73 comments

  • marysminefnuf 4 hours ago

    It seems like the sole purpose of palantir is to give data to the government they wouldnt have access to without a warrant. So now everyone is just being warrantlessly surveiled??? The difference between now and a few years ago seems to be that companies are assisting law enforcement with even more advanced datacollection.

    • bebop 4 hours ago

      This is a very accurate take. There is a ton of collection that the government is explicitly not allowed to do. However, the ability to purchase this data is much less regulated. So the work around is, get contractors to do the data collection and then purchase that data.

      • glaslong 2 hours ago

        The government gets to ignore the will of its people and companies get to be middlemen leeches, it's perfect really.

        • themafia an hour ago

          Yes.. but.. have you seen the DOW?

      • colechristensen 3 hours ago

        There needs to be a landmark supreme court case that decides that "Search and Seizure" protections include paying corporations for the sought after items.

        • leftbrainstrain 2 hours ago

          I thought Carpenter vs United States was that case, but apparently it wasn't. Terry stops by local officers based on tips from regional Fusion Centers via WhatsApp sounds less unusual every day. Parallel construction has become a long-established technique.

        • b00ty4breakfast 3 hours ago

          As long as Alito and Thomas are still alive, this will never happen. I have no doubt that both of them have been the recipients of Peter Thiel's "generosity".

          • dragonwriter 23 minutes ago

            > As long as Alito and Thomas are still alive, this will never happen.

            Unless the court shrinks down to three seats (or four, if the Circuits cooperate) Alito and Thomas alone can’t dictate the way the Court treats the issue.

          • ch4s3 25 minutes ago

            It’s not just Alito and Thomas who have been hostile to the 4th amendment, disrespect for the 4th amendment has been a bipartisan affair for 50 years.

        • thfuran 2 hours ago

          I don't want to see any more landmark cases from the current supreme court.

      • spwa4 3 hours ago

        Purchase? You're misunderstanding how government consultancy works (this is what EU states use consultancy firms for, and that's what Palantir really is)

        A purchase works as follows: I like ice cream. I give you 5$. You give me an ice cream. I enjoy ice cream.

        This is: government likes private health data. Hospital gives Palantir 5$, and your health data, repeat for 1 million patients. Palantir gives the health data to government, employs the nephew of the head of the healthcare regulator. Your unemployment gets denied because the doctor said you could work.

        Buying means exchanging money for goods and services. This is exchanging money AND goods AND services for nothing. It's highly illegal for private companies, if you try it you'll get sued by the tax office the second they see it and find all company accounts blocked "just in case", but of course if you are the government, directly or indirectly, it's just fine and peachy.

        And you might think "this makes no sense". But you'd be advised to check out who appoints the head of the hospital first. It does make sense. (In fact just about the only break on this behavior in most EU countries is that the Vatican still has control over the board of a very surprising number of hospitals. Needless to say, the EU governments really hate that, but there tend to be deals around this. For example, in Belgium the hospitals get 50% less per resident. These sorts of deals were made, but they now mean that if the government wants the Vatican out of the board ... they have to increase spending on that hospital, often by a lot. I'd call them "Vatican hospitals" but one thing government and the Vatican really agree on is that they do not want patients to know the underlying financial arrangements around hospitals, and in many cases it's quite difficult to find who controls a hospital even though it's technically public information)

        • throwaw12 3 hours ago

          > Palantir gives the health data to government

          Ice cream was sellers when they were selling it, but not the data, data belongs to someone else, who didn't explicitly allow selling it

          • dheera 2 hours ago

            The problem with today's society is you walk into a hospital bleeding and they make you sign an ultimatum.

            Legally this should be treated as signing under duress and invalidated.

            If someone's life or well-being depends on it, and undergoing services in not a choice, terms and conditions should not be legally allowed to be unilaterally dictated by one party.

            • sneak an hour ago

              Fun fact: it’s illegal to open new hospitals without the permission of the government.

              There are multiple layers of corruption at work here. (They also cap the number of doctors, and clinics, etc).

              • woodruffw an hour ago

                > it’s illegal to open new hospitals without the permission of the government.

                This doesn't seem surprising on its face given that a hospital is, not unreasonably, a heavily regulated entity.

        • mistrial9 2 hours ago

          in Western history, culturally, Church was a founding force for the existance of hospitals, full-stop. Repeat with more money and more fallable humans and yes some of what you say is accurate. But, if you start naming the behavior as if it is synonymous with the original founders of Hospitals, you a) create an intellectual dishonesty on your part, b) attract wing-nuts and sociopaths who are looking for a place to join in the chanting, c) obscure important details while the casual readers focus on the glaring finger pointing.

