Germany raises red flags about Palantir’s big data dragnet | Hacker News Reader

Germany raises red flags about Palantir’s big data dragnet

wired.com

194 pointsBrajeshwar41 comments

linked letter to share holders by Palantine (https://www.palantir.com/newsroom/letters/letter-to-sharehol...)

: "It has been our experience, however, that some countries, particularly in continental Europe, including Germany, have fallen behind the United States in their willingness and ability to implement enterprise software systems that challenge existing habits and modes of operation. There have been repeated attempts to build replicas of Silicon Valley in continental Europe, in Germany and elsewhere, but the results have been decidedly mixed. We have found that large institutions in the United States have been far more willing to investigate the most significant sources of systemic dysfunction within their organizations, which in the current moment often relate to the ability or rather inability of an institution to metabolize its own data."

Honestly I feel the opposite in this high level description of cultural difference but it is the only rationalisation of the CEO who is very likely pissed off by data protection.

Oh boy, at least they are honest in their arrogance.

Well, Palantir is a glorified spreadsheet provider whose only selling point is access to a ton of data its clients could not have otherwise. Their sales people are pretty good so, kind of the equivalent of the stereotypical IBM or SAP sales rep.

It sounds like people using private Nextcloud servers is throwing a wrench in their machine.

> linked letter to share holders by Palantine

I think of Thiel and Karp that as Palpatine and Vadar too. ;)

I'm Swiss and American. Comparing culture is difficult, but limiting it to willingness to adopt software for large enterprise and adapt the business, I agree with the assessment.

Ironically, the increased calcification of those large enterprise has lead in Europe, especially Germany, in markets where competition is possible, the very fast displacement of large enterprises by startups. E.g. n26

ok but you are agreeing with a company that is enacting mass surveillance using new technology

It seems that "slow" adoption is a feature

no adoption sounds right to me

Weird, I am also mainly contrasting US and Swiss business culture, and I've come to the exact opposite conclusions. In Switzerland, every interaction with any large enterprise can be done entirely on your phone, fast, securely and conveniently.

The SBB, the post office, the banks, the city of Zurich, the tax office - all of them let you do everything online. And unlike the US versions of these things, it actually works!

The only thing you can't do online is vote, and that's probably a good thing.

> The only thing you can't do online is vote

YET. We're working on it :)

Oh I'm aware. I both work in infosec and live in Switzerland, so naturally I've been following the saga quite closely.

The current version is the scytl-developed monstrosity, which will hopefully never be deployed:

1) The developer went out of business

2) People keep finding vulnerabilities in it, like the operator being able to change the votes.

3) Listen: I've been in Security for 20 years and the idea of E-voting is absolutely terrifying to me. It should never, ever, ever happen as long as those systems are developed and operated by humans.

> adopt software for large enterprise and adapt the business

It’s not my area of expertise, but isn’t that kinda what SAP is known to bring?

Edit: formatting

Silicon Valley arose from defense spending.

The integrate large enterprise software systems piece doesn’t jive since there are many enterprise providers in Europe. In Germany there is SAP for example.

The trope that all the innovation comes from Silicon Valley is starting to wear thin.

Having experienced American bureaucracy, I find the claim that US institutions have been "willing to investigate systemic dysfunction" completely hilarious.

I think what Palantir means is that American organizations have been faster to adopt big data and centralize decision-making. Having worked for multiple large US businesses, I am not convinced that this leads to "less dysfunction".

Having a few technocrats with some data make all the decisions centrally is just a reinvention of Planned Economy. It didn't work in the USSR and it doesn't work now.

A plan economy works for smaller organizations, it is very much the norm.

From my experience the most common use of Big Data is to

1. Provide confirmation bias for decision makers to feel more confident and comfortable. This happens in the translation layer from Data to Information, and the data can support several possible points of view depending on what questions are asked of it.

2. Provide small adjustments to someone's existing plan. Maybe someone was planning on building fifty connivance stores in a region, but they found data that local market can actually support eighty so they use the data to justify increasing their budget. Maybe they were planning on selling five types of pepsi in their store, but the data shows they should sell six. This type of adjustment is usually used as an excuse to increase capital expenditure, or provide guidance on how to allocate existing resources.

3. (Most rare) Data is used to provide novel insights that give a large compeitive advantage. This is the "Money Ball" and "Big Short" sort of situation. One thing America is very good at is to provide a compeitive marketplace where a smaller participant has a shot if they are good enough. It's exceedingly rare to see an incumbent use big data in a novel way.

Its kinda within the definition of Big Data, which is that you have too much data to really inspect all of it. this means that the previous approach had to be inverted:

now its necessary to propose a theory, define queries to validate it and then evaluate the results, whereas before you'd take everything in and define a theory from the data set.

the new approach is pretty much a textbook definition of a confirmation bias. But there is no other way to really approach these vast amounts of data, so its become the default.

This shareholder letter operates on the same principle as spam from attorneys of a recently deceased Nigerian prince’s widow.

You make the claim so outrageous that it immediately filters out those who are not completely gullible or desperate to believe. That’s the kind of shareholders Palantir wants.

> some countries, particularly in continental Europe, including Germany, have fallen behind the United States in their willingness and ability to implement enterprise software systems that challenge existing habits and modes of operation.

This is brilliant marketing, positing the USA as a champion leading the vanguard, and the EU as a laggard in the inevitable progress towards Utopia. The reverse is in some ways true; the EU has developed much better data privacy laws, and the USA has significant catching up to do.

