The data analytics company Palantir is reportedly considering going public. Palantir is the company co-founded by controversial Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, formerly of PayPal. It's named after an all-seeing artifact in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. The company promises police departments, governments, even the IRS, that it can take in huge amounts of data and make artificial intelligence-informed guesses to help track down criminals and cheats, among other things. In a secret pilot program in New Orleans, Palantir tech even tried to predict when crime would happen or who might be a victim. But lately its huge $20 billion valuation is in doubt and privacy activists are concerned about its tactics. Molly Wood talks about it with Mark Harris, a reporter who's covered Palantir for Wired magazine. Today's show is sponsored by Wasabi Hot Cloud Storage and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.