Comments on: Palantir's precrime preemptive security

Palantir's precrime preemptive security

kliuless — Mon, 01 Sep 2025 23:56:04 -0800

When the government can see everything: How one company—Palantir—is mapping the nation's data - "Government agencies are contracting with Palantir to correlate disparate pieces of data, promising efficiency but raising civil liberties concerns."[1,2,3]

Gotham is an investigative platform built for police, national security agencies, public health departments and other state clients. Its purpose is deceptively simple: take whatever data an agency already has, break it down into its smallest components and then connect the dots. Gotham is not simply a database. It takes fragmented data, scattered across various agencies and stored in different formats, and transforms it into a unified, searchable web. The stakes are high with Palantir's Gotham platform. The software enables law enforcement and government analysts to connect vast, disparate datasets, build intelligence profiles and search for individuals based on characteristics as granular as a tattoo or an immigration status. It transforms historically static records – think department of motor vehicles files, police reports and subpoenaed social media data like location history and private messages – into a fluid web of intelligence and surveillance. These departments and agencies use Palantir's platform to assemble detailed profiles of individuals, mapping their social networks, tracking their movements, identifying their physical characteristics and reviewing their criminal history. This can involve mapping a suspected gang member's network using arrest logs and license plate reader data, or flagging individuals in a specific region with a particular immigration status. The efficiency the platform enables is undeniable. For investigators, what once required weeks of cross-checking siloed systems can now be done in hours or less. But by scaling up the government's investigative capacity, Gotham also alters the relationship between the state and the people it governs... These integrations mean that Palantir is not just a vendor of software; it is becoming a partner in how the federal government organizes and acts on information. That creates a kind of dependency. The same private company helps define how investigations are conducted, how targets are prioritized, how algorithms work and how decisions are justified. Because Gotham is proprietary, the public, and even elected officials, cannot see how its algorithms weigh certain data points or why they highlight certain connections. Yet, the conclusions it generates can have life-altering consequences: inclusion on a deportation list or identification as a security risk. The opacity makes democratic oversight difficult, and the system's broad scope and wide deployment means that mistakes or biases can scale up rapidly to affect many people.

-Palantir: Peter Thiel's Data-Mining Firm Helps DOGE Build Master Database to Surveil, Track Immigrants -"Purge Palantir": Day of Action Protests Firm's Role in Gov't Surveillance, ICE & Genocide in Gaza -Palantir and the Surveillance State w/ Alice Hu from Planet over Profit also btw...

Behind the Curtain: The Great Fusing - "America's government and technology giants are fusing into a codependent superstructure in a race to dominate AI and space for the next generation. The merging of Washington and Silicon Valley is driven by necessity — and fierce urgency. The U.S. government needs AI expertise and dominance to beat China to the next big technological and geopolitical shift — but can't pull this off without the help of Microsoft, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia and many others."[4,5]
Silicon Valley Enlists in the Business of War - "In a major shift, Google, OpenAI, Meta and venture capitalists — many of whom had once forsworn involvement in war — have embraced the military industrial complex."

By: Too-Ticky

Too-Ticky — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 01:52:08 -0800

'The nation'? Would that it were so. The Dutch police and defence force use Palantir, too. https://www.ictmagazine.nl/nieuws/nederlandse-politie-gebruikt-nog-steeds-omstreden-palantir-software/ https://www.computable.nl/2025/09/01/defensie-bevestigt-gebruik-van-omstreden-palantir-software-na-jarenlange-geheimhouding/

By: Iteki

Iteki — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 05:01:13 -0800

the nations' then I suppose?

By: mrgoat

mrgoat — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 05:23:07 -0800

makes democratic oversight difficult, and the system's broad scope and wide deployment means that mistakes or biases can scale up rapidly to affect many people. Oh, I'm sure "mistakes" can be "scaled up rapidly". That's the whole point of torment nexus 2.0, I'm sure.

By: HearHere

HearHere — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 07:46:37 -0800

the nations' then I suppose? [pomoculture:] nationalis is inseparably linked to a set of questions posed in another famous text, one in which Balibar [wiki] introduces us to a very specific problematic characterizing our modern world order: the volatile articulation or process of referral between the citizen and the subject

By: Spike Glee

Spike Glee — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 07:48:50 -0800

Didn't Person of Interest have a storyline based on this, where a guy's life was ruined because his AA sponsor was a criminal? I've also read stories of people being harassed by the police because they fit the profile of someone who could become a criminal, with "early intervention to keep them from falling into a criminal lifestyle" quickly becoming "we'll harass you until you leave town".

