Did you catch our thread on the expanding reach of US company Palantir into UK public institutions? £91m+ awarded to the controversial Silicon Valley data-analytics outfit across government. Let's take a look at their work with the British Police…

Between 2014-15 Palantir were 1 of 3 companies trialled by Met police to use an algorithm to consolidate crime data “subject to local interpretation” by police officers, along with PredPol and Azavea.

https://t.co/EfxRHbSQsK
This trial was before Data Protection Impact Assessment became a requirement, so it’s not known what information was processed, and it took an FOI from @NoTech4Tyrants to even reveal this.

https://t.co/tv1ymD9IMx
In 2019, the BBC reported that at least 14 constabularies in the UK are known to have employed predictive policing software run by companies like IBM, Microsoft, PredPol, and Palantir.

https://t.co/3d3r30jiud
In the US Palantir predictive policing software has been implemented by a number of police departments, notably in New Orleans and by the LAPD, combining datasets in order to map and track criminal activity, surveilling specific people and neighbourhoods.

https://t.co/epzAApvVFC
Predictive policing has raised a number of concerns. Some fear it reinforces police bias and leads to increased police scrutiny in certain areas based on the racial or ethic prejudices of officers:

https://t.co/U1RcGzkWTg
LAPD worked with Palantir to create “chronic offender scores” for repeat offenders, leading to individuals being policed based on historic small infractions, such as traffic violations or stop and searches. This led to an increase in targeted individuals being stopped in future.
Of concern too is that, for years, many of these programmes operated in secret, often without even local council members being aware of their existence. It appears the same could now be true in the UK.

https://t.co/py1WWDPYru
@allthecitizens found that the Met trial may not be the only time Palantir has been working with UK police. East Northamptonshire rejected our FOI regarding contracts relating to Palantir under the Section 31 ‘law enforcement’ exemption.
This likely refers to a “Transform Police” (T-Police) initiative operated by Northamptonshire, Cheshire, Norfolk, Suffolk Constabularies and the Met, that delivers “intelligence, data integration and situational awareness through Palantir technology”.

https://t.co/0FGZeUbuYt
The initiative seems ostensibly to be a partnership between police forces and tech consultancy Cap Gemini, deploying Palantir technology, “helping intelligence, defence and law enforcement agencies optimize the management and analysis of real data”
Palantir and Cap Gemini make no secret of working with one another, and have done so since at least 2010. But details of their cross-Police initiative wasn’t released under Freedom of Information.

https://t.co/lT6u8VH18Z
It’s unclear how many constabularies have bought Palantir’s IT help. A promotional video for Cap Gemini/Palantir’s T-Police system states “the technology is designed, it’s live, we’re merely adding more customers to the service that we already provide”

https://t.co/4GsVhmEDYk
Palantir are also “retained on previous plan” under the Digital Policing IT Capital Programme 2016-21, although it’s unclear what role they may still have with the Met, and though the archived version of this document is available, it’s been removed from the Met Police website.
Palantir were also reportedly involved in a surveillance project with the Police / City of London in 2012, employed to undertake intelligence gathering during that year’s Olympic Games.

https://t.co/m8eTn1HtA9
Palantir have maintained engagement with high profile members of the force, meeting with them or hosting events between 2018-2019, including with Cressida Dick and Lancashire Asst. Chief Tim Jacques, and with Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) going as far back as 2014
What predictive policing work Palantir has undertaken for UK forces remains unclear, but their US and European work could give an indication of the sort of things we might see implemented.

https://t.co/1ePhwbFba1
Palantir UK built sophisticated software for Danish Intelligence Forces (PET) and Police (POL) in the wake of the 2015 Copenhagen terror attacks. The systems could access OS and police databases, social media data, and included hotspot and pattern analysis, and more.
Whatever the true extent of Palantir’s involvement with British law enforcement is - AI, facial recognition, or predictive policing initiatives - the public should know.

If these are systems designed to keep us safe, why the lack of transparency?

More from Tech

These past few days I've been experimenting with something new that I want to use by myself.

Interestingly, this thread below has been written by that.

Let me show you how it looks like. 👇🏻


When you see localhost up there, you should know that it's truly an experiment! 😀


It's a dead-simple thread writer that will post a series of tweets a.k.a tweetstorm. ⚡️

I've been personally wanting it myself since few months ago, but neglected it intentionally to make sure it's something that I genuinely need.

So why is that important for me? 🙂

I've been a believer of a story. I tell stories all the time, whether it's in the real world or online like this. Our society has moved by that.

If you're interested by stories that move us, read Sapiens!

One of the stories that I've told was from the launch of Poster.

It's been launched multiple times this year, and Twitter has been my go-to place to tell the world about that.

Here comes my frustration.. 😤
Next.js has taken the web dev world by storm

It’s the @reactjs framework devs rave about praising its power, flexibility, and dev experience

Don't feel like you're missing out!

Here's everything you need to know in 10 tweets

Let’s dive in 🧵


Next.js is a @reactjs framework from @vercel

It couples a great dev experience with an opinionated feature set to make it easy to spin up new performant, dynamic web apps

It's used by many high-profile teams like @hulu, @apple, @Nike, & more

https://t.co/whCdm5ytuk


@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike The team at @vercel, formerly Zeit, originally and launched v1 of the framework on Oct 26, 2016 in the pursuit of universal JavaScript apps

Since then, the team & community has grown expotentially, including contributions from giants like @Google

https://t.co/xPPTOtHoKW


@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google In the #jamstack world, Next.js pulled a hefty 58.6% share of framework adoption in 2020

Compared to other popular @reactjs frameworks like Gatsby, which pulled in 12%

*The Next.js stats likely include some SSR, arguably not Jamstack

https://t.co/acNawfcM4z


@vercel @hulu @Apple @Nike @Google The easiest way to get started with a new Next.js app is with Create Next App

Simply run:

yarn create next-app

or

npx create-next-app

You can even start from a git-based template with the -e flag

yarn create next-app -e https://t.co/JMQ87gi1ue

https://t.co/rwKhp7zlys

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