James Steinberg

Overview

James Steinberg is the cybersecurity-experienced event organizer behind Singles Dating Matching Using Palantir Data in the Planet Money episode Love in the time of Palantir.

Current Profile

Steinberg’s wiki role is narrow and source-scoped. He appears as a tech worker, startup founder, former cybersecurity CTO, licensed bounty hunter, and organizer of strange comedic technology events. In this episode, he explicitly says he is not using Palantir data or software, but spends roughly 50 hours using publicly reachable, brokered, professional, facial, court, and leaked-data sources to build Palantir-inspired dating profiles.

Key Characteristics

• Satirical tech-event organizer who turns surveillance anxiety into a social experiment.
• Cybersecurity-experienced operator with enough privacy knowledge to gather invasive-feeling profiles from ordinary identifiers.
• Licensed bounty hunter who can access databases not normally associated with casual dating events.
• Careful source discloser who says the event is not endorsed by Palantir and does not use Palantir software.
• Practical demonstration actor for Data Operationalization and Cross-Dataset Privacy Linkage.

Evidence

• Event role - Love in the time of Palantir identifies Steinberg as organizer of the Palantir-themed singles event.
• Technical and privacy background - Love in the time of Palantir says he has founded startups, worked as a cybersecurity CTO, and is a licensed bounty hunter.
• Data assembly method - Love in the time of Palantir says he used names, phone numbers, data enrichment, facial recognition, reverse phone lookup, bounty-hunter databases, court records, and leaked dark-web data.
• Palantir boundary - Love in the time of Palantir records his claim that the event did not use Palantir data, Palantir software, or Palantir endorsement.

Qualifications

The page does not independently verify Steinberg’s full professional history, database access, or every data-source claim. The source frames the event as comedy and demonstration, not as a production matchmaking system.

What Changed

• Initial profile adds Steinberg as the organizer and data-assembly actor in the Palantir dating-event source.

Relationships

• Singles Dating Matching Using Palantir Data - event organized by Steinberg.
• Palantir - company whose brand and legal objection shaped the event frame.
• Data Operationalization - mechanism Steinberg demonstrated through profile building.
• Identity Resolution Error - failure mode visible in the event’s incorrect matching.
• Consentless Facial Search - privacy concern illustrated by the event’s use of face-searchable photos.