
How Palantir Is Taking Over New York City - jonbaer
http://gizmodo.com/how-palantir-is-taking-over-new-york-city-1786738085
======
spunker540
The article is implying there's more to be worried about than there actually
is - they didn't mention anything actually "disturbing" but want us all to be
concerned about the vague threat of city surveillance nonetheless.

What does Palantir do? “integrate[s] disparate data sets and conduct[s] rich,
multifaceted analysis across the entire range of data.”

How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards,
fake IDs, fake cigarettes, fake marijuana.

So the data already existed in NYC databases and the crimes they're enforcing
already existed.

And yet: "the potential for that kind of outright abuse is less disturbing
than the ways in which Palantir’s tech is already being used. The city’s
embrace of Palantir, outside of law enforcement, has quietly ushered in an era
of civil surveillance so ubiquitous as to be invisible." \-- total hyperbole!

If anything the most telling part of this article to me, was the small sums of
money being made by Palantir which is frequently lauded as one of the most
elite, selective startups for software engineering positions. It seems to
operate in small change relative to all the hype.

~~~
koolba
> How does NYC use it? Tax fraud, fire code violations, fake security guards,
> fake IDs, fake cigarettes, _fake marijuana_.

Seriously? Is fake marijuana an actual problem?

~~~
conistonwater
I think that just means contraband lettuce.

~~~
ethanbond
No it's a reference to K2 which has actually been a huge problem in NYC. A
month or two ago there were like a couple dozen people hospitalized in _a
single morning_

------
Animats
At first I thought this was about Palantir leasing vast amounts of office
space, as they did in Palo Alto. But NYC? They're not _that_ big.

Take a look at the top 10 US government contractors.[1] Most of the top 10
make weapons systems. But two are in information processing: Leidos (used to
be SAIC), and L-3 Communications. Palantir isn't even in the top 100. Maybe
they're more into state and local customers.

There's lots of potential for innovation in the state and local government
space. A smartphone app for building inspectors, for example. One that
involves lots of picture taking and GPS tagging. There are building inspector
apps, but they're basically paper forms reworked for tablets.

An ambitious project would be a system which takes the video and audio from a
cop's body cam and does most of the paperwork. Show it a driver's license or a
face, and it's in the record and understood by the system. Cops hate
paperwork, yet have to document much of what they do. Automate that and cops
will be glad to wear a cam. Difficult and controversial, but useful.

It might be easier to sell in countries where local government is more
standardized. In the US, you'd have to customize a system for every police
department.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Top_100_Contractors_of_the_U.S._federal_government)

~~~
pritianka
Haha, my first thought was about Palantir leasing all of PA downtown as well.
But your point is very interesting. I agree that there's a lot of value a
company like Palantir can deliver to the traditionally luddite government.

------
maxander
> Co-founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp, Palantir...

It is a continuous marvel that Peter Thiel, nominally an outspoken and
prominent libertarian, is partially responsible for one of the most insidious
powers that the U.S. government has over its people.

~~~
evgen
Thiel is not a libertarian, he is a feudalist. He wants to be lord of the
manor and governments have a habit of getting in his way when he wants to make
you his serf.

~~~
mempko
in some ways big 'L' libertarians are petty feudalists.

~~~
__jal
Yep. After several years of pointing out that feudalism was the natural
outcome of his political sympathies, I finally convinced a friend that he
wasn't a libertarian a while back.

I say this as someone who is very sympathetic in principle to a lot of
libertarian thought. In practice, that's just not how humans work.

~~~
int_19h
There is a way to salvage the term (and preserve its distinctive meaning from
"liberal" etc). Most libertarians already speak of _minimal_ government, as
opposed to no government - ancaps are a vocal but small minority. So the
question simply becomes, what exactly constitutes "minimal". And that is very
much a subjective assessment.

