Background Brief
Based on what Ive seen of their corporate positioning, Palantir seem to be invested in the idea that they are one of the good guys. They claim to offer technology which better distinguishes and discriminates amongst information acquired via mass-surveillance, and to permit the tagging of this information so that it is accessible only to those with the appropriate clearance and jurisdiction.
dedicated to working for the common good and doing whats right
That deeply felt commitment has been clear since the companys inception and is evident in the companys roster of advisors, leaders, engineers, and technology experts.
White Paper: Privacy and Civil Liberties are in Palantirs DNA
Dam it feels good to be a gangsta...
Matthew Steckman
(worthwhile background: positioned as trying to make a bad system better
Theyre also pretty high profile, with a market capitalisation of over $1 billion (mostly courtesy of PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel) - ie, theyre a little more serious than the HBGary fools.
All of which makes it likely that theyre going to be looking to isolate Steckman, emphasising the disparity between their corporate values and his conduct. Obviously, having THEIR emails would make it easier to determine just how much upper management knew about his work without having to actually ask them only to receive the standard incredulous insistence of virtue. Either way, probing this is likely to give some insight into the scale of the threat as they presently perceive it.
On that threat, I think the safest thing to say at the moment is that nobody is quite sure where all of this is going to end up. Equally safe is that whatever we might be able to reduce the Anonymous position to, it will likely be directly contrary to Palantir and their ilk they want this to be a momentary blip, we want it to be the chink that proves the undoing of this sick machine weve all ended up serving and despising. The following is intended to outline some of the bigger picture factors in the form of some choice extracts from authoritative sources. This will hopefully yield insights into particular pressure points, fissures and weaknesses to be exploited.
Privatization and the Federal Government: An Introduction
December 28, 2006 Kevin R. Kosar Congressional Reporting Service
Furthermore, the movement of an activity from the governmental sector to the private sector, or vice versa, has significant ramifications. Most obviously, the behavior of the entity carrying out the task will differ because each sector has different incentives and constraints. One public administration scholar has suggested that the incentives amount to this: a government entity may do only what the law permits and prescribes; a private entity may do whatever the law does not forbid.
Government agencies, unlike private firms, usually operate under complex accountability hierarchies that include multiple and even conflicting goals. Federal agencies, for example, are subject to the corpus of federal management laws. These laws serve as means for keeping executive branch agencies accountable to Congress, the President, and the public. They also embody principles of democratic justice, such as the allowance for public participation and government transparency.
Thus, in shifting an activity from the governmental to the private sector, the nature of government oversight is transformed. As the components of government provision of goods and services are privatized, the jurisdiction of federal management laws, Congress, the President, and the courts is reduced.
Privatizations Pretensions
Jon D. Michaels
[77:717 2010] The University of Chicago Law Review
Workarounds provide outsourcing agencies with the means of accomplishing distinct policy goals thatbut for the pretext of technocratic privatizationwould either be legally unattainable or much more difficult to realize.
Consider the following scenario:
Exploiting Legal-Status Differentials. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) would like to establish a data mining operation to gather intelligence on potential terrorist threats. Bristling under stringent federal privacy laws imposed on government officialslaws that inhibit DHSs ability to collect and analyze personal information without court authorizationpolicymakers turn to private contractors. Contractors, like most other private individuals, are largely beyond the scope of these federal laws. For the most part, these laws were enacted well before contractors were hired with great regularity to assist with law enforcement and counterterrorism initiatives. Now, in an era where outsourcing is the norm, DHS may use the statutes narrowness to its advantage and award government contracts to the unencumbered private data brokers. The contractors can then acquire the information more liberally on their own and submit raw data or synthesized intelligence to the government. DHS thus gets the benefit of more sweeping, intrusive searches than would otherwise be permitted of government officials, short of their first obtaining warrants or securing legislative change.
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and
fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Thirteenth session
A/HRC/13/37 28 December 2009
[20]States that previously lacked constitutional or statutory safeguards have been able to radically transform their surveillance powers with few restrictions. In countries that have constitutional and legal safeguards, Governments have endangered the protection of the right to privacy by not extending these safeguards to their cooperation with third countries and private actors, or by placing surveillance systems beyond the jurisdiction of their constitutions.
[41]The Special Rapporteur notes that since September 2001 there has been a trend towards outsourcing the collection of intelligence to private contractors... [raising concerns about] lack of proper training, the introduction of a profit motive into situations which are prone to human rights violations, and the often questionable prospect that such contractors will be subject to judicial and parliamentary accountability mechanisms
Report of the Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights and fundamental freedoms while countering terrorism, Martin Scheinin
HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL Tenth session
A/HRC/10/3 4 February 2009
B. Recommendations
For legislative assemblies
65. The Special Rapporteur recommends that any interference with the right to privacy, family, home or correspondence by an intelligence agency should be authorized by provisions of law that are particularly precise, proportionate to the security threat, and offer effective guarantees against abuse. States should ensure that competent authorities apply less intrusive investigation methods than special investigation techniques if such methods enable a terrorist offence to be detected, prevented or prosecuted with adequate effectiveness. Decision-making authority should be layered so that the greater the invasion of privacy, the higher the level of necessary authorization. Furthermore, in order to safeguard against the arbitrary use of special investigative techniques and violations of human rights, the use of special investigative techniques by the intelligence agencies must be subject to appropriate supervision and review.
66. There should be a domestic legal basis for the storage and use of data by intelligence and security services, which is foreseeable as to its effects and subject to scrutiny in the public interest. The law should also provide for effective controls on how long information may be retained, the use to which it may be put, and who may have access to it, and ensure compliance with international data protection principles in the handling of information. There should be audit processes, which include external independent personnel, to ensure that such rules are adhered to.
67. The Special Rapporteur also recommends the adoption of legislation that clarifies the rights, responsibilities, and liability of private companies in submitting data to government agencies.
For the executive power
71. The executive should have effective powers of control, provided for in law, over the intelligence agencies and have adequate information about their actions in order to be able to effectively exercise control over them. The minister responsible for the intelligence and security services should therefore have the right to approve matters of political sensitivity (such as cooperation with agencies from other countries) or undertakings that affect fundamental rights (such as the approval of special investigative powers, whether or not additional external approval is required from a judge).