This is actually a very good summary of what Palantir does - coming from someone who was an engineer there for 5 years.

Some corrections:

1) I wouldn't say Palantir's main selling point is federated search - it's more providing a "single pane of glass" for a large organization to view their own data. This obviously can involve federated search but, at least in my experience, centralizing data was more common.

2) Palantir does have pretty rigorous data protections - such as Access Control Lists (ACLs) - that limit who can see what. These ACLs can be applied pretty granularly. Also, individuals and groups can be removed from these ACLs once their authority to view a certain kind of data has expired.

3) Palantir has extensive audit logs so there is a strict record of who looked at what, when. This should actually make accountability better than it was before - as it allows for more oversight of what the users are viewing, searching, and compiling.

It's a powerful tool, but they did put quite a bit of thought into privacy & civil liberties - being mindful of that stuff was a big part of the culture, and there were many protections baked into the platform from the beginning. In fact, it was a big part of the original problem statement for Palantir - how can we build a platform that allows the government to prevent future 9/11s without trampling on privacy & civil liberties?