
Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link - retr0grad3
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/2013/06/is_this_who_runs_prism.php
======
potatolicious
Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what _exactly_
it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a
large part is government intelligence work.

Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so
far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-
lunch version of Blackwater.

~~~
Anderkent
>Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so
far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-
lunch version of Blackwater.

Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or
because you think you are making a difference by not doing so?

If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the
approach - refusing the job only means someone else will take it, and is
likely to be 'worse' according to the values that prevent you from taking the
job (less likely to blow the whistle, less likely to challenge sales on
projects that are evil etc.)

~~~
sheri
> refusing the job only means someone else will take it,

Isn't that true for almost any moral stance? Should I stop being a vegetarian
because someone else will eat the meat anyway?

~~~
Anderkent
>Isn't that true for almost any moral stance?

That part on its own is not enough. Only when: 1\. someone else will do <the
job> AND 2\. it would be better for you to be doing <the job> than someone who
takes it up then you should take it instead of them.

~~~
pseut
I understand and somewhat agree with your point, but sometimes people
anticipate that, given the incentives of the job, they're unlikely to be any
better than anyone else when push comes to shove (your pt 2). Think of "golden
handcuffs" as one example.

This particular example doesn't apply to me, but I think I'd personally be
able to rationalize a lot of selfish behavior following that logic so I try to
avoid putting myself in situations where it would come up, even if both points
might apply.

------
jelkins
The link between the U.S. government's program codenamed PRISM and Palantir's
internal software called Prism is completely coincidental. If you take a look
at their site, you will learn that Metropolis is Palantir's alias for their
finance product[1]. This is obvious just looking at the page in question as it
[2] describes how to add Timeseries data. Timeseries data is usually composed
of information about stocks or derivatives.

I don't dispute that Palantir deals with much of the nation's intelligence,
but attempting to draw a link between two pieces of software that happen to be
named the same seems like pretty bad reporting to me. Even if there is a
disclaimer at the top of the page.

Full Disclosure: I'm an ex-Palantir employee.

[1]
[http://www.palantir.com/platforms/#metropolis](http://www.palantir.com/platforms/#metropolis)

[2] [https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism-
overview.html#...](https://docs.palantir.com/metropolisdev/prism-
overview.html#PrismOverview-AddTimeseriesData)

~~~
mullingitover
I was about to post, "Nice try, Palantir employee." Then I got to the full
disclosure bit. Fair enough.

I would assume that PRISM is an internal codename for the project within the
NSA. Just a wild guess, but perhaps it stands for "Palantir's Repeated
Interception of Society's Metadata."

------
jchonphoenix
Full Disclosure: I'm ex-Palantir Government Dev

Ok guys. Let's use Occam's Razor for a second. What's more likely?

1) A company that purposefully goes around blackmailing people to make deals,
uses underhanded tactics, and spies on the people, yet is able to hire
amazingly talented (and opinionated supporters of the EFF) engineers from
Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT.

Or

2)a company that builds a data analytics platform that is useful to a lot of
people and honestly believes they're helping the world by finding missing
children, tracking terrorism, and fighting fraud.

Although this article is just ludicrous. All because I think up the same
domain name as someone else doesn't mean I hacked into their computer and
stole their code.

~~~
laurenia
Those options aren't mutually exclusive.

------
aridiculous
I told my sister-in-law (a very level-headed economist) about Palantir and she
just referred to them as paramilitary thugs. It hadn't occurred to me to
phrase it like that because they are a young, hip group that borrows from Lord
of the Rings and evidently posts cartoons on their walls.

Karp's M.O. is to simply list off all the possible use cases of data
inference, including good ones. It makes him sound like a wise judge who will
exercise restraint. However, these use cases are sometimes simply incompatible
with each other, no matter how you slice it. Even IF he's a well-intentioned
judge (which I doubt), political forces are likely to overrule his control
when the kitchen gets hot enough.

We must stop excusing bad behavior from our elites.

~~~
garry
This is the first time I've heard Palantir being called paramilitary thugs.
Are there specific claims that would substantiate that? (I was an early
employee.)

~~~
aridiculous
Nope. Admittedly, kind of a cheap shot. Especially the thugs part.

However, more broadly, I believe a lot of problem is the asymmetric abuse of
rhetorical language by the clever silicon valley execs. Once you have the
public using your terms, they're on your terms.

