In 2006 , then - New York City city manager Michael Bloomberg issued an administrator orderestablishingthe Office of Special Enforcement , a citywide agency responsible for enforce “ quality of life ” regulations — a unfixed , ideologically charged concept that refer to anything from euphony venues with too many noise charge to nightclubs that facilitate prostitution to decrepit structure that baffle a fervidness hazard .
That office expand the work of a 40 - year - onetime means , the Office of Midtown Enforcement , that was essential in create Midtown and Times Square the shiny commercial hubs they are today , and created the substitution class for how metropolis federal agency “ address take and combat adverse conditions … that threaten public base hit , community livability and belongings value and can lead to serious criminal offence , ” Bloomberg ’s parliamentary procedure read . That effort “ should be continued and implemented on a Citywide basis to assure that more communities in the City can harvest the benefit of this attack . ”
To do that , New York City enlisted the CIA - backed information analysis firm Palantir Technologies . In December , 2011 , the city allow Palantirthe first of at least five contracts , in the end add up to more than $ 2.5 million , according to a revue of public disc obtained by Gizmodo . Palantir ’s software has since become a centerpiece of New York ’s delegacy to improve “ residential area livability and property values”—that is to say , quality of biography .
Illustration: Jim Cooke, Photo: Stephan Guarch, Shutterstock
When Bill de Blasio assume office in 2014 , he double over down , and give Palantir $ 907,413 for 24 “ Gotham ” waiter sum and licence for the Department of Finance . Later that same year , the Citypaid $ 20,000 to offer 10 inspectorsfrom the Office of Special Enforcement ( OSE ) with Palantir ’s peregrine technology , connect them to everything the city knows about every place within it . The tech has been used , among other applications , to break down on illegal Airbnb rental . “ Thirty percent more work with the same exact stave , ” Elan Parra , the place ’s acting film director , secernate WNYCin 2015 . “ I suppose perhaps you could call it Moneyball for quality of liveliness violations . ”
Colorado - ground in 2004 by Peter Thiel and Alex Karp , Palantir ’s intimate workings remain shrouded in concealment . But give what we do recognize , the table service Palantir leave to node appear unproblematic : entity like New York City ( or Coca - Cola , or BP , or the US Marines ) draw upon and bring out an unimaginable amount of datum every twenty-four hours . Palantir ’s platform , in the company ’s own words , “ enable organizations to incorporate disparate data sets and carry fat , multifaceted analytic thinking across the entire range of a function of data . ” It ’s essentially a high up - powered version of Excel , rendering an incomprehensible amount of selective information legible , parsable , and advanced for analysis .
respect in public at $ 20 billion ( and in private at just under $ 13 billion ) , Palantir reportedly gather up only $ 420 million in cash from the $ 1.7 billion in “ bookings ” that it had claim last class . Arecent BuzzFeed News investigationrevealed that many of the company ’s most consistent clients are entities that can not afford to pay its mellow fees — which can surmount $ 1 million per calendar month — include a slew of federal agencies that , since 2007 , have pay the company about$120 million .
NYC’s first purchase order to Palantir Technologies, for 32 “perpetual server core licenses”
In its first purchase order to Palantir , New York City ’s Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications ( DOITT ) paid $ 1.2 million for 32 eternal waiter core licenses , at $ 37,500 each . ( A “ perpetual server meat license ” imply the city is licensed to use the Palantir software in sempiternity . ) The licenses purchased under that contract bridge , according to a document provided by the Department of Contract Services , were to be used by the Financial Intelligence Center , part ofa Bloomberg initiative begun in 2011to prosecute mortgage fraud .
Just a few calendar month later on , in May 2012 , Palantir state a statement of piece of work and a quote for a six - calendar month buffer political program with the Financial Intelligence Center and the Department of Finance ’s Audit Division . The plan would identify businesses and mortal avoiding or wangle their taxes : “ Palantir engineers will desegregate relevant data point sets and do search , psychoanalysis , and other investigation activity . ”
The deal went through in April 2013 . That same month , Bloomberg create the Mayor ’s Office of Data Analytics ( MODA)by executive order . In June , the city paid $ 236,906 for eight more Palantir “ Cloud ” licenses , with six months of support from the ship’s company ’s technicians .
In December 2013 , MODA issued its first annual story , lauding the Department of Finance ’s use of Palantir , which enabled it “ to better realize tax fraud in NYC . ” The New York City Sheriff ’s Office — a naval division of the Department of Finance — was using the engineering science to tail illegal fag importing rings and “ developing their own in - house intelligence activity squad , ” principal analytics officer Michael Flowers wrote . The report also revealed a pilot project in which MODA and OSE , using Palantir , “ develop a lozenge software that allows inspectors in the line of business to easily see everything that the City knows about a cave in location . ”
Palantir key what the wandering broadcast would look like in a September 2013 statement of body of work . “ Palantir Mobile claim the capabilities of the Palantir Platform out of the endeavor and into the field of operations , where mobile user can call for information in real time and relay it back to the Mayor ’s Office ( headquarters ) for deeper analysis , ” the document reads . In so doing , inspectors from the Office of Special Enforcement purchase “ information from data sources across the urban center to retain building owners and constitution responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the City ’s lineament of life . ”
That information is conserve by something call “ DataBridge , ” a repository of data point from 50 source belonging to “ roughly 20 federal agency and external organizations . ” There are nine datasets — updated every night — that are integrate and managed using Palantir , a mayoral spokesperson evidence Gizmodo : “ This is how we regulate and maintain oversight for all admittance and privateness issues . ” The City Hall functionary discussed the metropolis ’s use of the data - excavation technology on background , and declined to provide the full tilt of data rootage or describe what is contained in the datasets .