          If you want to actually contribute to this very difficult topic, please refrain from welding disparate labels together in the introductory materials.

          • wizzwizz4 2 hours ago

            The way I read it, GP is saying that the Vatican's influence reduces such unethical distribution of medical information. Your response reads like a rebuttal, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say, nor rebut.

            • mistrial9 2 hours ago

              >in most EU countries is that the Vatican still has control over the board of a very surprising number of hospitals.

              >Needless to say, the EU governments really hate that

              > if the government wants the Vatican out of the board ... they have to increase spending on that hospital, often by a lot. I'd call them "Vatican hospitals"

              > one thing government and the Vatican really agree on is that they do not want patients to know the underlying financial arrangements around hospitals

              > in many cases it's quite difficult to find who controls a hospital even though it's technically public information)

              I am responding to these somewhat "breathless" statements that imply more than they delineate. My rebuttal is that these words frame a kind of inquiry that is common among conspiracy-attracted commentors.

              The subject deserves more rigor and less insinuation IMO.

    • 1vuio0pswjnm7 an hour ago

      The naivete or complacency of people who work for so-called "tech" companies that perform wanton, surreptitious data collection about computer users as their core "business model" is illustrated by the belief that what is significant for the surveillance target is how the data is used

      Thus, a company performing data collection and sharing it with the government may trigger nerd rage whereas company performing data collection and sharing it with advertisers triggers nerd advocacy, i.e., attempts to defend the practice of data collection with "justifications" that have no limit in their level of absurdity

      For the surveillance target (cf. the surveilling company), what is significant about data collection is not how the data is used, it is how the data _could_ be used, which is to say, what is significant about data collection is (a) the fact that data is collected at all, not (b) what may or may not happen after the data is collected

      Moreover, despite equivocal statements of reassurance in unenforceable "privacy policies" and the like, (b) is often practically impossible for those outside the company and its partners to determine anyway

      Hypothetical: Trillion-dollar public company A whose core "business" is data collection and surveillance-supported advertising services takes a nosedive due to unforseen circumstances that affect its ability to sell ad services. Meanwhile, billion-dollar public company B whose core business is data collection and surveillance services for goverments sees their business on the rise. Company A decides to acquire or compete with company B

      There is nothing that limits Company A's use of the data it has collected for whatever purpose the company and Wall Street deems profitable

      As such, the significant issue for the surveillance target is (a) not (b)

      Focusing on the fact that Company B assists governments whilst Company A assists advertisers is a red herring

      Once the data is collected, it's too late

    • coliveira 3 hours ago

      They figured out that if the government does something it is opposed by a lot of people. But if a company says they'll collect information from every single customer in exchange for some worthless token, people will willingly provide all their information to said company. And those companies will either sell that info to governments or give it away with a little ask... So, the private economy has become the biggest contributor to the surveillance state.

      • themafia an hour ago

        What people have "willingly" given their data directly to any company? It's usually buried in an agreement or hidden behind some dark pattern.

        Suing your government generates results. Suing a company usually results in it shedding it's shell corporation and taking it's assets where you can't get them.

        Selling user data needs to be a federal criminal offense. You need to go to jail for doing this. You need 15+ years in prison for doing this or enabling this in bulk. Let's start talking asset forfeiture next.

        • BobbyJo 23 minutes ago

          Exactly. Most people just don't know how much data is being collected on them, and probably can't know at this point. I say can't because the reality sounds so much like a conspiracy theory that a majority of people would simply reject the truth outright.

    • bigyabai 4 hours ago

      > So now everyone is just being warrantlessly surveiled???

      It's been like that for a while; I don't think either side of America's political aisle has the heart to extricate themselves of such a privilege.

      • hinata08 4 hours ago

        correct

        PBS's _spying on the homefront_ piece from 2007 already described this very kind of omniscient private database.

        The government itself isn't constitutionally allowed to build or run anything of the kind, but it can commission friends in the private sector to do one and query it with little to no oversight

        I am definitely not uploading my face and ID on Discord or any site

        • pylua 4 hours ago

          How is it guaranteed to be the same accuracy of data that is not retrieved through a warrant ?

          • pavel_lishin 4 hours ago

            It just needs to be accurate-enough to eventually get a warrant.