It's why the word "surveillance" is so critical to the discussion: People know
what it means. "Analytics" and even "privacy" are euphemisms that keep average
people uninformed or placated.

Fighting fire with fire, I'm simply trying to get some terminology inserted
into the discussion that isn't from Palantir's website or the (PR) media.

~~~
bwaldrep
I am confused. If there are no claims or evidence supporting the usage of the
term "paramilitary thugs," then why bring it up at all? "Trying to get some
terminology inserted into the discussion" is worthless (and arguably harmful)
if there is no justification for such inflammatory terminology.

------
c4urself
Seriously, there's a lot of FUD on this thread. Right now it's anecdotal
evidence at best that there is a relationship there at all. But most people
here seem to be talking about it as if it's already proven fact. Come on HN.

~~~
Permit
It's absolutely unbelievable how groupthink manages to take over here
sometimes. There are 296 repositories on Github when you search for PRISM.
People need to stop and think for a minute about how generic of a name that
is. It's certainly doesn't serve as any kind of useful evidence against
Palantir.

------
natch
Palantir has hundreds of employees swarming around downtown Palo Alto.
Hundreds. Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something.

There is something very weird about the employees in Palo Alto: I never see
them at local meetups, events, parties, and such. They are truly strangers who
keep to themselves and don't engage with the local community... and very
young. I get the feeling they come from afar and are just out in California
for a short time, and don't see themselves staying here. Like expats in their
own country. Maybe they are from NSA families. Maybe Palantir functions
effectively like an internship program for future NSA employees.

~~~
joezydeco
One of the most visible Palantir employees is Michael Lopp (aka Rands), ex-
Apple and Borland engineering manager and now a director at Palantir.

Lopp is pretty visible, writing a blog
([http://www.randsinrepose.com](http://www.randsinrepose.com)), publishing a
few books, and speaking at numerous conferences.

But you're right, it seems Palantir takes a lot of it's culture from Apple as
opposed to Google.

~~~
brown9-2
It's probably hard to get a lot of government counterterrorism and military
contracting work if you are dedicated to openness in the spirit of Google.

------
welp
While links are never impossible, I am ever optimistic and hope that their
employees actually do watch out for the red flags they just spoke about on
their blog two months ago.

"Every Palantirian is trained to look out for “red flags” at deployments that
might indicate activities that are antithetical to our commitment to privacy
and civil liberties."

[http://www.palantir.com/2013/04/dont-just-trust-
us&#x2F](http://www.palantir.com/2013/04/dont-just-trust-us&#x2F);

~~~
randomfool
And are the employees told to report these red flags directly to independent
third-parties for investigation?

It's an easy thing to say but I'm extremely skeptical about it in practice.

For instance, red flag- government is scaling up for 1000x the capacity that
lawful warrants would generate. You report this, but who at Palantir would
take action?

~~~
gohrt
No they report them to their manager ... on the way to their exit interview.

------
etjossem
Someone at Palantir has just explicitly denied this connection, for what it's
worth.

[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/07/startup...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/07/startup-
palantir-denies-its-prism-software-is-the-nsas-prism-surveillance-system)

Relevant bit: "Palantir’s Prism platform is completely unrelated to any US
government program of the same name. Prism is Palantir’s name for a data
integration technology used in the Palantir Metropolis platform (formerly
branded as Palantir Finance). This software has been licensed to banks and
hedge funds for quantitative analysis and research."

------
merinid
I cannot believe the link between palantir and prism is by the mere NAME of
the software package as alleged in this article. That's some weak journalism.
I mean, just check out github while you're at it:
[https://github.com/search?q=PRISM&ref=cmdform](https://github.com/search?q=PRISM&ref=cmdform)

~~~
freyr
I think the link is that, in addition to creating software under the same
name, they received early funding from the CIA, and their software serves the
same general purpose of sifting through large amounts of disparate data from
various sources.

