Tinfoil hats like to say that facebook is probably tied to the CIA, but Palantir is the one that actually is.
"Palantir was founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel, Dr. Alex Karp, Joe Lonsdale, Stephen Cohen, and Nathan Gettings. Early investments came in the form of $2 million from the CIA's venture arm In-Q-Tel and $30 million from Thiel and his firm, The Founders Fund. Dr. Alex Karp is Palantir's CEO. Palantir’s name comes from the "seeing stones" in the Lord of the Rings.
Palantir was built through iterative collaboration between computer scientists and analysts from various intelligence agencies over the course of nearly three years, through pilots facilitated by In-Q-Tel."
To be fair, Palantir says their name was associated with that HBGary proposal in error, severed all ties with HBGary, and denied offering any software that could be used for the tactics in the HBGary presentation.
Anyone is of course free to believe them or not, but our threads shouldn't be forwarding the vague allegations without also including the more specific denials.
How did they get a pt-themis-bcc@palantir.com forwarding address?
You call them vague allegations, but they look like facts to me. "In error" meaning "oops we got caught", or, facetiously "oh dear did I push the plan and scheme and conspire button again?"
Palantir did not say they had "nothing to do with" HB Gary.
Palantir said they should not have been portrayed as a part of the controversial Wikileaks-related offensive-actions proposal – because Palantir did not, and would not, approve of such tactics. Palantir also said, after that proposal, that they were breaking all contacts with HB Gary – which admits there were other ties.
The fact that HB Gary licensed some Palantir software or even had other project-related aliases with Palantir is wholly consistent with Palantir's explanation.
Perhaps any association whatsoever with HB Gary was a mistake. If so, doesn't Palantir get any credit for (belatedly) "sever[ing] any and all contacts with HB Gary"?
Also, as a government contractor, you don't necessarily have full control over every other contractor on related projects.
The Wikileaks-offensive project was known as Team Themis. Perhaps you didn't realize that.
The email address pt-themis-bcc@palantir.com, along with the sharing of third party software, is enough to prove that they were a part of this action, whether they "approved" of it or not. Saying after you got caught that you didn't approve of the actions and using a young engineer as a scapegoat doesn't get you any credit in my books. (As if there were only one person working on this project, then why the bcc forwarder?)
The whole episode has been broken down and explained in great detail by third-parties other than the Palantir PR department, and my rebuttal is by no means an attempt at a full explanation. I am just pointing out they did indeed provide software that could be used for the tactics shown in the presentation, so there was no error.
There was a definitely a project called "Team Themis", yes. But some of the documents describing it make no mention of any offensive (active disinformation/cyber-attack) tactics, nor even of Wikileaks specifically – merely the usual kind of passive intelligence-gathering, from legitimate sources, that Palantir does. Then at some point the additional sizzle of proposed offensive tactics against Wikileaks got added. (In the most infamous presentation, the word 'Themis' is not mentioned.)
So to say "[t]he Wikileaks-offensive project was known as Team Themis" is begging the question.
My concern is whether Palantir as a corporation ever meant to endorse or participate in the specific 'dirty tricks' sizzle. I find Palantir's explanation plausible enough to deserve reporting, anywhere that the allegations against them are also reported: telling the full story requires it.
Everyone is welcome to their suspicions, but I've yet to see any evidence that definitively falsifies Palantir's explanation.
You should provide links to where this is "explained in great detail", rather than more vague assertions.
If out of all the compromised HB Gary emails, one about sharing a license to third-party "application integration" software is the most incriminating one you can reference, that suggests a pretty flimsy case. HB Gary's entire corpus of email was compromised! Shouldn't there be at least one email from a Palantir employee showing enthusiasm about the offensive tactics, or review/approval of the deck, or something?
(And how exactly would the milquetoast not-created-by-Palantir Kapow Katalyst 'application integration platform' be "used for the tactics shown in the presentation", tactics like 'disinformation', 'fake documents', and 'cyber attacks'?)
Palantir's explanation remains unrefuted: that an employee gave the mistaken impression of participation in a specific effort that the company itself did not and would not support, as a matter of both policy and software capabilities.
