[HN Gopher] 'ELITE': The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborh...
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'ELITE': The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid
Author : sdoering
Score : 312 points
Date : 2026-01-15 18:42 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (werd.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (werd.io)
| kankerlijer wrote:
| OK, so they've put together a dashboard. I don't like what's
| happening but this isn't some fearsome tech they're doing.
| dghlsakjg wrote:
| They put together a dashboard that presents probabilistic
| information. We already know from several facial recognition
| cases that some police have a hard time differentiating known
| facts from probabilistic guesses. We also know that many agents
| of the agency using this dashboard have relatively little
| training, and have demonstrated very loose understanding for of
| fundamental rights (47 days for new recruits currently).
|
| I would be willing to lay a bet worth a significant portion of
| my net worth that this dashboard will end up being involved in
| multiple wrongful arrests of innocent people.
|
| Anyone working on these products should ask themselves if they
| believe in what they build or if they are "just doing what they
| are told". If the latter, consider the cohort of people who
| have previously used that justification.
| warent wrote:
| Palantir came to me multiple times over the years asking me
| to interview as a senior swe. The temptation was very strong
| back then. Insane pay package as you can imagine... but I had
| a really bad feeling about them and always turned them down.
|
| What a huge relief. One of my best moments of foresight.
| warent wrote:
| Sure, they build innocent dashboards in the same way that your
| name is an innocent Dutch word. Obvious bad faith arguments
| coming from a troll.
| arjie wrote:
| It appears that the name kankerlijer is an insult meaning
| "cancer patient", sort of like how in the US the phrase
| "fucking cunt" might be used (except without the gendered
| notion - just in severity).
|
| Didn't know so caching this here for others.
| accoil wrote:
| See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dutch_profanity
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| a lot of dutch curses and insults come from diseases
| (kanker/cancer and typhus are common). one of a few things
| i really appreciate about the Dutch language is they really
| make the most of a relatively small common vocabulary
| (compared to english).
| kankerlijer wrote:
| What exactly was my argument? Separate from what they are
| doing with it, a college grad could pop open PowerBI and
| build this thing quite easily. DHS gets their data from other
| agencies, not Palantir. Surely you must recognize that adding
| to Palantir's mystique as some bad ass tech company only
| perpetuates its appeal.
| hnbad wrote:
| Of course it's Palantir.
| phoehne wrote:
| "I was only in charge of transport" was not an excuse.
| pixelready wrote:
| I've never worked at Palantir, but once you get past the noisy
| leadership's villain virtue signaling, every report I've read
| about the platform itself gives me strong "typical enterprise
| vendor" vibes. A lackluster software offering that is overhyped
| to institutional purchasers, then shoved down frontline
| employees' throats because the vendor is good at navigating the
| sales and compliance labyrinth to secure deals.
|
| The goals and motivation for using these tools, and their broad
| allowance of access to what should be highly controlled data (or
| in some cases even not collected at all) is the problem. Don't
| give Palantir the bad-boy street cred they crave, focus on the
| policy decisions that are leading to agencies wanting tools like
| this in the first place.
| bri3d wrote:
| This is my understanding of Palantir too: it's a consultancy
| with a map, a graph database, and some "AI" nonsense. They sell
| expensive "forward deployed engineers" (aka, consultants) to
| customize this map and graph database to specific use cases.
|
| I'm not trying to argue Palantir is an ethical company; my
| views on "company ethics" are nuanced but I wouldn't put them
| anywhere near my "places I want to work" bucket. But (contrary,
| perhaps, to their name), they're not some weird deep demonic
| trove of personal information; that's supplied to them by their
| customers, which is where change needs to happen.
| genidoi wrote:
| Referring to engineers with top secret+ security clearances
| as "consultants" seems reductionistic.
| bri3d wrote:
| In what way? I'm genuinely curious; I would describe an
| engineer who is provided to build a customer product
| alongside a customer as either a "contractor" or a
| "consultant," depending mostly on their employer. A
| security clearance just changes what customers and products
| they work for.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Contractor makes sense, consultant is a bit weird because
| the typical understanding is that a consultant comes in
| to share knowledge, not build product.
| tym0 wrote:
| Then you're not familiar with software consultancy
| because that's exactly what they do.
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Ah ok then let's just call them contractors because
| that's what exactly what they do.
| throwawayq3423 wrote:
| Ok they are "consultants" with a federally guaranteed moat.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > expensive "forward deployed engineers" (aka, consultants)
|
| Well, at least they're paying those consultants a lot of
| money, since they're charging a lot for them... right? Right?
| vscode-rest wrote:
| Yes. If you worked at pltr as a FDE you are now wealthy.
| doctorpangloss wrote:
| no i think you and the people you are replying to are
| getting it completely backwards
|
| people think Palantir makes a lot of money. did Palantir
| make a lot of money? No. Accenture Federal Services, Leidos
| Defense Civil IT & Services, Booz Allen Hamilton Gov
| Consulting & Cyber, General Dynamics Technologies, SAIC,
| and CACI combined made $61.9b in 2024, compared to all of
| Palantir which made $2.9b. so if you just look at some IT
| and defense companies' gov IT sales segments - we're not
| even including Raytheon or Lockheed Martin or Boeing where
| calculating such a thing is complex - Palantir's revenue
| looks very, very small.
|
| people think Palantir makes vanilla "consultants" and
| "typical enterprise vendor vibes" products. does the thing
| that Palantir make work? we're talking about it! I think
| the reason we don't talk about Raytheon's version of this
| app is that Raytheon's (or Accenture's or...) version
| doesn't work haha
| NemoNobody wrote:
| I think Palintr ought to be nationalized and placed under the
| jurisdiction of several competing watchdog agencies - it can
| generate automatically our annual, quarterly and etc datasets
| for specific, selected things.
|
| Anyone in disagreement needs to read about Palintr and what
| has intentionally been said about it
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| I think its kind of a conspiracy/"Open Secret" that Palantir
| was funded by the government to side skirt any "Government
| cannot...." rules. It's not the government breaking privacy
| regulations, its a private company doing it....just under
| contract of the government.
|
| Thats the rhetoric on good ole r/WallSteetBets, atleast. Theil
| and Karp definitely play into this angle as well, but that
| doesn't really prove anything other than they're hungry for
| investors
| pixelready wrote:
| Yeah, I don't have any evidence for this but it certainly
| would make sense. It seems likely that the US government was
| catching wise to the data brokering loophole around the same
| time as the PayPal mafia was cashing out and Thiel would have
| been in the right circles to run into any well-connected
| gov't types sniffing around for the most morally flexible big
| names in the valley. But it seems equally likely that Thiel
| just wanted to continue accumulating wealth and power to
| pursue his other authoritarian projects and the government
| had the biggest bag of cash around so he worked backwards
| from that.
|
| If next I hear he's planning to build a fabulous underwater
| city in international waters, I won't be surprised. He enjoys
| his biblical themes, perhaps he can name it Rapture.
| dpoloncsak wrote:
| Karp put out a whole book about how "Silicon Valley needs
| to be more willing to work with the government" too, post
| launch of Palantir.
|
| Idk...any and every of these companies fielding government
| contracts with a name from LOTR seem off to me. Palantir,
| Anduril, Erebor....
| wombatpm wrote:
| At least the underwater city would be useful.
| 0xWTF wrote:
| Palantir also supports folks like CDC's DCIPHER
|
| https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/cdc-and-palantir-pa...
|
| When it's a government system, your issue is not really with
| the vendor, your issue is with the policymakers.
| calvinmorrison wrote:
| This is just an inversion of culpability. We know that theres
| virtually no relationship in our Republic with popularity of
| an initiative and it's passing into law.
|
| But don't people elect their representatives? oh of course!
|
| If your issue is with policymakers, then it is with the
| people.
|
| This is also very stupid because - essentially when the
| government is evil you become skeptical of your neighbors,
| not 538 people who really control your life.
| dabinat wrote:
| Sorry, but Palantir doesn't get off that easy. They know full
| well how their technology is used. Just because a market
| exists that doesn't mean you need to fill it. The tech
| industry could have taken a moral stand like the chemical
| industry did with execution drugs.