            • hinata08 4 hours ago

              you don't need warrants to query these databases

              They went from warrant, to FISA, to just write a request about a name, to more or less describe a vague group of ppl on whom you want the data

              You should watch this show. It's available online and pretty informative.

              If things weren't bad enough in 2007, things that have changed since then are most notably the cloud act that was created, Ring that started to "backup" your home CCTV in the cloud, then also Ring that enabled so called "Search Parties" and made a superball ad about it

              • pavel_lishin 3 hours ago

                Right, I understand they don't need a warrant for the databases. I'm saying that they use the databases to get enough data for a warrant that they wouldn't be able to get without the databases.

          • greedo 2 hours ago

            Parallel construction. They get enough data, legal or not, to know who to look for. Then they surveil you until you slip.

        • sneak an hour ago

          Your bank and mobile data carrier and cable company already did for you, on your behalf. It’s all searchable via your phone number, which you have to provide to all the apps you DO sign up for, so they can easily query your name, photo, address, purchase history, etc.

    • belter an hour ago

      Did you notice how the Dow is 50,000 ?

    • runarberg 3 hours ago

      I keep thinking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Illegal data gathering was a big deal only 10 years ago. It seems like with businesses like Palantir that this behavior has been normalized to the point where what was unthinkably bad 10 years ago is just business as usual today.

      • robby_w_g 2 hours ago

        It’s more that many adult citizens (and increasing every year) have grown up with the patriot act and liberties being stripped away in the name of security.

        I talked with cousins about it 8 years ago and I got laughed at as a conspiracy nut for saying that our personal data will be used against us if we allow it. People either don’t understand or don’t care because they’ve grown comfortable with it.

    • shevy-java 2 hours ago

      It is like 1984. But shit.

      • _DeadFred_ 2 hours ago

        It's wild they we are happily buying telescreens. Who would have imagined pre-2000s that would actually happen. And that the number one defense of capitalism would be to use telescreens as an example 'but look at how cheap your telescreen is, TVs were so expensive'.

    • einpoklum 4 hours ago

      Well, you know it's that time again...

      In Capitalist Russia, you are on surveillance by bought off government;

      In Soviet America, government bought off by surveillence on you!

    • crimsoneer 3 hours ago

      It's a software company, it sells software. You can literally go read the docs. It doesn't magically bypass the law anymore than Microsoft Sharepoint does.

      https://www.palantir.com/docs/foundry

      • malfist 3 hours ago

        Do you expect palantir's public documentation to explain how they operate as a spy agency?

      • oscaracso 3 hours ago

        Your link and description of it as a software company are irrelevant to the discussion, which concerns their retention and use of personal data. I welcome anyone to give their disclosure a critical reading. (They promise to follow the law- whew!)

        https://www.palantir.com/privacy-and-security/

        • jonnybgood 3 hours ago

          You mean the logging of their web traffic and communications with them like every corporate website does? Can you specify?

  • brandensilva 2 hours ago

    Palantir is a threat to all American privacy and likely Democracy given Thiel wants to tear it down and owns Palantir.

    This is why government and corporations should not be embedded together as they have near zero laws or punishment for spying on Americans.

    It isn't even just about the invasion of our rights but the government shouldn't choose winners and losers like we are seeing. It eliminates the open nature of competition.

  • noupdates 3 hours ago

    Take the following crude entities:

    - Stones

    - Sticks

    - Some rope

    Takes awhile, but humans eventually make a murder weapon out of that and build armies.

    Now take the benign elements of a crud stack:

    - Database

    - Server

    - User system

    It takes awhile, but eventually humans will make something (something not good) out of that.

    Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but databases will never hurt me

    Right?

    • themafia an hour ago

      Bleach and Ammonia are perfectly shelf stable on their own. Mix them up and they're literal poison.

      What you've described are just benign ingredients. The poison is turning them into a "analytics" or "adtech" system.

  • shevy-java 2 hours ago

    A system of corruption - get money from taxpayers, put it into private companies, private companies yield goodies to lobbyists disguised as "politicians". How to break up this milking scheme?

  • rubberband 4 hours ago
  • andy_ppp 4 hours ago

    Are there any demos of Palantir out there, what sort of things does it do and has anyone tried making an OSS alternative - I don’t really understand why any government would trust them.

    • _diyar 4 hours ago

      AFAIK their business model is to send skilled engineers to client sites to be consultants and developers. Their selling point is not some product/code per-se (ie. they have a code base with existing analysis tools, but nothing crazy), but the fact that they jump into whatever situation and grind through problems.

