Germany raises red flags about Palantir’s big data dragnet

https://www.wired.com/story/palantir-germany-gotham-dragnet/

by Brajeshwar • 3 years ago

194 41 3 years ago

haspoken• 3 years ago

jwildeboer• 3 years ago

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.

davidktr• 3 years ago

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...

snowpid• 3 years ago

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.

hef19898• 3 years ago

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.

kornhole2• 3 years ago

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

webdoodle• 3 years ago

linked letter to share holders by Palantine

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

eyphka• 3 years ago

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

mistrial9• 3 years ago

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

t8sr3• 3 years ago

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.

anotherboffin• 3 years ago

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

theGnuMe• 3 years ago

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.

t8sr3• 3 years ago

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.

toxik• 3 years ago

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

htag• 3 years ago

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.

pavlov• 3 years ago

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.

dtgriscom• 3 years ago

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.

kornhole2• 3 years ago

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

lrem• 3 years ago

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.

tenpies• 3 years ago

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...

nervysnail2• 3 years ago

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.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

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?

omnibrain• 3 years ago

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.

tg180• 3 years ago

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.

jonnybgood• 3 years ago

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

johannes1234321• 3 years ago

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.

mclightning• 3 years ago

Large-scale immediate query-ability.

jackmott• 3 years ago

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.

itronitron• 3 years ago

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

morpheuskafka2• 3 years ago

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.

TotempaaltJ• 3 years ago

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-...

zo1• 3 years ago

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

elkos• 3 years ago

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.

nervysnail2• 3 years ago

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.

Smoosh• 3 years ago

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

dean177• 3 years ago

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

LightDub• 3 years ago

About time.

Dragnet the dragnets.

Germany raises red flags about Palantir’s big data dragnet

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