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A new site called Palantir Watch is aggregating open source intelligence about the data analytics firm, which has long operated at the intersection of government surveillance and private capital. It's a reminder that transparency tools cut both ways — and that public scrutiny of powerful tech companies is itself becoming a discipline.
Shifting to privacy on a more personal scale, a tool called Kloak is making the case that your application's memory is a liability. The idea is straightforward but underappreciated — sensitive data sitting in RAM can be exposed long after you think it's gone. Kloak aims to keep secrets genuinely secret, which sounds obvious until you realize how rarely software actually delivers on that promise.
And in a story that sits somewhere between art and commentary, the artist Banksy has reportedly placed a statue in central London depicting a suited man, eyes obscured by a flag, walking toward the edge of a ledge. It's gathered nearly two hundred points on Hacker News, which tells you something about how technologists feel about nationalism, institutional blindness, or perhaps both.
That's your Tech Beat for today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