| ambicapter wrote:
| If you watch any entrepreneur-focused channels, the entire
| premise of Palantir was "what if we just didn't care about
| what people think is ethically dubious? What if we went
| into business in all the places that people have
| traditionally shied away from for moral reasons?" It's part
| of Thiel's "Monopoly is good/You want to build the 0 to 1,
| not jump into a crowded market" mantra.
| david_p wrote:
| I started a company in that market 10 years ago. We
| compete with palantir. It's a competitive market with
| lots of actors.
|
| On of their strengths is the ability of thiel to raise
| lots of money, and win huge gov contracts by convincing
| everyone that what he built is magic. it is not.
|
| palantir is regular enterprise software. morally, they
| are vilains for sure, but their superpower is being
| excellent at marketing themselves.
| sippeangelo wrote:
| Governments using Palantir services as a loophole to enable
| mass surveillance by linking data is the evil part.
| bri3d wrote:
| How is Palantir a loophole?
|
| I see this theory a lot (sometimes to justify their
| valuation, sometimes as a moral judgement, sometimes as an
| alarmist concern) but I genuinely don't see how this line of
| thought works in any of these dimensions. My understanding is
| that they're consultants building overpriced data processing
| products. As far as I know there isn't even usually a
| separate legal entity or some kind of corporate shenanigan at
| play; my understanding is that they send engineers to the
| customer to build a product that the customer owns and
| operates under the customer's identity as the customer. I
| certainly see how businesses like Flock are a "loophole;"
| they collect data which is unrestricted due to its "public"
| nature and provide a giant trove of tools to process it which
| are controlled only by what amounts to their own internal
| goodwill. But this isn't my understanding of how Palantir
| works; as far as I know they never take ownership of the data
| so it isn't "laundered" from its original form, and is still
| subject to whatever (possibly inadequate) controls or
| restrictions were already present on this data.
| jcranmer wrote:
| > How is Palantir a loophole?
|
| The big legal loophole is that the government needs a
| particularized warrant (per the 4th Amendment) to ask for
| any user data, but if the government buys commercial data,
| well, there's no warrant needed.
|
| I would also submit that it's possible that sending
| everything through a giant computer-magic-bullshit-mixer
| allows you to discriminate on the basis of race while
| claiming plausible deniability, but SCOTUS has already
| constructively repealed the 14th Amendment between blessing
| Kavanaugh stops and the Roberts Court steadily repealing
| the Voting Rights Act, Bivens claims, etc.
| bri3d wrote:
| > The big legal loophole is that the government needs a
| particularized warrant (per the 4th Amendment) to ask for
| any user data, but if the government buys commercial
| data, well, there's no warrant needed.
|
| Right; but as far as I know Palantir don't sell
| commercial data. That's my beef with this whole Palantir
| conspiracy theory. I am far from pro-Palantir but it
| really feels like they're working as a shield for the
| pitchforks in this case.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| Pretty sure GP is saying that the data Palantir sells are
| commercial _because_ they 're being sold by Palantir.
| bri3d wrote:
| Right, and what I'm saying is that to the best of my
| knowledge, Palantir don't sell data at all, which is the
| fundamental misunderstanding people seem to have about
| them.
| array_key_first wrote:
| They sell data derived from the data. But it's not, like,
| a hash function - you can absolutely deduce the source
| data from it. In fact, that's the entire purpose. You use
| the aggregation and whatnot bullshit to find individuals,
| track them, gain insight into their living situation and
| patterns, and acquire evidence of crimes. Typically that
| requires a search warrant.
|
| If you couldn't go backwards Palantir wouldn't have a
| market. So, I would consider that a loophole.
| bri3d wrote:
| > They sell data derived from the data.
|
| Do they? I don't think they even do this, either.
|
| I have really strong knowledge of this from ~10 years ago
| and weak knowledge from more recently. I'm happy to be
| proven wrong but my understanding is that they don't sell
| any data at all, but rather just consulting services for
| processing data someone already has.
|
| One of those consulting services is probably recommending
| vendors to supply more data, but as far as I know
| Palantir literally do not have a first-party data
| warehouse at all.
| 20after4 wrote:
| There are two really two major concerning issues with
| Palantir:
|
| 1. They provide tech that is used to select targets for
| drone strikes and apparently also for targeting violent
| attacks on US civilians. I don't know too much about how
| the algorithm works but simply outsourcing decisions
| about who lives or dies to opaque algorithms is creepy.
| It also allows the people behind the operations to avoid
| personal responsibility for mistakes by blaming the
| mistakes on the software. It also could enable people to
| just not think about it and thus avoid the moral question
| entirely. It's an abstract concern but it is a legitimate
| one, IMO.
|
| 2. I don't know if this is 100% confirmed but we have
| heard reports that Elon Musk and DOGE collected every
| piece of government data that they could get their hands,
| across various government departments and databases.
| These databases were previously islands that served one
| specific purpose and didn't necessarily connect to all
| the other government databases from other departments.
| It's suspected that palantir software (perhaps along with
| Grok) is being used to link all of these databases
| together and cross reference data that was previously not
| available for law enforcement or immigration purposes.
| This could enable a lot of potential abuse and probably
| isn't being subjected to any kind of court or
| congressional oversight.
| bri3d wrote:
| We agree, I think these are the more valid concerns than
| the "they are operating a data warehouse with all of the
| data in the entire universe" conspiracy theory that seems
| popular.
|
| I certainly think that Palantir has ethical issues; as I
| stated in my parent comment, it wouldn't be high on my
| list of choices for places to work.
|
| But, when it comes to things like (2), this is a failure
| of regulation and oversight and needs to be treated as
| such. Note that this doesn't make Palantir "right"
| (building a platform to do things that are probably bad
| is still bad), but there's no reason anyone with basic
| data warehousing skills couldn't have done this before or
| after.
|
| Essentially, I think people give Palantir specifically
| too much credit and in turn ignore the fundamental issues
| they're worried about. Panic over "dismantle Palantir" or
| even the next step, "dismantle corporate data
| warehousing" is misguided and wouldn't address the issues
| at hand; worry about government data fusion needs to be
| directed towards government data fusion, and worry about
| computers making targeting decisions needs to be directed
| at computers making targeting decisions.
| Terr_ wrote:
| > I would also submit that it's possible that sending
| everything through a giant computer-magic-bullshit-mixer
|
| See also: Parallel Construction (i.e. evidence tampering)
| and most of the times a "drug-sniffing" dog is called to
| "test" something the police already want to search.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| They also used Google, Facebook, etc... as a loophole for
| suppressing freedom of speech in the past (and could still be
| for all I know).
| cg5280 wrote:
| > The goals and motivation for using these tools, and their
| broad allowance of access to what should be highly controlled
| data (or in some cases even not collected at all) is the
| problem ... focus on the policy decisions that are leading to
| agencies wanting tools like this in the first place.
|
| That's how Karp seems to justify these things. Palantir's job
| is to (in theory) make government better at doing government
| things. It's up to voters to keep the government in line.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| I mean you can say stuff like that but the reality is they
| purposefully named themselves after a super villains magical
| spy apparatus so I'm not inclined to take his word about them
| being ethically neutral. Like I'm not really sure what they
| could name themselves after that would be more ominous
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > they purposefully named themselves after a super villains
| magical spy apparatus...
|
| Worse, that spy apparatus _inherently corrupts its users_.
| db48x wrote:
| That's a common misunderstanding. The Palantir never
| corrupted anyone. They only became dangerous to use once
| Sauron got his hands on one. You know, that immortal
| demon god who always uses mind control to get what he
| wants? If you use a Palantir he'll notice and start
| working you over. If he is stronger than you are then he
| can force your Palantir to show you things of his
| choosing.
|
| When Denethor used Gondor's Palantir he saw orc armies
| marching and pillaging, foundaries forging weapons,
| Southrons marching north with Oliphants, corsairs raiding
| the coast, wildmen pillaging Rohan, etc, etc. Sauron
| never let him see allies coming to his aid, or his own
| troops winning battles.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| > If he is stronger than you are then he can force your
| Palantir to show you things of his choosing.
