedroso's substantially identical reply, haha...
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.