
Palantir has secretly been testing predictive policing technology in New Orleans - rising-sky
https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predictive-policing-tool-new-orleans-nopd
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atonse
Palantir is one of those companies that has used Valley tactics and perks
(free gourmet food, gyms, ping pong tables, etc) to aggressively recruit tons
of talent in the DC area to help build the surveillance state.

People I know have COMPLETELY drunk the kool-aid to the point where they wear
Palantir t-shirts and walk around talking about being "forward deployed
engineers" like a cult.

And I only blame them a little. The DC area is starved of such benefits, so
it's easy to pick up tech talent.

~~~
jrochkind1
I live in Baltimore, that's even worse, but I still won't work for any DoD
contractors, even though that's where the money is around here.

I'm sure I make significantly less than anyone working for Palintir and I
don't have those "cool benefits". But I still make a hell of a lot more than
most people in Baltimore (ie the median income in Baltimore, what 50% of
people make less than). I'm not looking for praise, but, yeah, you can hold
people responsible for the work they do, even if they do it for cool benefits.
If you're willing to sell out for gourmet lunches and a ping-pong table, your
price wasn't very high.

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justaguyhere
I used to take pride in working in software. Increasingly, I see tech being
used to severely undermine civil liberties, abuse privacy etc. I guess techies
are becoming as bad as bankers

~~~
jrochkind1
I take pride in the work I do, but I think working as a software engineer
makes me hate tech _more_ than the average person. I know how it works, and I
think it's bad for us.

~~~
avenius
I second this. The longer I work in tech, the more I want to jump ship and
work the land instead.

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ionised
I don't necessarily want to leave tech, but I would prefer to work on my own
projects or at least for something open-source, free and positive.

~~~
justaguyhere
I guess there are lots of opportunities to build software outside of the 20s,
30s well to do crowd. Like for old people, poor people, disabled people and so
on. If money is taken out of the equation, lots of areas where software can
make genuine positive difference in people's lives

~~~
jrochkind1
The problem is paying your own rent when money is taking out of the equation!

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jrochkind1
Reminds me of the following a couple years ago in my city. There are sure a
lot of philanthropists interested in funding the tech police state, eh?

Just like New Orleans, "The arrangement was kept secret in part because it
never appeared before the city's spending board, paid for instead through
private donations handled by the nonprofit Baltimore Community Foundation."

Report of secret aerial surveillance by Baltimore police prompts questions,
outrage

[http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-
city/bs-...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-
ci-secret-surveillance-20160824-story.html)

~~~
jrochkind1
Baltimore actually seems to be kind of the center of these generous
philanthropists wanting to help out with police state surveillance.

Bloomberg donates $5 million to Baltimore police for new cameras, technology
[http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-
city/bs-...](http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs-md-
ci-bloomberg-police-20171201-story.html)

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selimthegrim
In the last year in New Orleans, there has been a proliferation of very
visible CCTV crime cameras and license plate readers at the parish boundaries
(all entry and exit points into the city as well as traffic chokepoints). The
city wants to combine this with cameras outside every place with an alcohol
license and stream it all in real time into a police control room.

If you want to donate to the people opposing this - check out
[https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new-
orleans-40-mil...](https://maccno.com/join-the-opposition-to-new-
orleans-40-million-security-plan/) \- sign and donate if possible

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forapurpose
What reasons do they give for hiding these programs from the public? Will it
somehow reduce their effectiveness?

The answer, I would guess, is that they think the public wouldn't like it, but
what reasons do they actually state?

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tehlike
Slowly boil the frog.

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gringoDan
Does this remind anyone else of The Minority Report? At least in that
book/movie people were aware of the predictive policing.

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maruhan2
Worse than Minority Report because at least in there they were actually seeing
the future not predicting it.

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gpsx
If someone is using machine learning to advertise to me on the web and they
come up with some crazy ad they think I might like, no harm done. Using the
"probabilities" they may be making the ads marginally better. But if someone
uses this for police actions, that is a different story. I expect a little
more certainty for something like police actions.

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reacharavindh
The scary thought from black box hi-tech policing like this is that you don't
know what little things you said/did that made the algorithms think you're bad
or worse a target.

What if there is a bug(and there will be) in such predictive analytical tool?
A swat team watching every move of a guy going to get groceries?

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DyslexicAtheist
goes hand in hand with the ambitions of NIST working on the IES SmartCities
framework. We are literally building this future right now and there is no
discussion on ethics or who will benefit from it and who bears the costs
(financial & social). If you want to change things consider subscribing to the
NIST mailing list and and make your case.

[https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/96442652181220557...](https://twitter.com/ValbonneConsult/status/964426521812205570)

EDIT:
[https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/](https://pages.nist.gov/smartcitiesarchitecture/)