|
| I mean, that's worse.
| ahazred8ta wrote:
| The palantirs were made by the elf lord prince Feanor of
| Valinor, one of the good guys. The one we see in the film
| was given to the kings of Gondor and then pilfered by
| Saruman. (elvish palan 'far', tir 'watch over')
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| This almost makes it funnier? As if it's the folly of
| creators to believe that their creations are by virtue
| untethered to morals and ethics, and it's only through
| their use by amoral or unethical actors that they become
| so.
| db48x wrote:
| Tools are always neutral. The hammer doesn't become evil
| merely because you used it to bash someone's brains in.
| Tools do not make choices; humans do.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| This is reductionist. Surely you've heard of the Torment
| Nexus?
|
| This is along the lines of "If I don't do it, someone
| else will get paid to, so it might as well be me that
| gets paid to do it" which I personally find morally
| abhorrent.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7DjEsFTlic it's also
| settler logic
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| The "torment nexus" is just as reductionist a claim. It
| is almost always an ad hominem selectively invoked under
| arbitrary standards. If one consistently follows the
| argument raised in the meme to its ultimate conclusion,
| then nothing should ever be invented or accomplished for
| fear of some speculative harm at some undefined point in
| the future.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > Torment Nexus
|
| You're bringing in something that's (vaguely and poorly,
| for no one knows what it actually could be) defined as
| something that fits the narrative and present it: "see,
| if we think up a tool that's inherently evil by
| definition of it, it cannot be neutral". We might, but
| could such tool actually exist?
|
| (And before we joke about building it, we can think up of
| its polar opposite too, something unquestionably good
| that just cannot be evil in the slightest. Again, I
| suspect, no such thing can exist in reality.)
| J_McQuade wrote:
| This is an incredibly silly thing to say. If someone
| makes a knife that is terrible at carving wood or cutting
| food but is the perfect shape for, say, clitorectomies...
| then maybe that tool is bad and we should probably stop
| making it.
|
| Yes, people choose to make it and people choose to use
| it. But, like... stop those people, right?
| db48x wrote:
| This hypothetical knife that you've invented still
| doesn't make any choices. A person still makes the choice
| of how and when to use it. That's all that matters. Only
| things that can choose to act can be judged as ethical or
| unethical.
| evan_ wrote:
| The tool is a lump of metal apart from ethics, but
| _making_ the cliterectomy-knife was a choice someone
| made. We can judge that decision.
| Dracophoenix wrote:
| Morality requires agency and agreement. A machine/device
| doesn't choose to be made or operated nor can it act
| against its maker/operator any more than rocks can act
| against the Earth. Regardless of motive, a moral
| conclusion can't be reached about the object.
| immibis wrote:
| So it's literally the Elvish word for "television"...
| db48x wrote:
| Telescope, not television.
| Terr_ wrote:
| And more particularly, any remaining telescope after an
| apocalypse which caused all of them to be controlled and
| by a mind-destroying superhuman force of literal evil
| incarnate.
|
| One can't just _ignore_ that kind of subtext...
| db48x wrote:
| It's not the palantir's fault that Sauron exists. You
| might notice that there are several other psychic tools
| lying around that nobody is using because Sauron will
| enslave anyone who does. The Throne of Amon Hen, certain
| magic rings, etc, etc. The danger is Sauron, not the
| tools themselves.
| bennettnate5 wrote:
| > prince Feanor
|
| > one of the good guys
|
| Uhhhh...
|
| Feanor drew his sword on his half-brother and threatened
| to kill him because he was paranoid Fingolfin was trying
| to usurp his power. He compelled all of his sons to swear
| an oath to slay any man, elf or being in possession of
| the silmarils (which led to subsequent needless
| bloodshed).
|
| Then he ordered and carried out the mass-murder of
| relatively unarmed Teleri in order to rob them of their
| ships.
|
| Such actions does not a good guy make.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| palantiri * (sorry, couldn't resist)
|
| that it takes following the... (charitably) uncommon view
| that Feanor was a "good guy" in spite of being a
| psychopathic thieving mass murderer to excuse the actions
| of Palantir (the company) should be an indicator that
| they're Bad, Actually.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| Even if they're the most evil corpo ever, the buyer is
| still the government. If a democratically elected
| government buys this products, I would assume, in large
| scale of things, the general population wants the most evil
| corpo.
| wombatpm wrote:
| It's not like they are overthrowing South American
| countries for favorable terms in pineapple and banana
| trade *cough*Dole*cough*Chiquita*cough*
|
| Yet.
| phoehne wrote:
| In another comment, I referenced Eichmann. A train is not a
| good thing or a bad thing. A rail car is not a good thing or a
| bad thing. Having an app that aggregates multiple different
| data sources and puts them together is not a good thing or a
| bad thing. It's the morality behind the hands into which we put
| that tools that matters. The more capable the tool, the more
| good or evil you can do with it. Maybe we should ask ourselves
| if this kind of a tool should exist at all, or there should be
| some level of process before it can be used. But the engineer
| at Palantir is just as guilty or not guilty in your eyes as the
| engineer fixing the trains or laying new track.
| gegtik wrote:
| any opinions on the german WW2 engineer laying neutral tracks
| toward Auschwitz
|
| EDIT: sorry, that was glib. However I want to make the
| argument that the argument of doing "neutral" physical work
| is not absolutely morally absolving.
| phoehne wrote:
| Yes. It's not, and I agree. There's no bright line that
| says you're morally culpable or you are not morally
| culpable for what you do. But all of us should think about
| our roles in that light. If Palantir uses Git, does that
| mean new Git contributions are part of what is arguably an
| ethnic cleansing? I wouldn't be able to sleep at night and
| work on this project. (I do not work at Palantir).
|
| But the point is also that maybe we should take one step
| back and think about the morality of the people we put in
| decision making roles. The technology is morally neutral,
| but the intention is not. And helping to realize that
| intention is not. And sometimes the things we build can be
| used in horrible ways unless we also think about
| safeguarding their use.
|
| This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is my very real
| fear that a lot of information has been aggregated into
| Palantir and other applications and is usable with no
| restraint. And that even if you just run the build system,
| across hundreds of apps, you might be culpable as well.
| Shalomboy wrote:
| Well that's clearly an example of putting the cart before
| the horse. You should be able to sleep at night so long
| as you remember that Git isn't what enables Palantir to
| power an army of federalized brownshirts; it's the people
| making the tools explicitly for an army of federalized
| brownshirts with Git that are morally culpable.
| phoehne wrote:
| Okay, that's where you draw the line. But someone
| provides power to their data center and their offices.
| Someone provides hand-held devices. Someone provides
| network connectivity. Someone has a contract to house and
| feed these agents. Someone has the logistical and fleet
| services for their vehicles. Someone is likely the
| landlord to their buildings. Someone has a contract to
| clean the buildings. Someone is a deciding to buy a block
| of Palantir stock versus some other software company.
| Someone runs the private prison into which people are
| herded. An attorney has a choice to file a charge or not
| file a charge. A judge has the choice to bend over
| backward to give ICE/CBP the benefit of the doubt, or be
| skeptical.
|
| Baking a roll of bread is not immoral. Baking bread as
| part of a contract to feed the gestapo, is.
| shrubble wrote:
| There wasn't anything built there until well after the
| tracks were laid, if I understand the logistics of that
| area correctly.
| pfortuny wrote:
| Mmmmhhhhhh it depends on what the engineer knows about the
| realistic uses of the tool. As a sibling comments, fixing the
| railroads to Auswichz might me morally wrong.
|
| Eichmann knew what he was doing and, in any case, forcing
| dozens of thousands of people to move with less than a week's
| notice does not soynd quite "amoral".
| miltonlost wrote:
| If you're working at Palantir, you know what you're working
| on.
| thatguy0900 wrote:
| You're missing the part where they named their train after a
| iconic artifact of evil famously used to do evil train stuff
| with for this metaphor to work
| Y-bar wrote:
| Producing Cyclon B is a doing a neutral thing apparently? So
| is building a system cataloguing all Jews and socialists in
| Berlin also a neutral thing? The officer ordering the legal
| building of large ovens and carpenter doing the bidding are
| not guilty? The soldier following the rules written by law
| that he should coral the "visitors" and "workers" is doing no
| good or bad thing because he has instructions and is not
| taking judgement on his work?
