Comment by deaux
18 hours ago
Postgres can aggregate many data sources of private data. So can SAP. So what is it about their tech that you think makes it different? SAP is a good comparison.
18 hours ago
Postgres can aggregate many data sources of private data. So can SAP. So what is it about their tech that you think makes it different? SAP is a good comparison.
Like I said, their tech is meaningless. It's the deals they cut to gain access to data and the deals they cut to expose that data.
Why would they be the ones cutting deals to gain access to data? The Party is cutting those deals and has been for ages. Deals like these:
> Spyware delivered by text > In August, the Trump administration revived a previously paused contract with Paragon Solutions, an Israeli-founded company that makes spyware. A Paragon tool called Graphite was used in Europe earlier this year to target journalists and civil society members, according to The Citizen Lab, a research group based at the University of Toronto with expertise in spyware.
> Little is known about how ICE is using Paragon Solutions technology and legal groups recently sued DHS for records about it and tools made by the company Cellebrite. ICE did not respond to NPR's questions about its Paragon Solutions contract and whether it is for Graphite or another tool.
> Graphite can start monitoring a phone — including encrypted messages — just by sending a message to the number. The user doesn't have to click on a link or a message.
> "It has essentially complete access to your phone," said Jeramie Scott, senior counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), a legal and policy group focused on privacy. "It's an extremely dangerous surveillance tech that really goes against our Fourth Amendment protections."
Deals with Flock, and so on. It makes no sense for Palantir to be the one doing those deals rather than the Party. They've been doing so for a long time now. That's the whole point of data brokers, on this site alone there are hundreds of comments and posts about how the Party abuses those to get around laws on mass surveillance - can't legally (or are too incompetent to) gather data ourselves? Just buy it off a data broker. And Snowden showed us more than a decade ago that even without them they can just.. not care about the "legal" part.
Palantir is not the only threat, Paragon is equally nasty. Any company with a mission to enable fascism or supremacism is a problem. Palantir is very open about what they strive to do. I have no doubt their tech is mediocre, but their motive is as malicious as it gets.
2 replies →