All city agencies have access code to DataBridge , but protocols regulate their access . “ If they are requesting use of data that they are not providing themselves , they have to get specific permission to apply specific data within Databridge , and will not be able to get at anything beyond that , ” the spokesperson wrote in an e-mail . “ Any data shared with Databridge has a designated point someone or federal agency who needs to give explicit permission before that data is used , often requiring in - depth examination of that exercise before permission is grant . ” The mayoral spokesperson could not clarify how this settle with the “ lozenge software that allows inspectors in the field to easily see everything that the City knows about a given location , ” and did not provide an answer in multiple subsequent queries . Palantir also did not retort multiple request for comment .
A DataBridge demo onPalantir ’s YouTube channelshows how the applied science can be used to better interpret which building are more vulnerable to flak in the wintertime . But consolidate “ everything that the City know about a given placement ” into one place also raises questions about privacy and civil liberties — questions Palantir has tried to displace witha white paper post on its website . The document outlines a variety of “ admittance restriction ” that law enforcement agencies can choose from , and in 2014 the New York Times cover that Palantir ’s safeguard let in “ audit trails ” that third - political party investigator can brush up . These safeguards and restrictions are not compulsory .
The NYPD — whose record on secrecy and civil libertiesincludes broad monitoring of Moslem communities without warrants or specific threats — also apply Palantir . ( Richard Falkenrath , a former deputy commissioner of counterterrorism in the section , order soduring a 2010 presentation at the party . ) According to City Hall , however , “ There are no members of the NYPD and no prosecutors utilizing the Databridge system . ” A disk petition from Gizmodo for the department ’s contract with the companionship was rejected on the earth that revelation would constitute an baseless invasion of personal privacy and would reveal “ non - routine technique and procedure . ” The department did not respond to subsequent requests for comment .
Palantir is name for the palantíri , from J.R.R. Tolkien ’s Lord of the Rings series — see - stones that grant one to snoop on others across great length ( and be spied upon , in routine ) . Thiel — who , incidentally , isbankrolling a number of lawsuitsagainst Gawker Media , the former parent fellowship of Gizmodo — invested $ 40 million of his own money in the caller , which he saw as allow a bulwark against secrecy invasion . “ It was a charge - tailor company,”he told Forbes in 2013 . “ I defined the problem as involve to boil down act of terrorism while preserve civil liberty . ”
As Palantir expands beyond the world of law enforcement and national security , its wallop on our civil liberties — and whether strict safeguard are enact to prevent overreach — remain to be visualize . As Jay Stanley , a senior insurance policy psychoanalyst at the ACLU , pointed out last year , “ Government security agencies and others using data for “ ‘ risk judgement ’ purposes are endeavor to decide who should be blacklisted , scrutinize , put under secrecy - invading investigatory microscope , or otherwise limited in their freedom and opportunity . ”
A city agency , like New York ’s Office of Special Enforcement , could hypothetically use Palantir ’s technology for purposes that go far beyond its authorization . The agency purports to improve people ’s quality of life story , crack down on building and fire code violation , for case , or identifying illegal hotel in the form of Airbnb hosts abusing the service . ( Ironically , Thiel is also an investor in Airbnb . ) Such investigations often direct to fines levied against property owners , and sometimes evictions .
But , as the New York Daily News and ProPublica describe earlier this year , the 1977 “ nuisance abatement ” law that was passed to authorise the Office of Midtown Enforcement ’s pursuance of sexual practice - have-to doe with businesses in Times Square has metastasized over the last three decades , amended to let in everything from the utilization of unlicensed security guards to selling semisynthetic marijuana and fake IDs . In 1995 , NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton called nuisance respite “ the most powerful civil tool usable ” in Broken Windows policing : In the year prior , the police section had brought 214 nuisance reprieve case ; in 2013 , it brought 1,082 — more than three quarter of them in communities where the universe is 80 per centum or more people of colour .
City Hall did not respond to Gizmodo ’s queries asking for further clarification on how OSE in reality utilize Palantir , or what part Palantir has in regulating and maintain any kind of oversight of how its technology is used . Palantir still manages the host that host data point generated and interpreted by the city , but it ’s undecipherable what kind of safe-conduct there are preclude Palantir from looking at what all that data .
A nightmare scenario of an Office of Special Enforcement inspector run rogue , stalking a fellow or creditor or lover with Palantir ’s nomadic technology , is for sure conceivable . But the potential for that form of outright abuse is less worrisome than the ways in which Palantir ’s tech is already being used . The city ’s embrace of Palantir , outside of law enforcement , has quietly ushered in an era of polite surveillance so ubiquitous as to be invisible .
“ It seems like the trickling down of ‘ Big datum ’ approaches from engage material , meaning error into the enforcement of petty rule and regulations , ” Stanley told Gizmodo . “ Maybe it ’s just enabling good direction , but it seems like there is substantial voltage for selective enforcement . If the authorities have enough data about you , they can always bump something you ’ve done wrong . ”
New York CityPeter ThielSurveillanceTimes Square
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