~~~
Permit
I attended a conference in Montreal where Palantir demoed their software. They
used a large amount of data on an ecoli outbreak to map out and track the
point of origin. Simply because a company isn't public about all its
activities and deals with "large amounts of disparate data" is not grounds to
call for their cruxifixion. This story had brought out the absolute worst in
HN commenters.

~~~
freyr
It's great that they showed a demo tracking a disease outbreak, but that
doesn't really mean anything.

The company readily admits that their software has primarily been used in the
defense and finance industries. They don't hide this fact, nor should they
feel pressured to.

I'm not crucifying anybody, I was just pointing out that the OP's speculation
was based on slightly more than just the name alone (but I agree, it's still
pretty weak).

------
jmngomes
Hmmm, that makes it clearer why their CEO is at Bildeberg this year
([http://news.rapgenius.com/The-bilderberg-group-list-of-
atten...](http://news.rapgenius.com/The-bilderberg-group-list-of-attendees-
for-2013-bilderburg-group-meeting-lyrics)).

I once had a startup project (shot down by internal "concerns") to spin-off an
intelligence software for social network exploration & analysis that I build
at the company I worked for, I remember browsing through Palantir's portfolio
and thinking they had quite the arsenal for surveillance and intelligence.

PS: Does this information being on RapGenius indicates something significant
about their mid-term strategy?

~~~
bri3d
It's already well known that RapGenius are trying to expand into a more
generic document annotation service (see "Enterprise Genius").

------
advice4u
Alexander Karp was interviewed by Charlie Rose[1]:

"Most of our business is in government, and it all involves both sides of this
equation -- finding people who are up to essentially bad things..."

"So, let’s say you go to the market and you buy something. You talk on your
cell phone, and you send an SMS. You send every little -- you write a report.
All those are data, and massive scale, it is very hard for you to see that as
a pattern.

So what is the pattern of Charlie Rose? Each Charlie Rose interacting with
people that are up to no good?

And then it is very hard for me, the citizen of America, to look at the
government and say, did they look at Charlie Rose because he was up to no good
or did they look at Charlie Rose because they didn’t like his hair color?

And by the way, did they use Charlie Rose as a way to look at Charlie Rose’s
audience and find out who is in the audience?"

[1][http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10549](http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/10549)

[2][http://www.charlierose.com/download/transcript/10549](http://www.charlierose.com/download/transcript/10549)

------
blendergasket
This is our future. A fascist with asymmetrical hair standing in front of a
hip, edgy bit of art, who's funded by a fascist who calls himself a
libertarian, waxing eloquently about how good a person he is because the
company he founded is protecting the shire by injecting the increasingly
unaccountable security apparatus into every single aspect of our lives where
they will enforce conformity.

~~~
pekk
I can't tell what you even mean by "fascist". The word has a specific meaning.

A good example of a fascist was Mussolini. An example of a fascist view is
that the nation (which should be holy) has been taken over by degenerates,
liberals, the weak and people of impure ancestries or ancestries which don't
belong here, and that it must be purified through violence such as purges and
wars of glory.

~~~
javert
Personally, I consider the left-wing leadership of the country to be
nihilists: they seek to gain self-esteem by destroying others' values (e.g.
wealth, rights, etc.). They do it via egalitarian ideology. Hence, egalitarian
nihilists.

If you have noticed a subtle ideological change between Democrats of the
previous "generation" (such as Bill Clinton) and the "Young Turks" of the
party (like Obama), this is the difference.

That said, I don't think this applies to the rank-and-file of intelligence
community at large. They're too close to mainstream American culture to be
nihilists. Any theories on why they would work to implement these kinds of spy
systems would be appreciated. Maybe they have simply been drained of all
critical thinking by the education system and just do what they're told since
that's their job.

~~~
asveikau
Such Randian nonsense. If the dems are such egalitarians and want to destroy
the wealth of others, why do you have growing disparity and retain the Bush
tax rates? And if you say Obama has more of this than Clinton, why are wealthy
people paying less taxes now than they did in the 90s?

~~~
javert
> Such Randian nonsense

What I said is my own opinion, didn't come from Rand.

All the supposed refutations of Rand online are laughably ridiculous,
including the popular one by Huemer. Until you provide a reasonable one,
please don't dismiss people by linking them to Rand. (And please never dismiss
ideas by _falsely_ linking them to Rand, as you did in this case.)

As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally.

~~~
asveikau
> As to all the other stuff you said: Obama can't set tax rates unilaterally.

If you had been following "negotiations" with Congress (take late 2010 as an
example) you'd know that the president basically did a song and dance where he
started out pretending he wanted higher taxes and proceeded to leave things
exactly the same.

He did not assert his strong position in that. If Congress literally did
nothing, taxes would have been raised. He declined to fight for the tax-
raising side of that argument and forfeited a superior negotiating position.
If he really believed it in the beginning, he did not think highly enough of
it to do what he could have.

Edit: removing trollish comment about Rand, because it's bad to flamebait. Let
me just say that it was clear to me from your comment that you have been
influenced by folks nearing the Rand side of the spectrum, and that you can
cease to compare it with Rand but it still comes out awfully similar... Thus I
don't hesitate to say, even after your objections, that the comment was very
Randian, in the sense that it is Rand-like.