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| >Producing Cyclon B is a doing a neutral thing apparently?
|
| Without searching for references, it's my understanding
| that Fritz Haber developed this decades before the war, in
| conjunction with making synthetic fertilizer. It was later
| used for the purpose you referenced.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I consciously used the word "produce" rather than
| "develop" or "invent" to try to be clear that I meant
| "[produce] from a factory".
| hydrogen7800 wrote:
| Fair enough. In that case I agree.
| phoehne wrote:
| My point was, if you do invent something like Zyklon B, you
| need to consider its uses. While the gas itself is just a
| molecule, devoid of morality, not everyone who employs it
| will be a moral person.
|
| In the case of Palantir, should we allow the federal
| government to combine databases (which may have been
| hoovered up by DOGE and held in a private sector company
| that isn't subject to FOIA)? Should there be judicial
| review, like for FISA warrants before you can field an
| application? Should we allow the government to buy that
| kind of app in the first place? I don't give Palantir a
| free pass.
|
| But it's not the engineer at Palantir that decides to send
| poorly vetted and trained people into a home, fully stoked,
| believing your have complete immunity, and full of anabolic
| steroids, and praying any of the occupants shows an iota of
| resistance. 79 million voters chose this. This is the
| morality of the people employing the tool.
|
| A thing clearly has no intention and it's impossible for us
| to know every possible use for a product. But at some level
| we need to feel responsible for what we create, we need to
| feel responsible for our choices, and we need to see the
| responsibility others have because of their choices.
| Y-bar wrote:
| I think there is no significant disagreement between the
| two of us, perhaps only on the topic of intentionality of
| things and degrees of involvement.
|
| A gun has the intent of projecting violence at a
| distance. No matter if it is used within the frame of the
| law or not.
|
| A vaccine has the intention of protection against
| disease. No matter if it is used within or outside the
| law.
|
| A fence contains the intent of separating things.
|
| A system built to deeply and widely track and catalogue
| and eavesdrop on people has the intention of being
| intrusive.
|
| The purpose of a system is what is does. If a system does
| help the violent actions towards civilians and citizens
| then that is the purpose of what the engineers at
| Palantir built.
|
| (I also think I was a bit too confrontational in my
| earlier reply, sorry about that)
| phoehne wrote:
| I think you're right and it's possible to have something
| that exists with no other purpose than to cause harm. And
| it's not moral to make that thing. I also don't think
| it's fruitful to find the specific circumstances it's
| moral to eat babies (go down philosophical rabbit holes
| until you find the one time that doing something
| despicably immoral is actually the moral thing to do).
| But I would say the technology is the least important
| part of the problem. A moral person uses dangerous tools
| sparingly and intentionally harmful tools never. If
| Palantir did not exist, would they perform the raids? I
| think so.
| immibis wrote:
| Germany has a system today cataloguing all the Jews in
| Berlin (the address registration includes your religion for
| the purpose of charging church tax), and everyone I've
| mentioned this to seems to feel it's neutral.
| Romario77 wrote:
| the commercial company I worked at had a contract with Palantir
| -
| https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20220817005178/en/Bet...
| .
|
| From what I understood they were to read our data and provide
| some kind of insights. I don't think any of this happened, at
| least while I was there.
|
| They talk about government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) - it's
| most likely the reason the company got into this contract, so
| Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac get some kind of data that they need
| in their systems.
| Y-bar wrote:
| Palantir reminds me of IBM 85 years ago, only following
| requirements and requests from the government, never an
| accomplice. Extracting shareholder value from human suffering
| should not be criticised because the effect is one step removed
| from the engineering and company leadership. Why do the ethical
| thing when instead you can become rich?
| jeron wrote:
| >because the vendor is good at navigating the sales and
| compliance labyrinth to secure deals.
|
| it's not just that. Alexandr Wang from Scale AI once said in a
| talk that they had to compete against Palantir for a gov
| contract. Palantir's salesmen have a high closing rate because
| they sell the software as if it were written by God itself.
| It's one hell of a sales strategy
| dylan604 wrote:
| > It's one hell of a sales strategy
|
| What happens when there's a bug in the software? Would that
| mean God is fallible after all? Could this be the plot line
| of Dogma++?
| coredev_ wrote:
| I do not agree at all. The problem is both Palantir AND their
| customers. You have a choise not to make the tools and you have
| a chiose not to use the tools.
| ajb wrote:
| Totally. Responsability is not, in general, mutually
| exclusive. When it happens to be, that's an organisational
| convenience, not a moral law.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| There's a lot of weird hype around Palantir, and I suspect bots
| that are propping them up in social media. For example look at
| how many meaningless comments on Twitter/X or YouTube videos
| mention Palantir's "ontology", whatever that means. Many of
| these comments literally will just say the word "Ontology" and
| nothing else, as if it is some mysterious superpower that
| Palantir has discovered. I suspect it is, as you said, just
| basic software but from a company that has no moral limits to
| what their software does.
| Spooky23 wrote:
| You're missing the point. The villainy and noise is the
| superpower of the company.
|
| Operating Palantir in the way ICE is illegal, full stop. Just
| the IRS integration alone makes most users in a position where
| they are committing felonies.
|
| Basically, there is little difference between what they do and
| what Enron did. It's all based on criminality, and instead of
| strippers and cocaine, they signal with weird faux Orthodox
| Christianity and crazy behavior. The "orthodox" selection is
| deliberate as it feels exotic but is not catholic, so the
| modern evangelical types somehow are ok with it.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The fact that there is a demand for fake evil, functioning like
| fake piety did in the 1600s, is a flaw of difficult-to-
| encompass proportion. Our culture is totally bankrupt if
| companies are now pretending to be worse than they're in
| reality able to be.
|
| Of course, in contrast to piety all fake evil is also real
| evil.
| tshaddox wrote:
| You mean virtue signaling with the sign flipped?
| jboynyc wrote:
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/vice_signalling
| carabiner wrote:
| "Banality of evil." This does seem to be obliquely whitewash
| the company as it's adjacent to so much of tech. I don't think
| this exempts them from the hostile intent of their work.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Don't give Palantir the bad-boy street cred they crave, focus
| on the policy decisions that are leading to agencies wanting
| tools like this in the first place.
|
| Had other policies decisions not led about 12 to 20 million
| illegals in the US in the first place, there'd be less need for
| ICE. The complete open borders policies signed by Biden's
| autopen and the millions who came during these four years comes
| to mind.
|
| I'll also remind everyone that it's estimated that under Obama
| 3.1 million illegals were deported.
|
| The question is simple: is the US open to anyone without
| needing a visa?
|
| And if it's not: how do you deal with tens of millions of
| illegals?
|
| (I'm not saying Palantir ain't evil: I'm saying ICE does its
| job)
| megous wrote:
| Does US have such a lack of space to fail to absorb 2-5%
| increase over years?
|
| What's so hard about naturalizing or legalizing them, so that
| they can more easily interact with current power structures
| on the territory?
|
| Capital city in the country where I live got a 25% population
| bump over a few months a few years back, of people who didn't
| even speak the language. Barely anything appretiably negative
| overall happened.
| Natfan wrote:
| a person cannot "be illegal". they can perform acts which are
| illegal, sure, but to call them "illegals" is just
| dehumanizing rhetoric that adds absolutely nothing to the
| discussion.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Yeah, this is no different from IBM setting up punch card
| tabulating machines to help Nazi Germany track its victims.
| DuperPower wrote:
| the thing about supervillains is that you expect technical
| seriousness but thats just Hollywood not showing that
| psychopaths and narcissists are lazy and sell BS
| drcongo wrote:
| Much better link with some excellent (and some not so great)
| discussion already: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633378
| mentalfist wrote:
| Since it's inception, Palantir has extracted roughly 10 billion
| usd taxpayer money from the US government. God bless America.