It suggests HB Gary was financially desperate to propose something big; Palantir was enticed by the size of the potential deal, but Palantir's payment demands were problematic for HB Gary. The Palantir employee(s) chasing the sale clearly knew and repeated HB Gary's dirty tactics bullet points, but it's not clear Palantir higher-ups saw the proposal as anything other than a potential large sale of their standard passive analysis stuff.
I know 'misrepresentation by overzealous employee' is a convenient excuse deserving some suspicion. But I also know that such vaguely-rogue sales-motivated oversteps happen all the time, even in much smaller organizations than Palantir.
Which part? Data visualization or data visualization to crush wikileaks through defamation and ddos?
Can you elaborate? I'm just having a really time seeing how "Palantir was going to destroy wikileaks" which is what everyone says, but if you read the documents that were exposed, this doesn't really seem to be implied.
Additionally, the type of software Palantir makes couldn't really be used to destroy wikileaks in the ways claimed.
Yes, Palantir is a government contractor, but that doesn't mean they do evil things. You don't call google evil because HBGary uses google search. In the same way, I don't see how you can call Palantir evil for making a data visualization platform.
I'm looking at data visualization to prevent corporate espionage. In reality it's data theft that brought Wikileaks in to the public consciousness.
I think that most people forget/aren't aware that the data was actually stolen by a 22 year old private. In fact, he goes in front of the court tomorrow: http://bit.ly/viXkwq
When I say 'prevent Wikileaks' via data visualization I'm referring to preventing corporate espionage and data leaks, not destroy the Wikileaks organization itself.
"We do not provide – nor do we have any plans to develop – offensive cyber capabilities. Palantir Technologies does not build software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain non-public information, engage in so-called “cyber attacks” or take other offensive measures."
A true statement that looks carefully crafted to have huge loopholes.
Loophole 1: apparently they're OK with building software that is designed to allow public sector entities (bad governments) to obtain non-public information.
Loophole 2: I guess they're OK with building software that is designed to allow private sector entities to obtain public information [and... the part left unsaid: distill it to create insights not readily noticeable by others with access to the same public information, thus giving these private sector entities overwhelming advantages in things like figuring out how to manipulate politicians].
That stuff, from reading the quote, I am left believing they are OK with. Which means the statement just comes off as PR-speak, and disingenuous.
Loophole 2 is called a product - what's wrong with being able to analyze public information? It's true that Palantir's software can enable wrong doing, but at that point you might as well blame computer manufacturers for building machines to run the software.
This isn't a legal document, it's a press statement. Go look for conspiracies elsewhere.
Additionally, this comment shouldn't be downvoted. I realize that people like to hate on Palantir, but I'm asking a legitimate question. And up to this point, nobody has given me a good answer.
Those of us that have been on HN for awhile know that you don't downvote things just because you disagree with them. This comment is really constructive and I'm disappointed that people are instinctively downvoting it because it can be construed as supporting a company they're biased against.
it would be interesting to see what the internal divisions of palantir are, and what are their government/defense contracts like vs. their commercial products division.
fight for government money can always get a little dirty. i'm sure good engineering happens there but they will always be colored by the HB Gary episode. plus the fact that partnering with a shady right wing corporate law firm and the HB Gary Federal clown will alway reflect badly on their general common sense judgement...
VERY good engineering/thinking/development happens here.
I was in a recruitment process with them back when I really wanted to make an immediate west coast jump, and the intelligence/competence across the board for their collective is simply unmatched.
I don't see how caycep's comment enhances my understanding of the released software. It's just a big dump of ad hominem (as are practically all the other comments).
Palantir open sourcing their software could and should be viewed through a PR lens, an action meant to build favorable reputation in the developer community. Maybe caycep could have elaborated on this more, but I understand the point: Palantir has a mixed history, so we should take the positive with a grain of salt and beware.
I remember seeing a demo of their UIs when they gave an infosession at school. They look nothing like Swing--as far as I could tell, all the widgets were either custom or redesigned. If I remember correctly, it looked more like MS Office 2007 than anything else.
Since Swing is "lightweight"--all the widgets are drawn in Java instead of using native ones--using it to make a completely custom UI makes sense.
That is what I always admired about the Ferengi. Whatever beef you had with them, you knew they could be counted on not to take sides, as long as you had money you were good.
