That’s not easy. Given what it does — develop software that essentially helps government intelligence agencies root out and track terrorists and other criminals with sophisticated data analysis technology — it’s generally known for keeping its mouth shut. Its name is taken from the mystical seeing stones in the “Lord of the Rings” novels.

The company takes huge reams of data and subjects it to analysis to find connections between people and entities, and to find patterns that aren’t obvious. It has been used to track suicide bombers in Iraq and to sniff out abuse of government stimulus money in the U.S., and naturally most of its business is with the government, though banks, always on the lookout for fraud, are also said to be enthusiastic customers.

Yesterday, Palantir reported in a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that it had just raised $68 million in funding, though, as is usually the case with Form D, the filing doesn’t say who it came from. This, of course, would come on top of $50 million that TechCrunch reported it had raised in May, and another $90 million it raised in June.

The idea for what became Palantir emerged out of antifraud work at PayPal, but then grew into something bigger. PayPal alum and Facebook investor Peter Thiel talked Alex Karp (pictured) into the idea of building it into something that could root out terrorists. Thiel and his Founder’s Fund led a $12 million funding round in 2006, some of which came from the CIA’s In-Q-Tel. Thiel led another round in 2008.

I’ve got a call in to Palantir and hope to find out more behind the details in this filing, and will update the post if I hear from them. Until then you can watch Karp’s interview on “Charlie Rose” from 2009, and a Peter Thiel interview with The Wall Street Journal from last month.

Having seen early reports concerning an afternoon bombing attack outside government offices in Oslo, I sought out news outlets such as local broadcaster NRK to see if any live footage was coming from the scene.

There was, and though I don’t speak a word of Norwegian, I was able to piece together a narrative showing Norway suffering through its own 9/11 moment. There were even very early reports that some Muslim men who had been under surveillance had been arrested in connection with the blast. The video below was taken in the immediate aftermath of the blast.

Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg, unhurt in the bombing, was at one point said to be at an undisclosed location. If his name sounds familiar it’s because he was the Prime Minister who last year was stranded in New York by the erupting Icelandic volcano, and took to governing his country using an iPad. Security around the royal family was boosted. Government officials appealed to local residents via Twitter to refrain from using wireless phone networks so as not to overwhelm them. With several people trapped in damaged buildings, locals in the area were also asked to unlock their Wi-Fi routers to allow those trapped to communicate and bypass the cellular networks.

But it was on the site of another Norwegian broadcaster, TV2, that I saw the first early reports of a shooting on the island of Utøya. The headlines, many relayed by people in the country on Twitter, quickly worsened.

The story that emerged from Utøya was doubly disturbing. A man dressed as a police officer arrived on the island armed with an automatic rifle, gathered together young people attending a political event taking place on the island, ostensibly to tell them about the bombing in the city. Instead he opened fire.

People scattered. Some headed for the water to try and escape by swimming to the mainland. Others tried to hide and some used their phones to send Twitter and text messages calling for help. “There’s some shooting at Utøya. Call the police!” Tweeted Kjetil Vevle, who was there.

Noen skyter på Utøya. Oppdater politiet!!

July 22, 2011 7:52 am via Twitter for iPhoneReplyRetweetFavorite

@kjetilvevle

Kjetil Vevle

Other reports emerged of messages sent by teenagers — most at the event were aged 15 and 16 — saying they couldn’t answer calls to their phones because they were hiding and trying to remain quiet. Frantic parents were unable to get reliable information. Police and ambulances, fearing more bombs were planted on the island, initially didn’t approach.

Photo reportedly showing #Utoya gunman http://bit.ly/nDj2Em via @felix85 @tweetminster //(Not a closeup)

July 22, 2011 12:50 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Journalisti

Ms Journalist

The story that has emerged from local media of desperate teens Tweeting for help is a harrowing one, even through the disjointed Google translation. “Do not call me, I’m in hiding,” and, “Anyone with a boat near Utøya. Drag and pull swimming young people who escape from the island! Spread the word!” they said.

One image emerged — apparently taken from a helicopter — of the attack while it was still in progress, showing the alleged gunman, though at a distance.

Photo reportedly showing #Utoya gunman http://bit.ly/nDj2Em via @felix85 @tweetminster //(Not a closeup)

July 22, 2011 12:50 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Journalisti

Ms Journalist

One witness told a local TV station that he had counted 20 or 25 bodies on the island. Another picture — apparently snapped by a mobile phone and which I will not show you — emerged showing bodies washed up on the shores of Utøya.

Early on, the speculation focused on Islamic jihadists as the likely perpetrators, making it seem that Norway had experienced its 9/11 moment. It eventually emerged that the alleged shooter is a 32-year-old native Norwegian, named Anders Behring Brivik. It didn’t take long for Twitter and Facebook accounts thought to be his to surface. Assuming the accounts belong to the same person, the one and only Tweet sent on July 17 was creepy and, in hindsight, ominous. As I write these words police in Oslo are searching his apartment.

Perhaps Oklahoma City, rather than 9/11, is a more apt comparison. That change makes it all no less horrifying. There is no information as yet about a motive. As of now, the combined casualty count is 17, and sadly I fear it will climb higher in the hours to come.

One person with a belief is equal to the force of 100 000 who have only interests.

July 17, 2011 9:48 am via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@AndersBBreivik

Anders B. Breivik

Update as of 7 pm PDT, 10 PM EDT: As I feared, the numbers did grow. Reuters just flashed the new updated casualty count from the Utøya shootings is now 80, making the total combined casualties at both sites 87, and police are saying it may grow more yet.

