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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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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".

> 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.

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.

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

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)

> 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

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.

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).

> 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.

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.

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.

>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.

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

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

Did you notice how the Dow is 50,000 ?

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.

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.

It is like 1984. But shit.

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'.

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!

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

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

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> has anybody found any evidence..or are we just speculating?

that’s what the article is discussing? the journalists found evidence.

i’m confused what you’re confused about.

this whole entire comment section is birthed from the evidence someone found.

Did you read the article? There's no evidence cited in it at all. This comment thread made me think "wow, Palantir must be selling PHI to the mob" or something, and The Intercept has the receipts, but the article simply states that Palantir has a contract to run medicaid billing. It then goes on to say that Palantir also works with other government agencies like ICE (bad), and the Israelis (worse than ICE), and the UK (they've crossed the line now!)

It's entirely left up to the reader to fill in the blanks that whatever is going on with this contract is nefarious and bad.

The Intercept used to do good work, but this article is complete trash. At least the author was self aware enough to reference the 2016 reporting.

Sorry, where? Maybe I've missed something, but the article is just about their health business growing in New York rather than an illegal data backdoors?

There's no evidence it's just speculation. Microsoft has a contract with the same exact orgs. So does AWS. Anyone with a little bit of common sense would know that. Palantir's CEO and Peter Thiel are not particularly well liked so presumably people are speculating without any evidence at all. Could there be an issue? Yes, absolutely but not just with Palantir but let's not let facts get in the way of a narrative. In any event I think the question of data being shared with the government could be a problem even if the software was made in house and then open sourced by the hospital (which is itself ridiculous to expect but this is HN) because the hospital themselves could provide the data to the government. At this point someone might say "no that won't happen because hospitals are nice and Palantir is evil" or "there are laws" but I am not sure why Palantir would be exempt unless anyone has proof or anything besides a vibes based argument but then we're back to square one.

They don't need a backdoor, the whole company is a backdoor receiving sensitive information from governments 24x7.

So Palantir receives info from governments only to… hand it back to them? It seems like most people really don’t know what Palantir actually does and are just speculating.

No, we know very well how they operate. They're paid to get all kinds of sensitive information from governments and other institutions around the world and store it in their very "secure" data centers. Once there, the US government can easily get any of that information for "national security reasons", because how would they say otherwise, and the Israeli government can do the same as well without even announcing anything, because how would the US government ever say "no" to them... It's all just obvious at this point.

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/

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

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.

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?

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.

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?

https://archive.is/bK8xU

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.

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.

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

And methodically operationalizing client work into products.

So, they create powerpoints?

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

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.

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.

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).

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Same thing with Tesla.

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.

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.

You can just go sign up...?

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

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

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.

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.

Great job NYC. Just like China and Russia.

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

What a steal!

https://archive.is/bK8xU

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

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

God knows it took long enough.

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

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Even if contractors/intermediaries consider themselves bound by HIPAA, the protections are lighter than one would think, in the political environment we find ourselves in.

Notably (though I'm not a lawyer, and this is not legal advice) - https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-45/part-164/section-164.5... describing "similar process authorized under law... material to a legitimate law enforcement inquiry" without any notion of scoping this to individuals vs. broad inquiries, seems to give an incredibly broad basis for Palantir to be asked to spin up a dashboard with PII for any query desired for the administration's political agenda. This could happen at any time in the future, with full retroactive data, across entire hospital systems, complete with an order not to reveal the program's existence to the public.

Other tech companies have seen this kind of generalized overreach as both legally risky and destructive to their brand, and have tried to fight this where possible. Palantir, of course, is the paragon of fighting on behalf of citizens, and would absolutely try to... I can't even finish this joke, I'm laughing too hard.

I'm old enough to remember we literally had a Captain America movie, barely more than a decade ago, where the villains turn private PII and health data into targeting lists. (No flying aircraft carriers were injured in the filming of this movie.)

Clearly, we learned the wrong lesson there.

HIPAA privacy arose indirectly from its administrative simplification provisions concerning its main goal of standardized electronic health data. Privacy is not "why HIPAA exists".