| shevy-java wrote:
| It is a de-facto corporate state right now. Everyone in the
| current government tries to see how much money they can steal.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| It's been crony capitalism for decades now. Trump has been
| the only one that the corporations couldn't buy, hence why
| he's such a thorn in their sides, and by extension the sides
| of every other federal politician.
| SaltyBackendGuy wrote:
| > Trump has been the only one that the corporations
| couldn't buy
|
| Hasn't he accepted donations from many mega corporations?
| My assumption is that a corporation wont donate money,
| without the expectation of ROI.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| OP has the delusion that being rich means you are
| resistant to corruption by being less likely to pursue
| riches. That being rich causes one to stop pursuing it.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Form what I've seen in life it's the exact opposite - the
| most greedy are the richest. The only people who have the
| seemingly unreasonable desire for infinite wealth are the
| already wealthy. For most everyday people, there is a
| cutoff amount.
| Ritewut wrote:
| This is one of the most insane things I've ever read. You
| have to be so disconnected from reality to believe this.
| Altern4tiveAcc wrote:
| Has been for over a century.
| helterskelter wrote:
| I'm so free, I'm so free I'm so free, I'm so free
| Feel so good, now, I'm so free Oh oh oh, I'm so
| free
| detourdog wrote:
| Lou Reed lyrics?
| randommar wrote:
| Ah yes, beta-tested on Palestinians, how generous of them to ship
| the polished version to everyone else.
| pixelready wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_boomerang
| therobots927 wrote:
| Welcome to the downvote club folks. It's an honor to serve
| here with you.
| bradley13 wrote:
| The question you have to ask yourself, us this: How do you deport
| with millions of illegal immigrants? Propose a better system,
| considering the realities on the ground.
|
| And, no, ignoring their existence is not an option, unless you
| want "millions" to become "tens of millions" or even more. Note
| also that mass deportations also happened under Biden and Obama -
| they just didn't attract the same publicity.
| RIMR wrote:
| 1. You don't deport millions of undocumented people, you find a
| way integrate those who are willing to work (most of them) into
| your society.
|
| 2. Obama and Biden didn't get the same level of attention
| because they weren't being publicly antagonistic and racist, or
| using deliberately cruel tactics to accomplish their goals. Or
| breaking the law / violating the constitution to meet their
| ends.
| whatthesmack wrote:
| > 1. You don't deport millions of undocumented people, you
| find a way integrate those who are willing to work (most of
| them) into your society.
|
| How is that currently working out for all of Europe? Hint:
| not well at all.
|
| > 2. Obama and Biden didn't get the same level of attention
| because they weren't being publicly antagonistic and racist,
| or using deliberately cruel tactics to accomplish their
| goals. Or breaking the law / violating the constitution to
| meet their ends.
|
| You've made a lot of ambiguous accusations right here. Can
| you please give specific examples?
| wat10000 wrote:
| Example: Kavanaugh stops. Racial profiling is now legal
| thanks to our Supreme Court.
| jakeydus wrote:
| Trump referred to Somalis as "garbage". If that's not
| publicly antagonistic or racist then what is?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| 1) You don't deport them, you don't ignore them, you document
| them. Then you let them live their lives. They're people, not a
| mold outgrowth that needs culling.
|
| 2) Check those stats a bit more closely. The vast majority of
| "deportations" were people turned away at the border.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| Would you support deporting people who are criminals? Or have
| no intention of ever working and just want to live off
| various welfare programs? Trying to find some common ground
| here.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Nope. Access to food, water, shelter, and freedom of
| movement are fundamental human rights. I'm not a proponent
| of executing useless eaters. If you commit a crime with a
| prison sentence then you serve that sentence where you
| committed the crime.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| Thanks for taking the time to clarify your position.
|
| So if China or some other country decided to send 10
| million people here for whatever reason, you think our
| official policy should be to welcome then in and provide
| them food, shelter, etc...?
|
| What about 100 million people?
|
| Should they also be given citizenship and right to vote
| in addition to food/shelter?
| idle_zealot wrote:
| The only issue would be logistics. Getting supporting
| infrastructure and housing set up. But yeah, ultimately.
| More hands, more consumers. Why wouldn't we want as many
| citizens as possible, we certainly have the land for it.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| I wonder in such a case if more populous countries like
| India or China could in theory send over 100 million+
| people to our country over the course of a decade, and
| then once those people are citizens, legally vote for the
| US to be annexed by China, etc..
|
| You could conquer a country without a single shot fired.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| Yeah, sure, if Chinese people were ants in a hivemind
| that strategy might work.
| palmotea wrote:
| > 1) You don't deport them, you don't ignore them, you
| document them. Then you let them live their lives. They're
| people, not a mold outgrowth that needs culling.
|
| I don't think that's a policy that would get majoritarian
| support in the US. The only people who can and should get
| deported are those who are not already not authorized to be
| here. If you don't deport them, it's functionally equivalent
| to an open-borders policy. Do you want more MAGA? Because
| open-borders is how you get more MAGA.
|
| What you're proposing is also roughly analogous to a policy
| of not evicting squatters. If someone breaks into your house
| and decides to start living in one of your bedrooms, are you
| going to want them out or give them a key? The squatter is a
| person too, not a mold outgrowth that needs culling.
| comrh wrote:
| There is broad support for Dreamers. It's not as simple as
| deport everyone here illegally and the public seems to
| understand that.
| palmotea wrote:
| > There is broad support for Dreamers. It's not as simple
| as deport everyone here illegally and the public seems to
| understand that.
|
| What the GGP was advocating was _much_ broader than that.
| What 's sympathetic about the Dreamers is the non-
| consensual nature of their position (their parents took
| them here) and many of them have little to no connection
| to the country they'd be deported to.
|
| That logic doesn't apply to, say, the 3.5 million illegal
| immigrants that arrived between 2021 and 2023
| (https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-
| ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-...), but those are people the GGP
| would "document not deport."
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > Because open-borders is how you get more MAGA.
|
| Pretending that immigrants are the underlying cause of
| every societal failure is how you get MAGA. Enabling that
| big lie bolsters it.
|
| And I don't think I can enumerate the ways in which an
| occupied house are different from a country and unsuitable
| for the metaphor you're trying.
| palmotea wrote:
| > Pretending that immigrants are the underlying cause of
| every societal failure is how you get MAGA. Enabling that
| big lie bolsters it.
|
| What are you going to do, win elections by lecturing
| everyone about how they're wrong and they need to think
| just like you? People thought the Biden administration's
| immigration policy was too lax, and that was a major
| contributing cause to the second Trump term.
|
| Deporting people who are in the country illegally is a no
| brainer. If you don't want that, get the law changed.
| Until then, it's not wrong to deport them.
|
| Now, that doesn't mean deportation should be the only or
| even the main method of immigration enforcement
| (personally, I like the idea of putting more burden on
| employers).
|
| > And I don't think I can enumerate the ways in which an
| occupied house are different from a country and
| unsuitable for the metaphor you're trying.
|
| Oh of course, it's always too different if you want it to
| be. That way, you can continue to feel righteous.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > What are you going to do, win elections by lecturing
| everyone about how they're wrong and they need to think
| just like you?
|
| I'm partial to the strategy of selling voters on a set of
| policies that will improve their lives and address their
| problems. Unfortunately neither party in my country is
| keen on that idea.
|
| > People thought the Biden administration's immigration
| policy was too lax, and that was a major contributing
| cause to the second Trump term.
|
| People thought that once they were told to think that.
| It's an easy sell to blame everything wrong on the scary
| dirty foreigners. When people are dissatisfied populism
| wins, regardless of whether the talking points are rooted
| in reality. The responsible thing to do is try to get
| people on board with populist ideas that help rather than
| hurt.
| palmotea wrote:
| > I'm partial to the strategy of selling voters on a set
| of policies that will improve their lives and address
| their problems.
|
| It's a seductive idea, but it's the attitude of an
| authoritarian technocrat. However, the US is supposed to
| be a _representative_ democracy, which requires being
| sensitive to the problems voters have, _as voters see
| them_. And that 's probably a big part of Trump's actual
| appeal. My understanding is at his rallies and in his
| rhetoric, he gave the appearance of being responsive to
| many concerns that had been willfully ignored or denied
| for a long time (for instance: free trade dogma, which
| destroyed a lot of things and insisted people be
| satisfied with the easily-quantified cheap junk they were
| being given).
