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(June 7, 2013) - The UK’s electronic eavesdropping and security agency, GCHQ, has been secretly gathering intelligence from the world’s biggest internet companies through a covertly run operation set up by America’s top spy agency, documents obtained by the Guardian reveal. The details of GCHQ’s use of Prism are set out in documents prepared for senior analysts working at America’s National Security Agency, the biggest eavesdropping organisation in the world. Dated April this year, the papers describe the remarkable scope of a previously undisclosed “snooping” operation which gave the NSA and the FBI easy access to the systems of nine...

As controversy rises around deportations underway across the U.S., a new report says Palantir, the secretive Palo Alto security firm co-founded by Peter Thiel, has built “the engine for Donald Trump’s deportation machine.” Trump has brought in new policies directing authorities to ramp up arrests and deportation of people in the U.S. illegally. And Palantir, valued at $20 billion, is key to that effort, according to a report published March 2. The company did not respond immediately to a request for comment. In 2014, Palantir won a $41 million contract to build and maintain an intelligence system called Investigative Case...

Peter Thiel, the Silicon Valley billionaire and outspoken Donald Trump supporter, is considering a 2018 bid for California governor, according to three Republicans familiar with his thinking. Thiel, who co-founded PayPal and was an early investor in Facebook, has been discussing a prospective bid with a small circle of advisers, including Rob Morrow, who has emerged as his political consigliere. Morrow has worked at Clarium Capital, the San Francisco-based investment management firm and hedge fund that Thiel started. Those who have been in t

Steve KovachJanuary 12, 2017 Silicon Valley investor and Donald Trump transition-team member Peter Thiel says Apple is past its peak. Here's what he said in a Q&A with Maureen Dowd of The New York Times when he was asked to confirm or deny that "the age of Apple is over": "Confirm. We know what a smartphone looks like and does. It's not the fault of Tim Cook, but it's not an area where there will be any more innovation." Thiel is best known in Silicon Valley for his early investment in Facebook.(snip)

In a wide-ranging interview with the New York Times’ Maureen Dowd on Wednesday, billionaire tech giant Peter Thiel defended his support of President-Elect Donald Trump and offered some characteristically esoteric opinions on everything from Meryl Streep to “Star Wars.” To a question noting that “President Obama had eight years without any ethical shadiness,” Thiel replied, “But there’s a point where no corruption can be a bad thing. It can mean that things are too boring.”

This is a remarkable speech-and I haven't even listened to 20 minutes of it. I don't know why this man isn't Trump's chief spokesman.

The primetime airing of remarks of billionaire technology entrepreneur Peter Thiel at the Republican National Convention was no accident. Thiel was given a starring role at the convention to make some things clear. That although lip service may be paid in the party platform to traditional, biblical values and opposition to gay marriage, this is really no longer what the GOP is about. Thiel brought his credentials as a high-tech billionaire to the stage to announce to the world that he is gay. In this, those organizing the convention told the world that, despite what the platform says, Thiel represents...

The final night of the Republican National Convention was as confusing and incoherent as it was disturbing. Before Donald Trump brought forward his chilling imitation of history’s greatest fascists, Ivanka Trump and Peter Thiel made bizarre plays for the votes of women and LGBT people. Ivanka Trump riffed on issues like equal pay and affordable childcare, which are typically Democratic issues. Thiel announced that he’s “proud to be gay” to wild applause from a roomful of people who are the very base that voted against the rights and dignity of LGBT people, over and over again. “This is a distraction...

A bigger problem than Mr. Trump’s policy ideas was his tone. Though Silicon Valley has well-known problems with diversity in its work force, people here pride themselves on a kind of militant open-mindedness. It is the kind of place that will severely punish any deviations from accepted schools of thought...

Facebook Inc is considering incorporating most of its 1 billion-plus members’ profile photos into its growing facial recognition database, expanding the scope of the social network’s controversial technology. The possible move, which Facebook revealed in an update to its data use policy on Thursday, is intended to improve the performance of its “Tag Suggest” feature. The feature uses facial recognition technology to speed up the process of labeling or “tagging” friends and acquaintances who appear in photos posted on the network. … The changes would come at a time when Facebook and other Internet companies’ privacy practices are under scrutiny,...

The National Security Agency paid millions of dollars to cover the costs of major internet companies involved in the Prism surveillance program after a court ruled that some of the agency's activities were unconstitutional, according to top-secret material passed to the Guardian. The technology companies, which the NSA says includes Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Facebook, incurred the costs to meet new certification demands in the wake of the ruling from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court. The October 2011 judgment, which was declassified on Wednesday by the Obama administration, found that the NSA's inability to separate purely domestic communications from...