I posit that there is a broader category, which is distinct from what people
usually mean when they speak of or self-identify as libertarians, that adheres
to the same principle. Basically, the idea is that government is _always_ , by
its very nature ("all power comes from the barrel of a gun"), an intrusion on
some liberties - and so any extension of government requires a solid
justification and thorough vetting. However, some freedoms and liberties have
to be intruded upon in order to maintain others. Again, most bona fide
libertarians would agree - say, the freedom to violently coerce other people
is clearly not the one that you want.

But once you get into this mode of thinking, and ditch ideological
stereotypes, there are many other limitations that appear perfectly
reasonable. More importantly, you realize that whether some limitation is
justifiable or not depends on your [inherently subjective] assessment of what
is good and what isn't - but that is orthogonal to the minimal government
principle. In other words, there are many different kinds of libertarians, who
all agree on that basic principle, but disagree on what outcome they desire
(and hence on how much government is "just enough").

So you can be a libertarian, but still consider public welfare programs to be
a good way to spend money, because the alternative would be worse, in terms of
overall individual liberties.

~~~
jonathankoren
> So you can be a libertarian, but still consider public welfare programs to
> be a good way to spend money, because the alternative would be worse, in
> terms of overall individual liberties.

True, but all too often, I've heard otherwise reasonable people seriously
argue for the repeal of the 13th Amendment (the abolishment of slavery) in the
name of Freedom(tm) because, "You can't truly be free unless you can sell
yourself into slavery."

Of course, we have seen this society, and even today can easily extrapolate
what would be its effect due to proliferation of legal usury in the form of
payday loans. But hey, we've got a Dark Enlightenment to usher in, for
FREEDOM(tm).

------
someone7x
This gives me such mixed feelings. Using technology to increase productivity?
Good

Committing resources to quality of life improvements? Good

75% of enforcement done in neighborhoods of "color"? Yikes

CIA-backed data analysis firm Palantir Technologies? Dear god

~~~
blackbagboys
Would "75% of enforcement done in neighborhoods of color" still be an issue if
75% of crime occurs in those same neighborhoods?

~~~
dangerlibrary
This argument is so seductive, but it bugs me that people assume that "crime
rates" are based on how often people are committing crimes. It's how often
crimes are reported / how often criminals are caught.

Given the greater prevalence of things like stop and frisk in neighborhoods
with large minority populations, is it any surprise more people are caught for
things like drug possession? That's going to further skew the stats, leading
to more enforcement in those neighborhoods (since they are "high crime").

Drug use is actually higher in young white populations than it is among young
black populations, but because of where law enforcement spends their time the
incarceration rates differ wildly.

~~~
rayiner
Possession is a red herring. The CompuStat statistics don't even count drug
crimes and gun possession crimes--the incidence of which might be affected by
the intensity of policing due to stop-and-frisk:
[http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/...](http://www.nyc.gov/html/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-
en-us-city.pdf).

Here is the NYC crime map:
[https://maps.nyc.gov/crime](https://maps.nyc.gov/crime). Look at the maps for
felony assault or rape. Stop-and-frisk isn't going to change the incidence
rate of those crimes.

~~~
dangerlibrary
You obviously have a more sophisticated take on the question. Parent comment
referenced "75% of crime," not "75% of violent crime" or "75% of rapes and
aggravated assaults recorded in compustat."

The general point holds - there are corrective measures that need to be taken
to avoid skewing crime data as a result of increased enforcement, and in the
case of some jurisdictions those measures are being taken.

What's not obvious to me is whether police are increasing the severity of the
charges based on where they are, even if the charges wouldn't necessarily hold
up in court. There's a case to be made that that would be an efficient tactic
- public defenders will encourage plea bargains and it gives the DA more
leverage to settle the case quickly and efficiently. The opposite may be true
when booking a drunk banker who gets in a fistfight, or a privileged college
kid who rapes his date behind a dumpster.

Also, the discussion generally is not about CompuStat, it's about "quality of
life" improvements prosecuted with the use of secret databases that are not
publicly available. So, you know, there's that.

------
hprotagonist
"they are not all accounted for, the lost seeing stones ..."

why anyone thought it was a great idea to name their company after the remote
sensing device guaranteed to lie to you and make humans suicidally depressed
has always been beyond me.