|
| > People thought that once they were told to think that.
|
| Don't pretend your thoughts are any more independent than
| those of the people you're othering.
| stuffn wrote:
| Cute.
|
| 1. Entering a country without proper documentation is a
| crime. Therefore all "undocumented immigration" is by
| definition criminal.
|
| 2. Removing criminals is paramount to a safe society and a
| justice system that is respected.
|
| 3. "Documenting them and letting them live" undermines legal
| immigrants who likely worked very hard to integrate
| culturally, establish themselves, and do the proper LEGAL
| paperwork. These legal immigrants have stringent reporting
| requirements, need to be careful about even minor crimes
| (excessive speeding tickets even!) etc. How is your proposal
| remotely fair to them?
|
| I don't understand why this is a controversial opinion at
| all. I have yet to meet a legal immigrant that isn't okay
| with booting anyone that isn't legal out. A country without
| border control is NOT a country.
| idle_zealot wrote:
| > "Documenting them and letting them live" undermines legal
| immigrants who likely worked very hard to integrate
| culturally, establish themselves, and do the proper LEGAL
| paperwork.
|
| It's a shame those people had to work so hard to be treated
| like their neighbors. That's not a reason to deny others
| that treatment though.
|
| > I have yet to meet a legal immigrant that isn't okay with
| booting anyone that isn't legal out.
|
| Yeah they tend to skew pretty reactionary. That tends to
| sort itself out after a generation or two.
|
| > A country without border control is NOT a country.
|
| I didn't say we shouldn't have border security. In what
| universe is a goon squad going door to door checking for
| undesirables "border control"?
| daheza wrote:
| How about we treat people humanely? How about we focus on the
| criminals and dangerous people first instead of getting people
| that have pending citizenship appointments. How about we don't
| grab people from hospitals, schools, and places of worship? How
| about we try to get citizenship easier access for these folks
| who are clearly living and contributing successfully to our
| society? How about we don't have masked thugs grabbing anyone
| of color off the street?
|
| Its extremely easy to do better than they are. Biden and Obama
| did in fact do this and successfully. They are not trying to do
| it well, they are trying to do it cruelly. The cruelty is the
| point.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Biden did not do it successfully, or most of anything really
| commandlinefan wrote:
| > focus on the criminals and dangerous people first
|
| That's what they say they are doing? Every time I read about
| them arresting somebody who was "just picking their kids up
| from school", it turns out to be some professional agitator
| who was trying to get arrested in exchange for a photo op.
| buffington wrote:
| > Every time I read about them arresting somebody...
|
| You're clearly not reading enough and are a part of the
| problem if you believe what you're saying to be true.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| I'm not 100% sure what to believe, but I have been around
| long enough to take everything I read with a grain of
| salt.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Gonna need more than a grain these days.
| cmtm4 wrote:
| If that were true, they'd be showing up with real warrants
| (super easy if these are convicted felon illegal immigrants
| as they claim! But of course there are nowhere near as many
| of those as, say, the "thousands" they claim exist in
| Minneapolis) and mostly dressing in much more ordinary
| federal agent clothes and it'd all be boring and uneventful
| and _legal_ enough that most of what they 're doing would
| hardly even be noticed.
|
| Going several thousand(!) strong into a US city and rolling
| around town in paramilitary convoys questioning people who
| don't "look American", to... "support fraud investigations"
| apparently, LOL, WTF... among other things, is why they're
| a hot topic right now. If they were doing what they claim
| to be doing, this would all be boring stuff.
|
| Frankly I don't feel like I should be having to explain why
| guys in SUVs wearing plate carriers and comically
| overloaded with blinged out Call of Duty gear driving
| around a US city and sometimes jumping out _literally_
| going "papers, please" to people who "look foreign", all
| while universally masking up to hide their identities, is
| _extremely fucking bad_ , to the point that I think that
| language is _way too mild_ , but here we are I guess.
| timeon wrote:
| > That's what they say they are doing?
|
| Hardly with president convicted of sexual assault (among
| other things).
| commandlinefan wrote:
| See, this is exactly why I don't believe the things I
| read - his only actual conviction was for falsifying
| business records. (He is a convicted felon, though,
| that's indisputable).
| spit2wind wrote:
| How does one become to be a professional agitator?
| Indeed.com comes up with no results. I have a friend who's
| bored with their job.
| negzero7 wrote:
| They can self deport and get paid doing so, it doesn't get
| any more humane than that really.
| cheese4242 wrote:
| Cost-free travel back home, a $1,000 exit bonus, and
| forgiveness of any "failure to depart" fines. Quite
| generous.
|
| Over the Holidays they even increased the exit bonus to
| $3000: https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/12/22/increased-
| incentives-dhs...
|
| Yet another reason why I find the haphazard comparisons to
| Nazi Germany/Gestapo so farcical.
| aswegs8 wrote:
| Since you're only getting blowback, I think taking tough action
| on immigration was a long time coming. I don't agree with the
| violent tactics, but exactly those people who couldn't settle
| on some sensible solution are the ones that fostered the
| current situation where the (anti-)immigration pendulum swings
| back hard.
| commandlinefan wrote:
| That's where I'm stuck on this. When you have certain cities
| (or even entire states) saying "we will resist _any_
| deportation effort", what choice does a deportation officer
| have than what they're doing right now?
| michaelmrose wrote:
| Number of immigrants has been slowly increasing or steady for
| decades. It's a fantasy that it's a crisis or that there is a
| risk of tens of millions flooding our shores. We mostly
| drastically benefit from products downstream from cheap labor
| while tacitly allowing those who don't get in trouble so we can
| continue to benefit from this.
|
| We could have "solved" immigration decades ago with enough
| punative treatment of employers but didn't want to.
|
| If you want to actually stop it you could just ramp up punative
| treatment of employers over the next 5 years while keeping
| other policies at Obama or Bush era.
|
| Half the undocumented without us family members would self
| deport gradually whilst jobs dried up. Offer amnesty to
| productive people with family roots and no criminal record and
| you end up with a microscopic undocumented pop.
|
| Meanwhile DSHS is tweeting a pic of an island paradise with the
| caption America after 100M deportations. There are around 12M
| undocumented but about 100M non-whites if you have trouble
| interpreting their meaning or intention.
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Ah yes, the "fantasy" of housing price inflation and wage
| depression.
| hellzbellz123 wrote:
| The fantasy is that's it's caused by migrants and going to
| be fixed by deporting them.
| NickC25 wrote:
| >How do you deport with millions of illegal immigrants?
|
| Make E-verify the federal minimum standard for ALL employers
| nationwide.
|
| Fine the shit out of all businesses that don't comply. Fine the
| shit out of employers that hire illegal labor. We know who they
| are.
|
| You don't deport them, you give them no reason to stay here
| because there'd be no work for them.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| You're assuming deportations work, but the evidence doesn't
| suggest that. Huge numbers of deportations have happened, with
| some people deported multiple times. Do you feel the problem is
| solved?
|
| Ultimately, you have to fix the incentives. Fine the people
| hiring them, making it uneconomical, and you will remove the
| main incentive for people to enter the US illegally.
|
| Our politicians have simply seemed fairly uninterested in
| holding business owners accountable.
| hairofadog wrote:
| They didn't attract the same publicity because
|
| * They didn't jack up the budget to a size larger than most
| countries' militaries
|
| * They didn't target primarily Republican cities and states out
| of vengeance for how those cities and states voted
|
| * They didn't explicitly target people here legally
|
| * They didn't send bands of masked men house to house to kick
| in doors without warrants
|
| * They didn't implement Kavanaugh Stops, which makes racial
| profiling legal
|
| * They didn't implement a "Papers, please" policy
|
| * They didn't crow about their cruelty on social media or make
| funny memes about immigrant families being destroyed
|
| * They didn't broadcast that agents had "absolute immunity"
| even if their agents killed people
|
| * They didn't use fascist iconography and phrasing in their
| press releases and design systems
|
| * They didn't create a situation in which businesses and
| schools had to shut down because their employees and students
| were afraid to leave their houses because even though they were
| U.S. citizens, they had darker colored skin or spoke with an
| accent
|
| * They didn't try to end birthright citizenship
|
| I mean the list goes on and on. It's not the same at all.
