SpyVeillance: Palantir Spy Manual For Cops Against People, Military Snoops Same

[grarpamp]

https://www.vice.com/en/article/9kx4z8/revealed-this-is-palantirs-top-secret-user-manual-for-cops
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/6190005-PALANTIR-Guide.html

https://www.flightradar24.com/multiview/2a50bf10,2a50b524


Revealed: This Is Palantir’s Top-Secret User Manual for Cops

Motherboard obtained a Palantir user manual through a public records
request, and it gives unprecedented insight into how the company logs
and tracks individuals.

Palantir is one of the most significant and secretive companies in big
data analysis. The company acts as an information management service
for Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, corporations like JP Morgan
and Airbus, and dozens of other local, state, and federal agencies.
It’s been described by scholars as a “secondary surveillance network,”
since it extensively catalogs and maps interpersonal relationships
between individuals, even those who aren't suspected of a crime.

Palantir software is instrumental to the operations of ICE, which is
planning one of the largest-ever targeted immigration enforcement
raids this weekend on thousands of undocumented families. Activists
argue raids of this scale would be impossible without software like
Palantir. But few people outside the company and its customers know
how its software works or what its specific capabilities and user
interfaces are.

Through a public record request, Motherboard has obtained a user
manual that gives unprecedented insight into Palantir Gotham
(Palantir’s other services, Palantir Foundry, is an enterprise data
platform), which is used by law enforcement agencies like the Northern
California Regional Intelligence Center. The NCRIC serves around 300
communities in northern California and is what is known as a "fusion
center," a Department of Homeland Security intelligence center that
aggregates and investigates information from state, local, and federal
agencies, as well as some private entities, into large databases that
can be searched using software like Palantir.

Fusion centers have become a target of civil liberties groups in part
because they collect and aggregate data from so many different public
and private entities. The US Department of Justice’s Fusion Center
Guidelines list the following as collection targets:
1562941666896-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-102230-AM

Data via US Department of Justice. Chart via Electronic Information
Privacy Center.
1562940862696-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101110-AM

A flow chart that explains how cops can begin to search for records
relating to a single person.

The guide doesn’t just show how Gotham works. It also shows how police
are instructed to use the software. This guide seems to be
specifically made by Palantir for the California law enforcement
because it includes examples specific to California. We don’t know
exactly what information is excluded, or what changes have been made
since the document was first created. The first eight pages that we
received in response to our request is undated, but the remaining
twenty-one pages were copyrighted in 2016. (Palantir did not respond
to multiple requests for comment.)

The Palantir user guide shows that police can start with almost no
information about a person of interest and instantly know extremely
intimate details about their lives. The capabilities are staggering,
according to the guide:

    If police have a name that’s associated with a license plate, they
can use automatic license plate reader data to find out where they’ve
been, and when they’ve been there. This can give a complete account of
where someone has driven over any time period.
    With a name, police can also find a person's email address, phone
numbers, current and previous addresses, bank accounts, social
security number(s), business relationships, family relationships, and
license information like height, weight, and eye color, as long as
it's in the agency's database.
    The software can map out a person's family members and business
associates of a suspect, and theoretically, find the above information
about them, too.

All of this information is aggregated and synthesized in a way that
gives law enforcement nearly omniscient knowledge over any suspect
they decide to surveil.
1562941061041-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101139-AM

An instructional flowchart showing how to search for people tied to a
specific vehicle or license plate.
TERMS TO KNOW

Most of the Palantir guide is written in the company’s technical
language, so it can be hard to parse if you haven't used the software
or aren't familiar with it. Here are the important terms to know:

OBJECTS: Any piece of data. This data could be a name, address, phone
number, bank account number, etc.

HISTOGRAM: A chart. Specifically, a chart that looks like a web and
makes connections between things. This feature kind of looks like the
"detective wall" trope from TV and movies, but since it’s digitized,
it’s much more fast, powerful, and dense.

ALPR/AUTOMATIC LICENSE PLATE READER: A camera that takes pictures of
cars and license plates. They’re usually located at toll booths, or
intersections on heavily trafficked roads, though police also have
mobile versions of them and massive databases of license plate
information. Each city in California has different ALPR privacy
policies about how the information can be used and shared.

HEATMAP: A map that shows how many things there are in a particular
area. A higher concentration of things is usually shown in a darker or
richer color. Palantir advertises Gotham as a tool that transforms
huge amounts of data into actionable maps for police investigations.
1562940921088-Screen-Shot-2019-07-12-at-101333-AM

Search results showing that a single license plate can be tracked
around the state using Automatic License Plate Reader data.
THE DATA

All data points in Palantir are referred to as “Objects,” and these
objects can be practically anything. But they boil down to three main
categories: Entities, Events, and Documents. The possibilities of
these categories are shown below.
Chart of object types

The “Person” Entity Type doesn’t just include a person’s name. It also
includes their emails, bank account numbers, phone numbers, current
and previous addresses, social security number(s), and driver’s
license data such as height, weight, eye color, and date of birth.
(The email address example shown in the user guide is
jbg01 at DownWithTheUS.org.)
Zoomed-in screenshot from the Palantir user guide.

