Security: Palantir as police software – devil's work or miracle weapon?

In JRR Tolkien's fantastical world, the Palantíri are instruments of power: those who look through the "seeing stones" can observe distant places – but often only what others want them to see. This element from "The Lord of the Rings" reads today like a metaphor for Big Data: whoever controls the data controls the world. A few company founders in the USA in the early 2000s apparently found the story so interesting that they named their company after it: Palantir. Today, intelligence services, police forces and security authorities, as well as financial corporations and industrial companies all over the world use Palantir's software to link and analyze data efficiently, thoroughly and quickly.