~~~
javert
For all I know, Obama traded advocating higher taxes for getting Obamacare
through.

A short list of partial evidence for what I said about Obama: Blocking the
keystone pipeline, his foreign policy, Obamacare, attending a church for many
years where the evil of America was explicitly preached, involvement with Bill
Ayers, his explicit pragmatism (i.e., denial of any valid principles), his
election being the first day he was proud of America (according to his wife).

Anyway, the "egalitarian-nihilist" label needs much broader observations and
analysis to validate than any list I could give you. But that's some stuff I
have a problem with.

> the comment was very Randian, in the sense that it is Rand-like.

That's simply untrue. Rand said that nihilism and egalitarianism are bad
(among many other things). But we simply do not know if she would apply those
labels to Obama. As an Objectivist, I can tell you that there are some things
where her applying her philosophy is more straightforward if you understand
it, but this is not one of them.

(The reason it is tricky is because Obama doesn't come out and say what he
believes, and chances are, he doesn't have any specific opinion on these kinds
of abstractions. So we have to infer what's going on in his mind from what he
says and does.)

~~~
asveikau
> For all I know, Obama traded advocating higher taxes for getting Obamacare
> through.

He had already signed the healthcare bill 9 months prior to the events I am
talking about. And again, one must understand that he was in a position where
if nobody did anything, the person favoring higher taxes would win. It took
_effort_ to get the outcome that we did.

> As an Objectivist,

Thanks for confirming.

------
zht
is this what stands for journalism now? taking random anonymous reader email,
googling it casually, and then writing a story on it behind the facade of "oh
please don't hold us responsible, we're just quoting random anonymous email"

~~~
scarmig
Well, when the government keeps tens of billions of dollar worth of activities
totally secret--not just the details of, but the very existence of--what are
you supposed to do?

Wait until the NSA does a press release of everything it's doing?

------
joering2
Okay I may be nighmar-ishing here, but is it possible that since Peter Thiel
owns/owned large chunk of Facebook and also owns Palantir that works for
government contracts, is it possible that Thiel could have been passing by
info from Facebook servers via Palantir to the Government?

Wouldn't that make sense? I mean, lets say you own Facebook so what you say
needs to be programmed or Facebook employees get pink slips, simple. Is it
possible that Government does not tap into Facebook servers, BUT it does
contract Palantir that the owner owns Facebook at the same time and thats how
Governement gets up to date access to Facebook servers?

~~~
akiselev
The CIA's venture arm invested in Facebook and the political pressure is
probably far greater than any pressure that small owners could generate
(Thiel/In-q-tel owned a few percent by the time of the ipo)

------
Makkhdyn
Semi related: [http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/745547_re-ct-tactical-
pala...](http://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/745547_re-ct-tactical-palantir-
software-.html)

~~~
bane
it's a stronger link than the article supposes

------
marcamillion
Whenever Thiel talks about Palantir, I get a bit confused.

I wonder if he suffers from cognitive dissonance.

One of his most successful companies is a company that does big data analysis
for the DOD (likely the Intelligence Community)...yet he is stridently
libertarian - to the point where he is a Seasteader.

So I can't quite reconcile the two.

~~~
gohrt
1\. Many Libertarians give defense spending a free pass, calling defense the
only essential function of government.

2\. Libertarians are opposed to _giving_ money to govt, not _taking_ money
from govt.

~~~
marcamillion
Yes...but the core of a libertarian is that they value their LIBERTY over
anything else.

It can't just be that Thiel wants to make money. Would he be involved in a
company that is systematically eroding the very liberties that he publicly
claims to cherish, all for a few more hundreds of millions of dollars?

I doubt it.

So there must be something else going on - and I am genuinely interested.

------
jboggan
A few months back I met a building contractor at a party outside of SV who was
going on and on about installing "bullet proof glass" inside various areas of
a tech company headquarters. I asked a few questions about the environs and it
was clear it was the Palantir office he was talking about.

I've never heard a single good thing from my friends who had interviewed or
had brushes with the company.

