The article suggests the opposite: The prosecutor contends that Palantir was a non-factor in the conviction, hence its lack of inclusion in material disclosed to the defense. The reason for the contract getting cancelled was also not confirmed or commented on by the city, the article only mentioned "some" that were "leery" of its use because it could be used to connect gang members to others. This is a very vague wording of any concerns about use of Palantir. The article was very light on content here, using words that indicate trepidation but not connected those loaded terms to any explanation.
From prior stories about Palantir's lack of efficacy outside of well-resources intelligence and military venue, my guess is that lack of efficacy was the cause for the contract going belly up.
I don't see parallel construction here. There's no reason to think that any information in Palantir was inappropriately obtained without a warrant when one should have been required. Without that breach, then Palantir helped generate leads, it didn't result in parallel construction. That's not even what the defense contends in the criminal issue cited in the article: There, they simply maintain that a Brady violation occurred by not disclosing that Palantir was used, or that Palantir showed negative evidence that was favorable to the defendant. I really don't understand where any issue or suspicion of parallel construction arises from the use of Palantir. It's basically a mashup of a social network and CRM with predictive modeling on top.
There's no reason to think it happened either way. But I think there's reasonable suspicion that Palantir might have been involved.
> information in Palantir was inappropriately obtained without a warrant when one should have been required
That's not the only issue, or even the main one. Government investigating and collecting information on private citizens en masse, rather than individuals for cause, is very dangerous. Doing it based on decisions made by Palantir's software developers, seems even worse.
> It's basically a mashup of a social network and CRM with predictive modeling on top.
How do you know how it functions? And wouldn't that describe any government system used for surveilling (and sometimes oppressing) its citizens? The Stasi had the same thing, just with far less powerful tech. Using banal buzzwords doesn't make Palantir or government surveillance any more banal.
These are all reasonable concerns about palantir, but none of them are parallel construction. And I know how palantir functions because there's plenty of information available on it. Heck call their sales team and chat them up about a use case if you want to learn more (it's what i did, about 10 years ago) my point is their gotham product isn't top secret, at one point they even had some sort of demo client.
I'm sure their tech, like any other, can be misused. But parallel construction isnt even hinted at here, its the potential Brady violation that is the issue.
The problem is I see it is not just whether the Palantir evidence was inappropriately obtained - it's also about the refusal to disclose to the defence all the evidence used against them.
If you're OK with "using ubiquitous surveillance as evidence gathering then cherry picking other evidence discovered based on the original evidence set and never needing to disclose in court that you used the original evidence as a starting point" - how can there be checks and balances in place to ensure that original evidence was obtained legally? What's to stop every ambitious/crooked cop from starting every investigation with ‘the fruit of the poisonous tree’?
From prior stories about Palantir's lack of efficacy outside of well-resources intelligence and military venue, my guess is that lack of efficacy was the cause for the contract going belly up.