~~~
TrevorJ
Probably the same people who designed the NRO spy satellite mission patch:
[http://b-i.forbesimg.com/kashmirhill/files/2013/12/Satellite...](http://b-i.forbesimg.com/kashmirhill/files/2013/12/Satellite-
logo-for-spying.jpg)

If anything, they are both a little _too_ on the money.

------
panic
_The City Hall official discussed the city’s use of the data-mining technology
on background, and declined to provide the full list of data sources or
describe what is contained in the datasets._

Presumably this technology is supposed to be helping the people of NYC.
Shouldn't these people know what data is being collected about them so they
can decide whether or not they actually want it?

~~~
dmix
I believe this is why FOIA was so important...

------
bogomipz
There's a few other recent developments of the "Big Data" city that New York
is aspiring to that also give some residents mixed feelings. In chronological
order:

[http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyregion/cellphone-
alerts-...](http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/20/nyregion/cellphone-alerts-used-
in-search-of-manhattan-bombing-suspect.html)

[http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/linkny...](http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2016/04/linknyc-
new-york-wifi-privacy-security/477696/)

[http://www.nyclu.org/content/automatic-license-plate-
readers](http://www.nyclu.org/content/automatic-license-plate-readers)

------
Spooky23
Articles like this are so obnoxious.

When the government calls it "Open Data" (ie.
[https://nycopendata.socrata.com](https://nycopendata.socrata.com),
[https://data.ny.gov](https://data.ny.gov)) it's lauded as an inspirational
embracing of transparency and seen as just awesome. When the government uses
it to make itself more efficient and effective, there's this implication that
something nefarious is going on.

If you want to be offended by government software purchases, check out the POs
for Oracle Enterprise whatever or the IBM Passport Advantage agreement that
NYC has issued in the last year. Chances are, the city doesn't even know wtf
half of the products they license are!

------
polskibus
Does anyone know what differentiates Palantir from a typical OLAP + ETL stack
like SASS + SSIS?

~~~
blackbagboys
It has a user interface that civil servants and law enforcement analysts
actually have a prayer of learning.

------
dannylandau
Wow, just a few million dollars in contracts from NYC agencies. That is
peanuts. Not sure how they are able to justify such a high valuation. Seems
like a lot of hype at Palantr

~~~
luminiferous
This is just Palantir's foot in the door. Other municipalities will want to
follow in NYC's steps, as Palantir essentially expands the smart city market.
When the market is big enough, then Palantir will start pricing in a manner
that actually makes them money. At least in theory. The similarity to a
typical startup (low price to build demand, growth drives high valuation) is
uncanny.

------
ChuckMcM
I'm sure if your number is up, they will find you. :-)

There seems to be a lot of momentum in the "canvas large data sets" space. It
has always been on the wish list for the authorities (see many RFP's for the
DARPA "Total Information Awareness" initiative) and the challenge has always
been storage and algorithm development. Storage is becoming a non-issue when
you can have a petabyte in M.2 class SSDs available across a 10Gbit network of
processors. The challenge is the needle-in-haystack finding activity.

------
sfifs
Interesting that all this data is primarily being used to catch tax violations
and improving property prices. So from a city manager point of view, this may
be paying out for itself.

------
oneloop
Does any one know how Palantir started? I.e. from what I can remember it
seemed to come out of nowhere. How did they manage to get such huge contracts
from the start?

~~~
jhanschoo
IIRC Palantir had difficulty getting clients early on. The tech evolved from
Paypal's efforts to combat fraud via data analysis, esp. against the Russian
mafia trafficking on their platform. The CIA was one of its first clients,
which eventually led to other government agencies trusting them.

------
contingencies
"Quality of life violation"? Newspeak is truly here.