Do the employees get stock options or just U.S. Treasury bonds?

~~~
trxblazr
A decent number of Stanford CS undergrads/grads end up there.

------
ng12
That's not how Palantir works. Palantir is a platform, if it were part of
Prism the government would still be the one collecting and storing the data.
They may have had a hand in setting the system up so that it integrates with
that data but at the end of the day it would be no different than the
government using IBM's or Oracle's big data tools.

------
HudsonMauer
Of course there's a link.

Palantir basically allows for analysis across federated data sources. It's a
data fusion platform along the lines of other C4ISR programs.

One of those federated sources is now SNA (Social Network Analysis) and/or
other Internet sources.

One way for Facebook to share information the gov't requests is through this:
[https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines&#x2F](https://www.facebook.com/safety/groups/law/guidelines&#x2F);

This next part is speculation, but if you were servicing many of these
requests, wouldn't you just create an API to help you out? You aren't getting
paid (much? Note: "Cost Reimbursement" section in above link) to help them
out.

------
malandrew
I'd like to see that blurb about Fikri at the bottom rewritten multiple times
over for each of the 205 people on the list that McCarthy bandied about during
his Wheeling speech in 1950.

That story sounds very different when it can be used to describe the escapades
of a free citizen, especially when the details of those escapades can be used
as blackmail against them by another individual with an agenda.

What stops a politician with ties to the intelligence community from using
this system to coerce others around him. This is the conversation we should be
having, because this very real possibility is what makes these systems sound
reprehensible to red-blooded terrorist hating 'mericans who generally defend
these actions by the government in day-to-day conversations.

------
kjackson2012
Do they hire H1B's? That would be a really quick clue as to whether or not
they are doing work for NSA. None of my Indian friends know any H1B that works
at Palantir, which is really odd, but maybe other people have different
anecdotes.

~~~
dsl
It could also just be a moral choice. I don't hire H1Bs because I believe we
have a sufficient talent pool here in America.

------
ryanx435
finally a topic comes up on HN that I'm an expert in, and yet I'm legally
unable to talk about it.

... crap.

~~~
HudsonMauer
Which is also why Palantir folks don't talk about what they do.

------
kevinpet
Palantir may not be printing this on t-shirts, but they aren't that secretive
about what they do.

Let's say you're an FBI agent with a warrant that allows you to spy on Joe
Schmo, and any of his foreign contacts (not named individually). And maybe
you're doing this because of ties to drug smuggling, so you're allowed to
ignore the fourth amendment when dealing with some particular data source, but
other sources are only allowed within the scope of the warrant.

Palantir (or at least one of their products) allows querying across those data
sources within the bounds of the warrant. So rather than the good old days
when "secure in their persons and papers" meant that you could actually keep
your data private, with Palantir, the government has moved the position that
until a human sees it, it doesn't count.

------
Stratego
Anomaly Hunting: [http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-
hunting...](http://theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php/anomaly-
hunting&#x2F);

Not to be confused with investigating.

------
markhall
In case you missed it. UPDATE: Startup Palantir Denies Its 'Prism' Software Is
The NSA's 'PRISM' Surveillance System
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/07/startup...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/07/startup-
palantir-denies-its-prism-software-is-the-nsas-prism-surveillance-
system&#x2F);

------
draq
If I wrote a screenplay, then Palantir is exactly the name I would give the
evil Mega Corp
([http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MegaCorp](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MegaCorp)).

------
gregors
I've been following their repos for awhile now
[https://github.com/palantir](https://github.com/palantir) what exactly is
SYSMON anyway! monitoring tools indeed.

------
moconnor
This is a ridiculous suggestion. The NSA employs an incredible concentration
of some of the smartest people in their fields to work on analysis. I am
certain they don't outsource their core purpose.

------
neuro
Palantir did develop a database to store scraped data from social media sites.
According to Chamber of Commerce meetings, data was uploaded to it from HBGary
and Berico.

------
rwhitman
Whether its Palantir or not, it does make perfect sense that the NSA would
subcontract this work to a 3rd party. Someone is out there with this contract

------
noomerikal
I love how their hypothetical reads like an episode of 24.

------
gregors
been watching their repos for awhile now
[https://github.com/palantir](https://github.com/palantir)

------
apetresc
Guys, guys. Listen. They both start with a 'P'. We've cracked it. It's them.
We can all unclench now.

------
tptacek
What an embarrassing thread.