| That's why they didn't attract the same publicity.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| These raids are the indiscriminate door to door raids right?
| There are lots of disturbing reports from these. For example ICE
| agents showing up at a white family's door to ask which houses
| have Asian people living in them. The raids are blatantly
| unconstitutional (fourth amendment) but also, regardless of laws,
| they are well beyond the pale in terms of morality. It's crazy
| that tech companies are willfully participating in this. Palantir
| must be treated as a criminal enterprise by the next non-GOP
| administration, and there should be consequences for everyone
| there. As someone else said, you don't get to just say "I was
| only in charge of transport".
| rambojohnson wrote:
| This, along with the AI slop and agentic nonsense gutting real
| work, is exactly why I pivoted my career. The industry feels
| like it's being driven by chest-thumping, siege-heiling
| authoritarian inbreds at the top, propped up by tepid company-
| man shills who clap along and call it innovation while the
| place rots from the inside. my feed on LinkedIn gives me hives.
| I've since cancelled my account as well. good riddance. tech is
| dead and I hope the public doesn't have to yet again bailout
| some late-stage capitalist bullshit when yet another bubble
| bursts. /rant
| 1234letshaveatw wrote:
| Doesn't your indiscriminate label preclude the involvement of
| tools like Palantir? Unless you want us to believe that the
| tooling is worthless. But then again, I find most of the anti-
| ICE arguments to be nonsensical.
| buffington wrote:
| Indiscriminate can be defined as "done at random or without
| careful judgment" - I think the latter part of that
| definition perfectly describes ELITE.
|
| I find it nonsensical to dismiss an anti-ICE argument because
| of one word.
| SilverElfin wrote:
| Palantir is directing them to neighborhoods. The doors are
| being chosen indiscriminately and people are being stopped or
| detained on the street indiscriminately. So I don't think
| those are in conflict.
|
| > But then again, I find most of the anti-ICE arguments to be
| nonsensical.
|
| That's certainly your right and choice. But when we're
| spending tens of billions a year on harassing immigrants, you
| should ask if it is better to just spend the money on
| supporting them instead. Our economy benefits greatly from
| immigrants.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46633378
| big_toast wrote:
| Can people bring higher effort posts to this discussion so that
| this thread doesn't get pulled like the others?
|
| Is there a specific product line that this app is using? What
| FOIA laws are applicable to its use? What kind of data does this
| provide? something else?
| gnarlouse wrote:
| I told somebody that Palantir is building the maid services and
| rat poison for a post-lower/middle class society. They didn't
| believe me. Seeing this is vindicating.
| laweijfmvo wrote:
| "Tracking Apps for Thee, but Not for Me"
| schnatterer wrote:
| Original 404media article:
|
| https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-f...
|
| https://archive.ph/wa32f
| periodjet wrote:
| Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It's
| very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN,
| ostensibly populated by smart people.
|
| It's possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and
| ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about
| fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change.
|
| It's possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn't be
| marked as intrinsically "illegal" while also believing that an
| immigration queue should exist and skipping it is immoral and
| should be illegal.
|
| Etcetera, etcetera.
|
| You don't HAVE to dedicate yourself to a fully polarized set of
| beliefs. Nuance is possible. What the hell is causing us to lose
| our minds like this? Is it really just social media? So
| frustrating to witness.
| smokel wrote:
| The core issue is not that people cannot think with nuance, but
| that nuance is costly and poorly rewarded.
| periodjet wrote:
| I fear you may be right...
| R_D_Olivaw wrote:
| Yes yes, shoot mothers in the face in her car.
|
| Grab human beings from their homes and detain them thousands of
| miles away with no due process.
|
| Send human beings to detention camps in another country NOT the
| one they are from
|
| Please, people, have some decency and maintain the nuance.
| We're not barbarians here! Sheesh.
| periodjet wrote:
| This comment is a pretty robust example of the problem I was
| referring to.
| oldjim798 wrote:
| What nuance is missing? The above comment is a list of
| facts.
| layer8 wrote:
| Lists of facts don't inherently constitute a nuanced
| take.
| ilogik wrote:
| Is there anything inaccurate in the above comment?
| Refreeze5224 wrote:
| Then stop hiding behind "nuance" and be more explicit about
| how you support what's going on. Everyone who disagrees
| with the ongoing blatant fascist police state activity do
| not lack nuance, they lack your ability to suppress
| empathy.
| NemoNobody wrote:
| It's a slippery slope.
|
| ICE at one time was legitimate - their previous purpose had
| legitimacy... past tense.
|
| ICE will not exist at some point in the hopefully sooner
| future than later.
|
| No amount of nuance will change fundamental failure to
| success.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Because the use of ICE and its actions has become so extreme
| that it can't be simply "moderated". The Trump Admin is pushing
| it to extreme action. So unless that is removed the only
| possible response is a strong reaction. ICE gutted its own
| nuance.
| datsci_est_2015 wrote:
| Unfortunately while proselytizing about nuance, the side with
| the power and the guns is working overtime to make it so there
| is only one valid set of beliefs, and those beliefs are
| "American". This is no longer a symmetric conflict of
| ideologies, I'm not sure what it's going to take for people to
| realize this. A tidal wave of blue in the midterms I think is
| the only hope a lot of us have left. Maybe if that doesn't come
| to fruition, either legitimately or illegitimately, despondent
| Russian literature will start to resonate much more strongly
| for us.
| schmuckonwheels wrote:
| >A tidal wave of blue in the midterms I think is the only
| hope a lot of us have left. Maybe if that doesn't come to
| fruition, either legitimately or _illegitimately_
|
| So you admit you're ok with cheating in elections to get your
| desired outcome?
|
| At least you're being honest.
| danorama wrote:
| Whoosh.
| Altern4tiveAcc wrote:
| > It's possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear
| and ethical mandate
|
| ... "We" (a lot of people, not everyone who posts here) don't
| believe that. Lots of people disagree with immigration control
| as a concept period.
|
| The existence of that app is an abomination; the fact tax payer
| money is being allocated to it is tragicomic. Not spending it
| and just giving it as tax returns to the population would be so
| much better than kidnapping people over being born in the wrong
| place.
| tick_tock_tick wrote:
| > ... "We" (a lot of people, not everyone who posts here)
| don't believe that. Lots of people disagree with immigration
| control as a concept period.
|
| I mean sure but you have to acknowledge that is an extremely
| fringe belief that basically no one in the USA supports. The
| debate is on "how" it's being done not that we shouldn't have
| immigration control.
| immibis wrote:
| Yes, in the sense it's possible to believe the same things
| about the NSDAP. However, one who believes such things is
| simply wrong.
| tonymet wrote:
| Sophisticated and nuanced opinions are an embellishment . A
| badge worn at cocktail parties .
|
| Cleaning up a mess is 1000x messier than making it .
|
| No one will ever care or remember your sophisticated opinion.
|
| That's why it may be possible to have nuance but it's just a
| peacocks feather
| basch wrote:
| nuance exists plenty it just doesnt float to the top.
|
| by definition, groupthink will get more upvotes than
| mishmashthink.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by
| smart people.
|
| Even smart people are capable of hate.
| falloutx wrote:
| > believing that an immigration queue should exist and skipping
| it is immoral and should be illegal.
|
| Honestly, There is no queue for poor people, this is their only
| way, most of these people aren't even eligible for farm worker
| temp visa. US has created bureaucracy over the years in such a
| way that these people can never become legal. They are not
| skipping the line and taking some tech worker's spot or
| anything.
| Atomic_Torrfisk wrote:
| I blame infiltration by bots slowly shifting the Overton
| window. Did this site not get "weird" in the last few years?
|
| Not to think to highly of ourselves, I for one am a genuine
| idiot, but the crowed here likely has more influence than a lot
| of other online forums. Making it a worthwhile target,
| especially on the AI front. Plus the site is an easy to
| integrate into a bots with the minimal website and all.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > It's possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear
| and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going
| about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to
| change.
