Palantir Dropped by Berkeley Privacy Conference After Complaints
Palantir’s rapport with the Privacy Law Scholars Conference since 2011 became untenable in America’s divisive political milieu.
(Bloomberg) -- An influential digital privacy group affiliated with the University of California, Berkeley, said it severed financial ties with Palantir Technologies Inc., the controversial data-mining company co-founded by Peter Thiel.
Palantir had been a sponsor of the Privacy Law Scholars Conference since 2011, but the relationship became untenable in America’s divisive political environment. Attendees of the annual convention, which took place last week, voiced serious opposition to affiliations with Palantir, said Chris Hoofnagle, an organizer of the event and a law professor at Berkeley. Critics of the company cite its involvement in military and police surveillance, along with helping enforce President Donald Trump‘s family separation policy on the southern border.
Now in its 12th year, the Privacy Law Scholars Conference brings together hundreds of experts from around the world to discuss societal and business trends and workshop research with peers. It’s jointly organized by the law schools at Berkeley and George Washington University. Topics last week included ways to make computer algorithms more transparent and the ethical implications of attempting to use data to predict future events.
Other sponsors include Alphabet Inc.’s Google and Microsoft Corp., both of which have been chastised in the past for privacy lapses and contentious government projects. Conference organizers praised Palantir in a letter to participants for its hands-off approach to content at the event but suggested the company’s very presence at the gathering of academics was a problem. A spokeswoman for Palantir didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Palantir flew mostly under the radar for much of the 15 years since Thiel helped start the company. An arm of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency was an early backer of the technology, which seeks to make sense of large amounts of complex data and present analysis in the form of colorful charts and graphics. The software is used by numerous government agencies, including the Defense Department, Homeland Security and the Internal Revenue Service.
The company’s prominence rose sharply in 2016 after Thiel stepped up to aid Trump in his campaign for president. Alex Karp, another Palantir founder and the chief executive officer, recently dismissed concerns about his company’s government work and said others in Silicon Valley should do more to assist the country with its defense needs. Palantir is expected to pursue an initial public offering in 2020, Bloomberg reported last month.
One group that has helped draw attention to Palantir’s moral quandaries is Mijente. The Latino advocacy group staged protests during the last year at Palantir’s headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and at the Burning Man festival in Nevada, which draws a large contingent of workers from the tech industry. In the days leading up to the privacy conference in Berkeley, Mijente sent a letter to the organizers urging them to reject Palantir’s money. Hundreds of legal scholars, authors and activists signed it, including Google’s Meredith Whittaker and Terry Winograd, a Stanford University computer science professor and former adviser to Alphabet CEO Larry Page.
“People are being deported; children are being caged; and Palantir is knowingly facilitating these deeds,” said Jacinta Gonzalez, a representative for Mijente. “Those who care about human rights must not only push back on the governments that violate them but also the companies that enable them.”
Hoofnagle, the event organizer from Berkeley, said protesters declined his invitation to attend the conference and that their demonstration didn’t play into the decision to part with Palantir.
To contact the reporter on this story: Lizette Chapman in San Francisco at lchapman19@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Mark Milian at mmilian@bloomberg.net, Anne VanderMey
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