Norwegian police say at least 80 killed in shootings at Utoeya

July 22, 2011 5:52 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@REUTERSFLASH

ReutersBreakingNews

Norwegian police say killings are of “catastrophic dimensions”, may rise above 80

July 22, 2011 5:56 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@REUTERSFLASH

ReutersBreakingNews

As details about the daring raid on Abbottabad continue to emerge, we’re learning more not only about how Navy Seals found and killed their target, but about the potential for further clues that may help catch yet more terrorists still on the loose.

Historically, obtaining a computer used by a terrorist is almost as important as catching or killing the terrorist himself. When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was nabbed in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, in 2003, agents with the CIA and Pakistani intelligence seized a computer whose hard drive was said to contain, among other things, three letters from Osama bin Laden, a list of safe houses that bin Laden had used, a pilot’s license belonging to 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and information about the four planes hijacked that horrible day.

In Iraq in 2005, a seized computer found after a close call played a role in ultimately running to ground the terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. After being pulled over in a pickup truck by U.S. forces, he managed to get away, but was in such a hurry that he left his laptop behind. (I wrote about it at the time.) The computer yielded financial information and recent pictures of Zarqawi. It took another year, but he was eventually killed in 2006.

Clearly the walled compound wasn’t some Luddite hut where modern conveniences were banned. In some of the images of the compound you can clearly see a satellite dish, probably for TV. The Journal’s Tom Wright was among the reporters who got to tour the site. Initially described as a “mansion,” it seems from his description to have been nothing of the kind.

Among the items seized at Abbottabad, according to numerous reports, are hard drives, DVDs and other “electronic equipment.” CNN has a more detailed inventory here. The amount of information found is being described as “impressive” by CIA Director Leon Pannetta, and analysts are digging through it now to see who they can smoke out next.

Often it turns out that terrorists are just as sloppy as the rest of us when it comes to using computers. They make up easy-to-guess passwords, don’t go to the effort to encrypt their sensitive files and leave unencrypted documents in directories where they’re easy to find. With any luck, there is among the collected digital detritus something that will lead to several repeat performances by Seal Team Six.

It’s all part of the wider implications stemming from the dramatic close of the biggest manhunt in American history. I discussed them with Simon Constable and Spencer Ante of The Wall Street Journal during an extended all-bin-Laden edition of The News Hub yesterday. We talked about my story from yesterday on how it appears that bin Laden’s efforts to forgo the use of telephones and the Internet may have been a key clue that helped bring his hiding place to the attention of intelligence analysts. By trying to make himself digitally scarce, bin Laden may have ironically raised a red flag.

Details are beginning to emerge of the painstaking detective work that led to the raid, and one fact that has caught my attention is this:
The property where he was hiding, while valued at $1 million, had no phone service, nor any Internet connection. This turned out to be a key red flag that helped bring an increase in scrutiny that in time led to the attack on the compound that President Obama ordered yesterday. A report in The National Journal mentions that it was the National Security Agency, which gathers America’s electronic intelligence, which determined, in some secret manner that didn’t tip off the government of Pakistan, that the compound had no phone or Internet.

I find it ironic that among the clues that led to this important victory was a lack of technology infrastructure. Consider for a moment the untold billions of dollars in electronic intelligence-gathering that has gone into the effort to finding even the vaguest clue as to bin Laden’s whereabouts since 2001, with no result.

Add to that the years of legal and moral hand-wringing that U.S. citizens have endured after learning that their own government was illegally monitoring their phone and email communications. This collection, disclosed by the New York Times in 2005, was part of a broader effort, the argument went at the time, to collect any information that may reveal a threat to the United States. Perhaps some terrorist operative inside the U.S. would call, or send an email or text message to a handler. And it wasn’t just eavesdropping. As USA Today reported in 2006, the NSA also built a massive database of American’s telephone calling patterns using data provided by the phone companies.

It would have seemed reasonable were it not for the fact that the government didn’t follow the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, that sets out the conditions under which the government may eavesdrop on the communications of U.S. citizens. The revelation that it was eavesdropping without authorization by the secret FISA court naturally led to lawsuits. In 2010 a federal judge ruled that the government had overreached its authority.

Ultimately the eavesdropping efforts contributed little. In practically all cases, the information gathered under the program led to dead ends, and the sheer volume of information forwarded by the NSA so overwhelmed FBI investigators that they complained.

Meanwhile, bin Laden himself has been described numerous times as eschewing electronic communications. The story has been repeated many times that bin Laden had been an active user of satellite phones until sometime in 1998. In fact, the Inmarsat phone’s number was published in a fascinating book entitled “Body of Secrets” by the intelligence expert James Bamford. Following a 1998 missile attack on camps in Afghanistan thought to be frequented by bin Laden–and which he narrowly escaped–he severely curtailed his satellite phone use in order not to make himself an easy target for another missile strike. Some reports have said that since then he relied instead on an elaborate system of human couriers and opted not to use electronic communications at all.

Over the years there were numerous video and audio tape message. Intelligence analysts sought to pick out what clues they could from these. At one point in 2001, U.S. intelligence agencies turned to geologists to try and glean clues about his whereabouts. It wasn’t by accident that later video messages showed him speaking in front of a cloth background and that later messages were only audio tapes.

One has to wonder if bin Laden had chosen instead to be less careful, whether he might have been discovered at all. Presumably he had been able to purchase this property though intermediaries without raising attention, and had lived there for some time. Had he or someone living with him engaged in routine communications with the outside world, making the occasional local and international phone calls, he might have been safer, ironically more camouflaged amid the background noise of modern life in urban Pakistan.

There is still a lot we don’t know about the events leading up to the attack that ultimately killed bin Laden. But looking ahead I have to wonder if his choice to forgo all the modern communications technologies that so permeate 21st century life may in the end turn out to have been his biggest strategic mistake.