“PRISM” is the government’s name for a program that uses technology from Palantir. Palantir is a Silicon Valley start-up that’s now valued at well over $1B, that focuses on data analysis for the government. Here’s how Palantir describes themselves: “We build software that allows organizations to make sense of massive amounts of disparate data. We solve the technical problems, so they can solve the human ones. Combating terrorism. Prosecuting crimes. Fighting fraud. Eliminating waste. From Silicon Valley to your doorstep, we deploy our data fusion platforms against the hardest problems we can find, wherever we are needed most.” http://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/

Since rumors began to spread that a startup called Palantir helped to kill Osama bin Laden, Alex Karp hasn’t had much time to himself. On one sun-baked July morning in Silicon Valley Palantir’s lean 45-year-old chief executive, with a top-heavy mop of frazzled hair, hikes the grassy hills around Stanford University’s massive satellite antennae known as the Dish, a favorite meditative pastime. But his solitude is disturbed somewhat by “Mike,” an ex-Marine–silent, 6 foot 1, 270 pounds of mostly pectoral muscle–who trails him everywhere he goes. Even on the suburban streets of Palo Alto, steps from Palantir’s headquarters, the bodyguard...

And guess where they’re located? That’s right: Facebook’s former building.I couldn’t make it up if I tried.Via: Bloomberg:An organization like the CIA or FBI can have thousands of different databases, each with its own quirks: financial records, DNA samples, sound samples, video clips, maps, floor plans, human intelligence reports from all over the world. Gluing all that into a coherent whole can take years. Even if that system comes together, it will struggle to handle different types of data—sales records on a spreadsheet, say, plus video surveillance images. What Palantir (pronounced Pal-an-TEER) does, says Avivah Litan, an analyst at Gartner...

Posted in ubiwar Tagged intelligence, terrorism SNIPPET: "Friends of this blog and others, Palantir Technologies, are profiled in a new article by Siobhan Gorman in the Wall Street Journal, How Team of Geeks Cracked Spy Trade: From a Silicon Valley office strewn with bean-bag chairs, a group of twenty-something software engineers is building an unlikely following of terrorist hunters at US spy agencies."

The bottom feeders at Gawker are going under. Arrivederci, a- -holes! News of the slime Web site’s bankruptcy filing is schadenfreude-licious for those of us who, like wrestler Hulk Hogan and Silicon Valley financier Peter Thiel, were victimized by these Internet thugs but didn’t have the resources to fight back in court.

“Gawker Media has filed for bankruptcy.” Those words were the most positive assembly of pixels to have ever appeared on the smear site and are reason for all of us to celebrate. Gawker finally got theirs yesterday. After years of gossip-terrorism and vile internet bullying — all masquerading under the guise of journalism — someone finally put a knife in the wretched, pablum Orc once and for all.

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Donald J. Trump would not be Silicon Valley’s first choice as president. Or its second. Or maybe even its third. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee wants to restrict immigration while bringing back manufacturing. He compulsively uses tech products like Twitter but is not in awe of the people who built them. He made his fortune the old-fashioned way, by going into the family business, in the old-fashioned industry of real estate. He’s not the valley’s kind of entrepreneur. Worst of all, Mr. Trump is revealing Silicon Valley’s vulnerability. In recent years, technology companies have extended their...

Tech entrepreneur Scott Banister has long been an ally to the liberty movement. The angel investor, IronPort founder, and PayPal board member donated $3 million to a Rand Paul supporting Super PAC, and has been a vocal supporter of the libertarian Republican. Now that Rand Paul is out of the presidential race, Banister has thrown his support behind Ted Cruz. Cruz is a self-described constitutional conservative who earned the endorsements of both Rand and Ron Paul in his 2012 Texas Senate race. Scott Banister Our best chance for a constitutional presidency is now @tedcruz. #LibertariansForCruz Cruz's relationship with the Pauls...

Tea Party-backed Senate candidate Ted Cruz points with pride to the army of small conservative donors supporting him. But his largest longtime contributor is a gay billionaire who supports same-sex marriage and marijuana legalization, campaign finance filings show. Peter Thiel, a German-born hedge fund manager and founder of the online payment system PayPal, gave Cruz $251,000 in 2009 for his aborted run for attorney general. The money represented 19 percent of the total raised for that campaign, which Cruz ended after Attorney General Greg Abbott decided to run for re-election. Thiel’s political and financial support for gay rights and legal...