from the beat-it,-data-points dept
Palantir has never had a great reputation. Even before it teamed up with Trump to create a massive, abusable database of American residents’ information, it was working with forward-looking cop shops, that wanted similar massive, abusable databases of their own, even if those were limited to surveilling people in their own jurisdictions.
The company is never going to gather much praise from the press, so it will have to content itself with counting the billions it’s bringing in from government contracts. Oh, and chasing journalists it doesn’t like out of tech conferences that are otherwise open to the public. Here’s Caroline Haskins, reporting for Wired about four ejections made by Palantir employees, one of which was her own.
Prior to being kicked out of Palantir’s booth, the WIRED journalist, who is also the author of this article, was taking photos, videos, and written notes during software demos of Palantir FedStart partners, which use the company’s cloud systems to get certified for government work. The booth’s walls had phrases like “REAWAKEN THE GIANT” and “DON’T GIVE UP THE SHIP!” printed on the outside. When the reporter briefly stepped away from the booth and attempted to re-enter, she was stopped by Eliano Younes, Palantir’s head of strategic engagement, who said that WIRED was not allowed to be there. The reporter asked why, and Younes repeated himself, adding that if WIRED tried to return, he would call the police.
Younes has since tried to justify his actions. A lengthy XTwitter screed claims the journalists have only themselves to blame for their ejections because [scrolls scrolls scrolls scrolls] their coverage of Palantir wasn’t flattering enough and/or this one time a reporter was rude during a press conference.
Apparently this is all the justification Younes needed to make Palantir look even more thin-skinned and evil than it already appears to be. First, Younes personally went after Haskins. Then he sent consecutive sets of goons to toss out three other tech reporters.
Later that day, Palantir had conference security remove at least three other journalists—Jack Poulson, writer of the All-Source Intelligence Substack; Max Blumenthal, who writes and publishes The Grayzone; and Jessica Le Masurier, a reporter at France 24—from the conference hall, Poulson says. The reporters were later able to reenter the hall, Poulson adds.
To be fair to the security guards, they weren’t actually goons. I mean, they did eject the reporters but apparently allowed them back in after a “friendly” conversation with the three ejectees, asking them only to “respect any requests from attendees” (but, importantly, not vendors) to stop filming them.
Younes also took time to rebut a claim no one ever made during his extended follow-up to his ejections of multiple reporters from an open-to-the-public tech expo.
On Tuesday, Palantir posted on X claiming the Times article was “blatantly untrue” and said that the company “never collects data to unlawfully surveil Americans.” The Times article did not claim that Palantir buys or collects its own data, though it’s a common misconception that the company does so.
Much like other tech companies that have made themselves pariahs, denying claims no one made and ejecting reporters you don’t like isn’t going to do anything to alter public perception… at least not in the direction Palantir would prefer. If this is the stance Palantir wants to take in response to critical reporting, it’s never going to be the swaggering badass it thinks it is. It will just be another petulant tech company that’s too thin-skinned to absorb the criticism its questionable actions will always generate.
Filed Under: caroline haskins, jack poulson, jessica le masurier, max blumenthal, trump administration
Companies: palantir