      The problem is that they also keep close ties to law-enforcement and (para-)military clients, and while they promise to keep your data safe, they would never inform you if they received a warrant from the government to share the data.

      • rorylawless 3 hours ago

        So, they’re basically a traditional consultancy firm focused on data analytics, particularly record linkage?

        • CuriouslyC 2 hours ago

          And methodically operationalizing client work into products.

      • worldsayshi 3 hours ago

        If that's an accurate description it's very puzzling that European countries buy services from them.

        • Krasnol 3 hours ago

          It is a selective description.

          FDE is not the only thing they sell.

          Software Licenses for their products (Gotham/Foundry/AIP) is why countries (and businesses) deal with them.

      • themafia an hour ago

        They dump all your stuff into a schemaless database and then attach widgets to it.

        That's literally it.

        It's not even particularly good technology.

        • XorNot 28 minutes ago

          It's literally just "better then what people had" + they're willing to work through government and military contracting processes so it can actually be deployed in those environments.

          They have a lot of "forward deployed engineer" roles which basically means staff with security clearances who get locked in SCIFs and provide on-site technical support.

          Which is really why they keep getting hired: when you write into your contract "it stays on premises and technical support can't take logs off site" they agree to it (at a hefty mark up because all of that sucks to do).

    • nimrody 3 hours ago

      They have an entire youtube channel. For example, see this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uF-GSj-Exms

      Some of their stuff for handling data and versioned pipelines seem very well done.

    • infinitewars 3 hours ago

      The government IS Palantir at this point, at least J.D. Vance was hand-picked by Thiel.

      Musk+Thiel is also in the mix with Golden Dome, the space weapons program that was always Musk's mission. The inside "joke" is that Mars = Wars.

      • mullingitover 2 hours ago

        And Golden Dome is just the reheated leftovers of the 80s Star Wars space-based scheme literally dreamed up by Dr Strangelove himself, Edward Teller, and promoted by the Heritage Society as a way to get past MAD and allow the US to start and win WWIII. These clowns will absolutely kill millions if they’re not put in check.

        Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire

        • themafia an hour ago

          > These clowns will absolutely kill millions if they’re not put in check.

          They already are.. but.. have you seen the DOW?

    • estetlinus 3 hours ago

      Michael Burry is extremely bearish on their business model and has written excellent pieces on why he is shorting Palantir.

      • impossiblefork an hour ago

        The valuation is obviously insane. You can't have that kind of P/E ratios.

        Same thing with Tesla.

      • asdff 2 hours ago

        Burry is probably right, but he forgets that Thiel is friends with Trump, so the merits of business don't matter for Palantir to secure lucrative government contracts.

    • renewiltord 4 hours ago

      What’s there to trust? You use a tool, it finds things you did that you didn’t bill for, you get paid. Where in this is trust required? The guy you’re billing will complain if the bills are inaccurate.

    • crimsoneer 3 hours ago

      You can just go sign up...?

      https://www.palantir.com/developers/

    • SilverElfin 3 hours ago

      No one can explain what it is. They have some bullshit “ontology” thing they talk up on every investor call and bots spam about it on twitter and reddit. I think they are basically a software consultancy firm that the government can outsource all evil deeds to. Like warrantless surveillance

      • fatherwavelet an hour ago

        Their "ontology" is not bullshit but they speak about it in a bullshit way. I think they refer to it like a product or something they invented as a form of marketing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ontology_(information_science)

        If you just google ontology you probably end up reading some Heidegger and conclude how deep these guys must be.

        Whenever I hear Karp say it I always think of it like he is saying "Database" or "The Database". "What makes Palantir different is Database".

        I think so much of Palantir is performative and for sales performances.

  • esbranson an hour ago

    HHC, a Democratic Party-controlled state corporation, with the NYC administrator of health services as its chairman, is selling health data. Which is ok as long as it's not Palantir or the elected government, apparently. (The elected governments that run the systems.) Get off your high horses, any faux outrage does not fool many.

  • poontangbot 33 minutes ago

    Great job NYC. Just like China and Russia.

  • rebolek 2 hours ago

    So they get paid to steal personal data? What a deal!

  • SMAAART 4 hours ago
  • googaar 3 hours ago

    Surprised that YCombinator threads are misunderstanding palantir, of all forums…

    • ishouldstayaway an hour ago

      On the contrary, I think it's [pleasantly] surprising that YCombinator threads have finally stopped misunderstanding Palantir.

      God knows it took long enough.

    • wasmainiac 3 hours ago

      Ok so explain then… this is a forum for discussion after all.