By: thecjm

thecjm — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 07:54:43 -0800

Peter Thiel literally labels his companies with his evil mindset and they still succeed. He named his data snooping company after the object used by the DARK LORD SAURON to manipulate powerful people who thought they could use it despite the warnings and they get government contract after contract. And now his police database tool is named after a fictional city so rife with crime and with such a corrupt and ineffectual police force that vigilantes had to come do their work for them and cops are going, "sounds good!" The man could make a line of diapers called "Exxon Valdez" because they leak shit everywhere and the worst people you know would still line up to buy them.

By: subdee

subdee — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 07:56:28 -0800

It's not just Palantir, 404 has been running a story about how ICE have access to automatic license plate reader data collected by Flock... CPB had access to more than 80,000 Flock cameras. The real irony here is the US government was relying on private data collectors like Palantir in the first place because of federal laws that kept the government from collecting and consolidating that data. So they'd buy it instead from private companies that didn't have the same restrictions. But now whatever firewalls there ever were have just totally collapsed. And Palantir is a private security company, they don't just have data, they have guns. Remember those scenes of the US Marshalls and private security going to US agencies in January, and seizing the databases basically at gunpoint.

By: subdee

subdee — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 08:02:43 -0800

Inside the military's big, messy fight with Palantir. An article from 2013.

By: Homemade Interossiter

Homemade Interossiter — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 08:12:09 -0800

Imagine this information was being used for good, instead of neoliberalism.

By: star gentle uterus

star gentle uterus — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 08:30:41 -0800

Peter Thiel literally labels his companies with his evil mindset and they still succeed. thecjm The strangest thing is that it doesn't seem that he's doing this intentionally. There was a recent interview about his current "antichrist" nonsense, and the interviewer noted that he, as a highly influential and connected billionaire heavily invested in weapons and mass surveillance, fits the bill for "antichrist" better than just about anyone. Thiel seemed genuinely flummoxed by this and stuttered that he doesn't see it that way. I guess he's just so naturally an evil piece of shit that it's like asking a fish what water's like.

By: WatTylerJr

WatTylerJr — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 16:48:06 -0800

IMO Society is in a race between: 1) Power (its the oligarchy) using every possible tool it can to oppress (or destroy) anyone not of the billionaire class or its millionaire servants; 2) the Regime turning as many downwardly skidding middle and lower middle income people against the poor and vulnerable, in vengeance for all their accelerating fears, misery and economic tribulations; and 3) regular good people. 1 and 2 work together, and while combining, aren't there yet (eg Trump can have Musk thrown out the old' Putin window, but Thiel, Andressen, Bezos and the PE ghouls could certainly have Vance deposed). Guess who is winning. But there are a LOT more people in group #3. And not just us proles (e.g., Pritzker, Beshear, hell even the Costco CEO). We can win, but it will take a staggering effort and a lot of luck. I think it best comes down to "punch up not down". But we can win. Good people can win.

By: subdee

subdee — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 18:03:39 -0800

If you want to feel good about the ability of the panopticon to surveil us, remember that not only are the LA protests continuing and not getting any smaller, but to get around the tiktok algorithm hiding "protest" from all search results, people have started calling them the "LA Music Festival." https://www.reddit.com/r/50501/comments/1mmh97j/large_ice_protest_with_little_to_no_media/ ICE detention centers and other protest locations are "stages." The hottest band is Rage Against the Machine. "Here's what gear you should be bringing to stay safe at the LA Music Festival." I suppose as AI gets better workarounds like this will gradually disappear but at the moment you can get around the attempts at social control with just this one weird trick.

By: ASCII Costanza head

ASCII Costanza head — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 18:39:25 -0800

> people being harassed by the police because they fit the profile of someone who could become a criminal Pasco County [Florida] Sheriff Will End Predictive Policing Program to Settle Lawsuit Over Harassment Case Closed: Pasco Sheriff Admits "Predictive Policing" Program Violated Constitution It was a Smart Policing Initiative site. SPI is "a collaborative effort among BJA, CNA, state and local law enforcement agencies, and researchers." The Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), part of the DoJ, "was created in 1984 to reduce violent crime, create safer communities, and reform our Nation's criminal justice system." So, the fascists have been gearing up for this since Ronnie's time.

By: kliuless

kliuless — Tue, 02 Sep 2025 23:41:54 -0800

> The Dutch police and defence force use Palantir, too. huh, apparently EU law enforcement is above the GDPR law. i wonder if palantir qualifies -- or was deputized -- as a 'competent authority'?

By: j_curiouser

j_curiouser — Wed, 03 Sep 2025 06:44:17 -0800

they never gave up on total information awareness.