[gojomo]

Palantir did not say they had "nothing to do with" HB Gary.

Palantir said they should not have been portrayed as a part of the controversial Wikileaks-related offensive-actions proposal – because Palantir did not, and would not, approve of such tactics. Palantir also said, after that proposal, that they were breaking all contacts with HB Gary – which admits there were other ties.

The fact that HB Gary licensed some Palantir software or even had other project-related aliases with Palantir is wholly consistent with Palantir's explanation.

Perhaps any association whatsoever with HB Gary was a mistake. If so, doesn't Palantir get any credit for (belatedly) "sever[ing] any and all contacts with HB Gary"?

Also, as a government contractor, you don't necessarily have full control over every other contractor on related projects.

[loopdoend]

The Wikileaks-offensive project was known as Team Themis. Perhaps you didn't realize that.

The email address [e-mail], along with the sharing of third party software, is enough to prove that they were a part of this action, whether they "approved" of it or not. Saying after you got caught that you didn't approve of the actions and using a young engineer as a scapegoat doesn't get you any credit in my books. (As if there were only one person working on this project, then why the bcc forwarder?)

The whole episode has been broken down and explained in great detail by third-parties other than the Palantir PR department, and my rebuttal is by no means an attempt at a full explanation. I am just pointing out they did indeed provide software that could be used for the tactics shown in the presentation, so there was no error.

[gojomo]

There was a definitely a project called "Team Themis", yes. But some of the documents describing it make no mention of any offensive (active disinformation/cyber-attack) tactics, nor even of Wikileaks specifically – merely the usual kind of passive intelligence-gathering, from legitimate sources, that Palantir does. Then at some point the additional sizzle of proposed offensive tactics against Wikileaks got added. (In the most infamous presentation, the word 'Themis' is not mentioned.)

So to say "[t]he Wikileaks-offensive project was known as Team Themis" is begging the question.

My concern is whether Palantir as a corporation ever meant to endorse or participate in the specific 'dirty tricks' sizzle. I find Palantir's explanation plausible enough to deserve reporting, anywhere that the allegations against them are also reported: telling the full story requires it.

Everyone is welcome to their suspicions, but I've yet to see any evidence that definitively falsifies Palantir's explanation.

[gojomo]

You should provide links to where this is "explained in great detail", rather than more vague assertions.

If out of all the compromised HB Gary emails, one about sharing a license to third-party "application integration" software is the most incriminating one you can reference, that suggests a pretty flimsy case. HB Gary's entire corpus of email was compromised! Shouldn't there be at least one email from a Palantir employee showing enthusiasm about the offensive tactics, or review/approval of the deck, or something?

(And how exactly would the milquetoast not-created-by-Palantir Kapow Katalyst 'application integration platform' be "used for the tactics shown in the presentation", tactics like 'disinformation', 'fake documents', and 'cyber attacks'?)

Palantir's explanation remains unrefuted: that an employee gave the mistaken impression of participation in a specific effort that the company itself did not and would not support, as a matter of both policy and software capabilities.

Update: Looking for a good 'explained in great detail' overview, this write-up seems credible and balanced: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/02/the-ridiculo...

It suggests HB Gary was financially desperate to propose something big; Palantir was enticed by the size of the potential deal, but Palantir's payment demands were problematic for HB Gary. The Palantir employee(s) chasing the sale clearly knew and repeated HB Gary's dirty tactics bullet points, but it's not clear Palantir higher-ups saw the proposal as anything other than a potential large sale of their standard passive analysis stuff.

I know 'misrepresentation by overzealous employee' is a convenient excuse deserving some suspicion. But I also know that such vaguely-rogue sales-motivated oversteps happen all the time, even in much smaller organizations than Palantir.