How Palantir Pushed Its Way into Policing | Hacker News Reader

How Palantir Pushed Its Way into Policing

wired.com

50 pointsrbanffy8 comments

Previous discussion about this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14967371

> on two separate occasions, police shot at trucks misidentified as belonging to Dorner, injuring three civilians. [1]

> We used Palantir extensively to address that [1]

>A team of Los Angeles police officers protecting the home of a high-ranking officer in the 19500 block of Redbeam Avenue believed a pickup that stopped in front of the house matched Dorner’s Nissan Titan. Police opened fire, wounding two women tossing copies of the Los Angeles Times onto porches. [1]

> a driver in another pickup that looked similar to Dorner’s drove toward them on Flagler Lane near Beryl Street. Officers, suspecting it was Dorner, purposely collided with the truck and shot at him. [1]

[1] http://www.ocregister.com/2013/02/08/police-confuse-truck-fo...

Interesting read. Sounds like some inefficient government bodies grappling with complicated software that they dropped tons of money on without fully understanding. And now they're using the insights from that software in a way that doesn't work well. That reflects more poorly on the police depts than Palantir.

For everyone's sake, I hope police are able to use data within reason to do their jobs better. That will either involve police depts getting smarter about spending on/using software, Palantir getting more user-friendly, or a company focused on doing this well specifically for police departments disrupting Palantir... all of these are good things which I hope happen in due time.

Also,

> "Palantir’s customers must rely on software that only the company itself can secure, upgrade, and maintain."

This is a weird thing to include. Were they hoping for open source?

> complicated software that they dropped tons of money on without fully understanding. And now they're using the insights from that software

A complicated software telling cops where to start looking for suspects - what could possibly go wrong?

Political and racial profiling as-a-service.

> I hope police are able to use data within reason

...how? You either trust the software and follow the "insights" or not.

>> "Palantir’s customers must rely on software that only the company itself can secure, upgrade, and maintain." > This is a weird thing to include. Were they hoping for open source?

In most countries the whole legal/judicial system is designed to be fully transparent and thoroughly auditable to ensure fairness and impartiality.

Even at the cost of having a lengthy, expensive (for the tax payers) and sometimes ineffective process. History shows that quick and cheap justice is no justice.

Do you see the problem with having closed source software telling cops which person / neighborhood / company investigate first?

Selling to police departments can be quite lucrative. I know someone who sells "forensics" software. I won't say what it does but it's both basic and snake-oil-y at the same time. They are raking in big bucks. It's also not a market many in the startup world thinks about usually.

> California’s cops have become accustomed to the adrenaline rush of data and analysis that Palantir provides, and the more departments that join, the more addictive its products.

It's just a matter of making the software seem and look like like magic. Police departments traditionally are not very tech savvy, so they will readily throw money at stuff they don't understand. Well, not unlike enterprises but it's just more pronounced it seems.

> I won't say what it does but it's both basic and snake-oil-y at the same time. They are raking in big bucks.

On the other hand in this case it seems like Palantir is providing some value-add by nearly-transparently integrating data across departments which would otherwise not be communicating with each other on this scale.

While the article provides a lot of good info, it is a very difficult read due to the structuring.

Here's something which I found strange: "In fact, on two separate occasions, police shot at trucks misidentified as belonging to Dorner, injuring three civilians. “We said [to Palantir], ‘We need an application that can span multiple units within an agency…multiple agencies within a county... and multiple counties within a state,’” says Jackson. “[They developed an application] based on lessons learned from Dorner.” That application, called ClueMan, short for Clue Manager, has just gone live at JRIC."

Makes me wonder - Is software some day going to replace good police work?

Software giant uses opaque pricing and vendor lock in to bamboozle overmatched civil servants. In the annals of government contracting, the fact that their software seems to be useful and work pretty well is notable in itself.

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