Monday, October 13, 2014

Police Departments Using Private Funds to Buy Spy Tech - Palantir

23 December 2016:  More info on Palantir.....
http://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/14012534/palantir-peter-thiel-trump-immigrant-extreme-vetting  
"Documents suggest Palantir could help power Trump's ‘extreme vetting’ of immigrants"

Palantir as a magical atrefact is and intersesting description of an alternate meaning of the word!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palant%C3%ADr 

The subject of this blog entry is a link to a ProPublica report.

Private funding provided to buy things for a public agency.  Private funding that does not necessarily become subject to rules and procedures applicable to public funds.  Basically, non-appropriated funding supplement to appropriated government funding.

It would seem to be the drug dealers model:  "Try this, you'll like it.  Here, take it, its free."  Come back for some more......(that's when I score).

Private funding via direct corporate donation of money or material.  Indirect funding through Police Chief private professional association agencies.  Indirect funding through any agency claiming to be a supporter of civil order.  It gets a foot in the door and gets it there generally without public oversight, controls or transparency via private money channels carrying "earmarked" or preferential strings.

A model with the same "look and feel" is private donations to public schools on  selective school basis.  Illegal in some places.  Donations by wealthy parents to public schools that just happen to be the geographical or preferred public school attended by the children of public schools.  A super "bake sale" to buy computers, etc.  The things that the school could not otherwise afford.

What can go wrong with privately supporting the public good?  The answer is in who benefits, how and why as well as the flip side who is adversely affected.  In the case of law enforcement, criminals are adversely affected and everyday is open season on them.  Privacy rights are also adversely affected and criminal or not it is open season on rights as well.  The "village has to be burned to expose the criminal" justification.  We all have to give up some privacy.  Maybe true but there are no effective public controls over authoritarian decisions about what is best for us.  Public controls of the government or media type.

Palantir is a producer and systems aggregater of information intelligence (spy) hardware and software.  Originating at the national level intelligence agencies and expanding to the local level law enforcement agencies primarily in large cities and through Fusion Centers as the integrating entity between national and local intelligence.

The software intelligence system is fully integrated from the national to the local level but the hardware to gather intelligence to feed the system at the local level is not.  Both a demand for the hardware as well as the funding to obtain it at the local level has to be created.  Demand by law enforcement is easy and stimulated by private sectoral private enterprise aggregated associations hosting Private expos for public agencies to attend to view the offerings and, let me guess, get a few free samples in the private suites by invitation only.  What is the line between a soft and hard bribe?  Is the mere generous offer "to help you, the public official in your fight against crime" a bribe? 

Palantir is blatant in their public promotion of its systems across the board from strictly private enterprise to government agencies.  It integrates everything with an "all information, all the time" model.  Blatant?  Look at the slick presentations produced by Planatir.  These are not releases of classified info but commercial bragging of what they can do for their customer.

This is a link to Palantir Youtube videos.  Start with this one, which applies to Australia then pick and choose among all the other Palantir videos on the side bar.  Palantir platform in Palo Alto is global. 

J. P. Morgan Chase is a customer for Palantir cyber fraud detection explained in the course of the You Tube link.  How is cyber fraud detected?  By sifting through the entire haystack for the fraud needles.  What exactly might be looked at along the way that is not related to cyber fraud?  Why, simply everything.  The same model as a virus protection service looking at everything in an enterprise's files, programs and data to detect a virus.  The "we have to examine everything to detect anything" method, qualified by the contradiction: "But we do not look at things we do not need to look at, and if we do we do not take action on it (because we looked at it and determined that no action was necessary, just an innocent by-stander).

It is absolutely amazing how a company like Palantir can publicly reveal exactly what their business is, its customers and what their hardware and software intelligence systems actually do.

Blatant?  Go to this link at the Palantir site. "Philanthropy Engineering".  This is how they get their foot in the door.  Philanthropy to save lives.

"Our Philanthropy Engineering team applies Palantir’s people, products, and resources—always at a deep discount and often for free—to support initiatives and organizations dedicated to improving and saving human lives."

 The site goes on to define the domain of saving lives: All extremely noble in their 2013 report.  An extremely slick report produced by a probably high end PR company or a deep pocket in house effort.

Wake up!  Palantir has CIA origins! What is this the new model of secrecy called "Hide in Plain Sight"?

Back to the Humanitarian Response in the Palantir 2013 report.  It is a model to demonstrate response to a natural disaster.  That model is no different than response to a fomented disaster to take control of domestic or foreign situation.  It is a legitimate test bed for situation command and control domination.

Look at the Veterans portion of Palantir's philanthropy:  Gathering all information to help a target demographic.  This is another blatant test model.  One that tugs at the patriotic heart strings covered with good intent.  The same system could be aimed at any selected demographic.  It is the slickest piece of PR I have ever seen that runs cover for a hidden agenda.  It should get a Oscar for illusion.

A detailed report on Palantir Veteran philanthropy is at this link:  Analyzing the Present and Possible Futures of the U.S. Veterans Population with CNAS and Palantir Metropolis

CNAS Center for a New American Security is an interesting entity described at this link.

Planatir Metropolis is a general purpose intelligence tool that can be aimed at any demographic.  The veteran demographic of 6 million veterans is obviously a test of the tools capabilities involving a excellent "do good" patriotic target that would meet with full public approval.  Intelligence systems are a weapon that can be aimed at any target of choice in the hands of the user/owner.  Might Planatir Metropolis also be an aka for Planatir Fusion?




Palantir Philanthropy:



"We have a full-time team of engineers who work with non-profits to revolutionize the way they use data in pursuit of their missions. We call it Philanthropy Engineering.
As engineers, we are trained to apply technology and passion to problem-solving, iterating relentlessly, with laser focus. We do this for a reason. We want to maximize the good we can do. It’s where empathy meets execution. By partnering with proven and promising organizations and donating our technology and engineering expertise, we are helping non-profits close the gap between reality and their inspired visions for the world."

The real world application of these "Philanthropy test bed examples is probably the Fusion Center.

Palantir has irons in many fires for many purposes.

This entry drills down into one example. The relationship between Palantir and Team Rubicon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Team_Rubicon

http://teamrubiconglobal.org/ 





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