Palantir Technologies
 Palantir Technologies        | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Formation | 2004 |
| Founder | •  Peter Thiel•  Alex Karp• Joe Lonsdale • Stephen Cohen (entrepreneur) • Nathan Gettings |
| Headquarters | Palo Alto, California |
| Type | commercial |
| Staff | 1,500 |
| Interest of | Barrett Brown |
| Member of | Council on Foreign Relations/Corporate Members, WEF/Strategic Partners |
Palantir Technologies is a software company with a reputation for secrecy[1] which focuses on mass surveillance and data analysis. It is closely connected to the MICC; "among the list of past and current Palantir clients are the NSA, CIA, Department of Homeland Security and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement — which directly uses its technology to fuel its controversial raids on undocument[ed] workers."[2]
Contents
Activities
Palantir has been called "Silicon Valley's Most Secretive Company".[3] and the "War on Terror's Secret Weapon".[4] "Founded in 2004 by Peter Thiel and some fellow PayPal alumni, Palantir cut its teeth working for the Pentagon and the CIA in Afghanistan and Iraq. The company’s engineers and products don’t do any spying themselves; they’re more like a spy’s brain, collecting and analyzing information that’s fed in from the hands, eyes, nose, and ears. The software combs through disparate data sources—financial documents, airline reservations, cellphone records, social media postings—and searches for connections that human analysts might miss. It then presents the linkages in colorful, easy-to-interpret graphics that look like spider webs."[5]
Palantir helped create the visual mapping software for XKeyscore, an NSA hacking tool that was disclosed by Edward Snowden.[6]
Ownership
As of December 2014, Peter Thiel was Palantir's largest shareholder.[7]
Military contracts
In 2018, Palantir won a $876 million contract from the US Army.[8]
Cambridge Analytica
On 27 March 2018, Christopher Wylie told a House of Commons select committee that Palantir had worked with Cambridge Analytica, although there “was not an official contract between Palantir and Cambridge Analytica, but there were Palantir staff that would come into the office and work on that data, and helped build the models we were working on.”[9]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Civil Liberty Vanishes | blog post | 6 May 2020 | Craig Murray | "Serious questions have to be asked about why the UK government has developed its own unique app, universally criticised for its permanent central data collection and ability to identify individuals from their unique codes. That this is overseen by NHSX CEO Matthew Gould who held all those secret meetings with Liam Fox and Adam Werritty, including with Mossad, frankly stinks." |
References
- ↑ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/pa7bkn/these-videos-show-how-palantir-tracks-leakers-protesters-and-prisoners
- ↑ https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/gy4awq/how-palantirs-spy-tool-for-cops-works
- ↑ https://www.buzzfeed.com/williamalden/inside-palantir-silicon-valleys-most-secretive-company
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2011-11-22/palantir-the-war-on-terrors-secret-weapon
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/
- ↑ https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/peter-thiels-palantir-allegedly-helped-nsa-spy-programme-xkeyscore-new-snowden-documents-reveal-1608147
- ↑ http://www.forbes.com/sites/ryanmac/2014/12/11/palantir-aiming-to-raise-400-million-in-new-round/
- ↑ https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-03-09/peter-thiel-s-palantir-wins-876-million-u-s-army-contract
- ↑ "Palantir worked with Cambridge Analytica on the Facebook data it acquired, whistleblower alleges"
