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by manfredo 2373 days ago
Palantir does not build surveillance technology. They build data visualization technology. They build tools to let organizations better view and correlate between the data they collect. This could be considered to be adjacent to surveillance technology, but the company does not in fact built surveillance tools.
2 comments
ljd 2373 days ago
Nothing I know is first hand, so I may be wrong. I've been influenced by articles like this over the past decade: https://theintercept.com/2017/02/22/how-peter-thiels-palanti...
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manfredo 2373 days ago
That article illustrates the point I'm making:

> For example, a 2010 demo showed how Palantir Government could be used to chart the flow of weapons throughout the Middle East by importing disparate data sources like equipment lot numbers, manufacturer data, and the locations of Hezbollah training camps.

Government agencies are the ones collecting data. Palantir is building tools to browse it.

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ljd 2373 days ago
I understand what you're saying but I feel like it's splitting hairs.

https://thenextweb.com/artificial-intelligence/2019/12/11/re...

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BinaryIdiot 2373 days ago
The issue here is the Palantir tool versus the Palantir company.

When I did DoD contracting work I worked both with the Palantir tool and worked on a competitor to it. The tool itself basically correlates data from multiple sources and works very well for that.

The AI work mentioned in this article, I believe, is separate contracting work.

Granted these two things (their AI work and their tool) may end up being combined. Also, as part of contracting work there may be times where they are directly connected to tools and could technically be considered as surveiling. But, in general, they're mostly used as the glue between a bunch of databases to let analysts better understand the data already collected.

So, in a way, I think you're both kinda right?

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alexander-litty 2373 days ago
When I went on-site for an interview with Palantir about a year ago, I had the same idea going in and left very disturbed.

I'm not sure what else I can say under NDA, but anecdotally they have a frightening culture. I'm less worried about the tools they make and more about their motivations.

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xkcd-sucks 2372 days ago
If it really is that scary, the world deserves that you should break the NDA and describe what you saw.
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