Palantir would have formed the core of both the Gestapo's and the STASI's population-monitoring programs, and perhaps Germany has had enough of that kind of thing?

That's more or less it. With the "Volkszählungsurteil" and varios judgements regarding "Rasterfahndung" and later "Schleierfahndung" and "Lauschangriff" our constitutional court constructed some sort of "basic human right to privacy" called "Recht auf informationelle Selbstbestimmung" (right for informational self-determination).

The judgements footed on various articles of our moder (post 1945) constitution and its bill of rights and indirectly in the experiences under NSDAP and SED rule.

While reading the article I couldn't stop thinking that the new partnership with Crisis24, which is not irrelevant in the Konstanz tech scene, has contributed to making Palantir's data collection "less virtual" for the German DPAs.

Pretty sure Germany uses Excel and variety of DBMS's. What do you think makes Palantir any different?

> variety of DBMS's.

This is the key. Germany doesn't have a central citizen database or something like that, but each municipality has a system on their own. Any bad actor can't search through that to discriminate, deport or whatever people. This of course also leads to problems like paying out corona support money to students still isn't completely done etc.

Palantir tries to create an Über-Database.

Large-scale immediate query-ability.

Small correction to the article: it is not „a top constitutional court“ it is THE top constitutional court. The German Bundesverfassungsgericht is the equivalent of the US Supreme Court.

First part yes, second part not quite. The US Supreme Court is the highest court for all legal matters, whereas the BVerfG only hears cases where constitutional matters are involved. In all other cases the branch courts like BGH for criminal and civil cases are the top courts.

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oberster_Gerichtshof_der_Verei...

Maybe we shouldn't be synching our contacts with government accessible cloud services such as Apple, Google, MS etc.

Funny that you chose, of all things possible, the contact list as your example. You can safely assume that competent governments on both sides are aware of most forms of electronic communication, including pstn, email and all major chat services, as well as post, courier and similar services. With cell phone tracking, as well as the extensive video surveillance all over the place, they also have a pretty good idea of face to face communication. If you want to hide a contact from the government you don't disable cloud sync. You use direct radio. Or, if you don't want to attract attention by having said radio, you leave all electronics at home and meet deep in a forest.

Ironically, I wonder if something like lettermail is now more secure.

We do know that the exterior of every single piece of mail handled by the USPS is photographed, documented, and retrievable later[1]; but the content of the envelope seems like it may have some level of protection, if only because of the absurdly costly effort of opening and re-sealing in a way that doesn't reveal tampering.

Throw in some level of cryptography, use cursive (so it's harder to OCR), and use code words, and you probably have something better than e-mail.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mail_Isolation_Control_and_Tra...

In addition to what 'lrem' said: Don't turn off your devices before going to the forest, as, if both persons don't create network traffic for, let's say five hours, then the government could derive that these persons are related. Of course this is not applicable if your threat model is low.

https://archive.is/aabRs

“A court has issued strict limits on how police can pull innocent bystanders into big data investigations”

About time.

Dragnet the dragnets.

Its pretty gross that tech people look up to this company and its founder. We should be doing everything we can to bring them down. This company led by a man who regrets that women got the vote and that apartheid ended in south africa and runs a company that helps governments spy on citizens. He also helped trumps insurrection attempt while readying himself to bail out to new zealand in case whatever sick experiment he had in mind didn’t work out to his advantage. nevermind if the rest of us plebs die.

I don't know any tech people that look up to this company or its founder.

It's just a strange feeling to be browsing LinkedIn and see a job pop up for a company like this. Almost like it's an ad to work for the Nazi party or something. Like do people just click on these, read the description, and apply for the job without a second thought of what it is they actually do?

It's not even like the military or three-letter agencies that can claim to be serving their own country, it's just a for-profit enterprise that will serve any government that hires them.

> it's just a for-profit enterprise that will serve any government that hires them.

Palantir does only work with "Western-aligned" governments, so this isn't quite true.

> Palantir Technologies CEO Alex Karp says that employees unhappy with the company’s mission—or its dealings with Western governments and militaries—should leave. > > “We want people who want to be on the side of the West, making the West a better society,” Karp said on Wednesday at an event for the World Economic Forum, continuing that Palantir “may not be your cup of tea.”

https://fortune.com/2023/01/19/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-world-...

Fair enough, although a lot of that isn't really their choice. They are a US based company, they aren't going to be able to sell this stuff to Russia and China. And if they were there, they wouldn't be able to sell to the US.

"Western-aligned" isn't completely up to the company to define, but it sure is a completely flexible term. Whether a country like Saudi Arabia or Turkey is "Western-aligned" seems open to interpretation and changes with the geopolitical winds.

I don't want to be "that guy", but is this the same Germany that arrests people over social media posts because of "hate speech"? It's the first thing that popped into my head after reading the headline.

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/23/technology/germany-intern...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech_laws_by_country#Ge...

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

One has to take into account the historical and cultural background of such laws. The analysis of public and personal data by the government in a massive scale was also part of that cultural and historical background.

Yea, for their ancestors may have once killed millions. And that this ancestor ideology is not to be revived/resurrected in order for their country to not kill millions more. When you drink bleach and feel bad, you don't drink it again, yes? Then, it follows, you have to take precautions. Not everyone should follow an American understanding of things, in this case, the First Amendment.

Amazing how American Freedom™ doesn't extend to self-determination.

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