Image: Zoomed-in screenshot from the Palantir user guide.

There’s also “Property Types”—which basically list different traits
that can be attributed to Objects, or data points. The different
Property Types are:

    Label
    Data Source
    Agency
    Address
    Data Range and Location
    Date
    Incident Type
    Geographic Area
    Incident Number
    Incident Disposition
    Incident Status
    Cross Street
    Comments
    Phone Number
    Location Name
    Name
    License Plate
    Gender

The Palantir guide shows that this data is pulled from several
different management systems at once. For instance, a Palantir
screenshot included in the guide show that the NCRIC lets police pull
from the record management systems of the San Mateo and Palo Alto
Police Departments. This exemplifies Palantir's selling point: the
system can synthesize enormous amounts of data from various sources.
Palantir can also make connections across that data, making it
accessible for users in a way that would be extremely time-intensive
to do manually.
Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.

Image: Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of
the user guide.

In order for Palantir to work, it has to be fed data. This can mean
public records like business registries, birth certificates, and
marriage records, or police records like warrants and parole sheets.
Palantir would need other data sources to give police access to
information like emails and bank account numbers.

“Palantir Law Enforcement supports existing case management systems,
evidence management systems, arrest records, warrant data, subpoenaed
data, RMS or other crime-reporting data, Computer Aided Dispatch (CAD)
data, federal repositories, gang intelligence, suspicious activity
reports, Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) data, and unstructured
data such as document repositories and emails,” Palantir’s website
says.

Some data sources—like marriage, divorce, birth, and business
records—also implicate other people that are associated with a person
personally or through family. So when police are investigating a
person, they’re not just collecting a dragnet of emails, phone
numbers, business relationships, travel histories, etc. about one
suspect. They’re also collecting information for people who are
associated with this suspect.
Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of the user guide.

Image: Zoomed-in screenshot of the Palantir Object Explorer section of
the user guide.
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SEARCHES

The guide explains how to make two types of searches: people record
searches, and vehicle record searches.

With the people record search, police can start out with a person’s
name. Police can also input a phone number (with or without area
code), a license plate number, or the dates of cases associated with
that person. The name that the Palantir guide uses as an example is
"John Badguy Smith."

“The results that appear are from LAPD and LASD data sources,” the
Palantir guide says, “and include person records linked to crimes,
citations, and arrests.”
Palantir person search section of the user guide.

With the vehicle record search, police start by entering a license
plate number. The results spit back any and all relevant information
about that vehicle, and Palantir gives police the option of mapping or
visualizing this information.

“The results show if the vehicle appeared in any crimes, arrests,
field interviews, incidents, or citations, across both LAPD and LASD
sources simultaneously,” the Palantir guide says.

TOOLS
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The Palantir user guide also explains how to use three types of tools:
the Histogram tool, the Map tool, and the Object Explorer tool. These
tools all let police graph, map, visualize, and connect dozens of
different types of data points. So, police can chart the relationships
between individuals. Police can click on an individual on this chart
and see everything about them: their email addresses, their bank
account information, their license information, etc. Police can also
put current addresses, previous addresses, locations of a suspected
crime, work locations, family addresses, and travel history (as
captured by ALPR-cameras) on a map.

Histogram Tool

The Histogram tool, as stated by the Palantir guide, helps police find
“correlations” and “trends” between different Objects, or data points.
This can help police decipher a person’s behavior. Police can also
create “Virtual Dossiers” at the end of their investigations, which
centralizes their analysis into a single place.
Palantir Histogram Helper section of the user guide.

Image: Palantir Histogram Helper section of the user guide.

Map Tool

The Map tool lets police do three things: complete “Geosearches,”
create “Heatmaps,” and search an Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR)
database.

Geosearches lets police see Objects, visually, within a certain radius on a map.

“The purple radius, polygon, route, or recent buttons allow you to
draw a shape and search for objects/properties that are within the
search area,” the Palantir guide says.

Heatmaps show the concentration of Objects on a map. Using a Legend
tool, police can adjust the coloring and display of objects on the
map.
Palantir Heatmap Helper section of the user guide.

Image: Palantir Heatmap Helper section of the user guide.

The ALPR search, meanwhile, lets police view license plate data
captured within a certain search radius on the map. Police have to
first enter a search purpose, which can be a “a DR or case number,”
according to the guide. Then, police have to enter the center of their
search radius, and a license plate number they want to search. Police
can, optionally, select a date range they want to search.

The results show images of the license plates as captured, the car
associated with the license plate, time stamps, and the location that
the license plate information was captured (Image of this is near the
top of the article.)

Object Explorer

The Object Explorer is a comprehensive analysis tool that lets police
filter, sort, map, analyze, and export dozens of different data
points. A huge part of the Object Explorer is visualizing data, which
can be done in four main ways: numeric charts, histograms, timelines,
and pie charts. The Palantir guide explains that depending on which
Objects police are analyzing, the appropriate visualization tool may
vary.
Palantir “Timeline” tool in the Object Explorer.

Image: Palantir “Timeline” tool in the Object Explorer.

The document obtained by Motherboard for this story is public and
viewable on DocumentCloud.