|
| Yes, that it is a set of things that it is possible one could
| believe.
|
| That is not an argument for it being a set of things that one
| ought to believe, as opposed to that ICE has a _legal_ mandate
| that it _isn 't actually pursuing_, and the mandate which it is
| pursuing is both intentionally murky, unethical to the extent
| that evidence suggests what it is, and _also_ pursued by
| methods that are illegal and inhumane even irrespective of the
| bad ends that they are directed at.
|
| > It's possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn't
| be marked as intrinsically "illegal" while also believing that
| an immigration queue should exist and skipping it is immoral
| and should be illegal.
|
| Again, that it is certainly a set of things it is _possible_ to
| believe, but it seems pretty silly to believe. A queue is _at
| best_ an undesirable consequences of particular choices about
| how to manage concerns about quantitative levels of immigration
| and particular impacts those levels might have, not an ideal to
| be pursued.
|
| > Nuance is possible.
|
| "X is possible" is not an argument is that X is, factually or
| morally as appropriate to the shape of the proposition at
| issue, _justified_. And an extended argument that sets of
| beliefs are possible is something people only engage in when
| they recognize that they are _unable_ to make the case that
| they are justified, but nevertheless want to suggest that
| people are bad for failing to adopt them.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| It's because there is extremism both on the left and right: the
| left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop left from
| coming back, and the right thinks that if they don't keep their
| power now, the left will take it and keep it using immigrants.
|
| Both of them are right: unless there's a civil war or moderate
| president (which probably needs ranked choice voting) the most
| probable scenario is that one of the 2 extremes succeeds.
|
| I also miss the old HN btw and wish that there wouldn't be any
| right/left politics, just the old classic libertarian
| property/privacy/opennes right debates, but it looks like those
| days are gone.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Yeah, remember when Biden deployed a personal army on red
| states and threatened to cancel the election?
|
| What world do you live in where you would expect equally
| extreme behavior from a democrat president?
| hairofadog wrote:
| > the left thinks that the right wants a power grab to stop
| left from coming back
|
| It would probably help if Trump didn't fantasize about this
| publicly all the time
|
| > the right thinks that if they don't keep their power now,
| the left will take it and keep it using immigrants
|
| The left will "take it" by being elected, if they are in fact
| elected. That's the extremist threat the right is worried
| about?
|
| What does "keep it using immigrants" mean?
| vitaflo wrote:
| Companies have advertising to sell. Nuance doesn't sell very
| well.
| anon291 wrote:
| I have no strong feelings towards palantir. But the ones I do
| have are mostly negative.
|
| However it seems crazy to me that even the idea of deporting
| people who have no legal status in this country is immediately
| branded Nazi. This just feeds extremism because it is extremism
| in and of itself
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| People have been deported for decades but the manner in which
| deportations occur is important. There's a world of difference
| between law enforcement and these brownshirts.
| Altern4tiveAcc wrote:
| > the idea of deporting people who have no legal status in this
| country is immediately branded Nazi
|
| Because that idea consists of harming someone over their birth
| circumstances, rather than any objective harm they may have
| done.
| tencentshill wrote:
| Even trying to follow the existing law is punishable by exile
| without trial. You can go to all your legally appointed court
| dates, follow every rule in the book, and get snatched and
| deported from the courtroom the next minute.
| anon291 wrote:
| If you are in this country illegally to begin with, then yes,
| going to court and following procedure will still result in
| deportation and a permanent ban on entry. While following the
| post-crime procedure is indeed laudable, the prescribed
| punishment for flaunting the immigration laws of the US is
| being barred from entry.
| swsieber wrote:
| > the idea of deporting people who have no legal status in this
| country is immediately branded Nazi
|
| It's not just that idea though. Plenty of presidents have done
| that without pushback. It's that idea combined with:
|
| * Rhetoric dehumanizing the immigrants
|
| * Raiding churches, courts, jobs, etc
|
| * Revoking legal status of immigrants
|
| * Reducing training time for new hires
|
| * Detaining U.S. citizens and threatening them
|
| * Saying it'll help the U.S. citizens, when data shows it
| doesn't
| anon291 wrote:
| I can agree with (1) and (5).
|
| (2) -- why can't you raid a church? A church is not a special
| place. America is not a theocracy which gives sacrosanct
| respect to some portions of land.
|
| (3) The US has every right to revoke legal status with no
| other reason than it doesn't make sense for the United
| States. We can talk about how it's done, but that's rarely
| the issue at hand in these debates.
|
| (4) Not sure what this means
|
| (6) Politicians say incorrect things all the time to appeal
| to their base.
| rconti wrote:
| I have a friend whose parents were just (incorrectly) detained
| by ICE, and had to pay a $3000 administrative fee to be
| released.
|
| That _is_ the extremism. It's here.
| anon291 wrote:
| Sure, that's extremism. That has nothing to do with ICE using
| software to identify illegal migrants. The argument in the
| article was not that the software often gets it wrong, but
| that -- even if it were right -- something would be wrong
| with it.
| hairofadog wrote:
| That's not what's happening. There wouldn't be the backlash if
| they were primarily deporting "the worst of the worst", as they
| promised, using due process. Instead they're targeting
| everyone, including people here legally and in many cases U.S.
| citizens, _without_ due process, in the cruelest and most over-
| the-top way possible.
| anon291 wrote:
| Ignore the worst of the worst framing. Even a person who is
| unobjectionable but who is in the country without legal
| authorization is fine to be deported. I'm not going to pearl
| clutch over it. Estimates say that up 3-5% of the entire
| american population has no legal right to be in this country.
| I'm not a perfectionist. A few 100,000 would be totally
| reasonable to say 'good enough' at. But multiple millions?
| Not really sure where this line of argumentation goes really.
| The US government has made it very clear for a year now that
| people without authorization to be here should leave. They've
| even offered monetary incentives to go. At this point, people
| flaunting the law are doing so openly. Most of these people
| are not even refugees from war-torn regions. They're from our
| neighboring country of Mexico which has no war going on.
| hairofadog wrote:
| It's both the fact that they're going after people here
| _legally_ and even _U.S. citizens_ , and the brutality and
| unconstitutional nature of their tactics. They are
| literally going house to house kicking in doors without a
| warrant. They're racial profiling. The ICE agents are
| completely out of control as their recruitment standards
| are nonexistent and higher-ups are signaling that they can
| do literally whatever they want, including killing people,
| and they'll face no consequences. I don't understand how
| _any_ sane person can support it, much less the "don't
| tread on me" crowd.
|
| Detaining and/or deporting people here illegally to their
| home countries with due process: OK
|
| Detaining, deporting, and/or killing people here illegally,
| legally, and U.S. citizens, _without_ due process, to
| private detention camps or third countries: NOT OK
| timeon wrote:
| My great-grand parents woke one day with status of illegals.
| Shortly after that they have been included in mass deportations
| to Poland.
|
| Some people have asked how something like that could happened.
| Thanks for your comment. Now I can sand them this link as an
| answer.
| elephantum wrote:
| Sounds like Palantir built a useful piece of software, nice job
| fudged71 wrote:
| To tech leaders and hiring managers at other companies: If you're
| reading this, please consider publicly stating that your company
| will interview Palantir engineers who want to exit on moral
| grounds. Create an explicit off-ramp. Lower the barrier to
| leaving. Make it a tech industry norm that we offer refuge to
| engineers trying to do the right thing.
| id00 wrote:
| Why shouldn't I do quite the opposite? I don't want people with
| a questionable morale who knowingly built those systems work in
| my company
| speedgoose wrote:
| You could focus on having positive projects for the society,
| and a good reputation. That works.
|
| I don't think I ever seen a CV from an ex Pal*ntir employee
| though. Perhaps they are automatically filtered or working for
| good morals doesn't attract them.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| I think they might be a little desperate for new employees
| since I haven't worked in about ten years and both Palantir
| and Anduril contacted me with cold calls in past year.
| tamimio wrote:
| Only an idiot will think all of this is about "illegals"; this is
| a whole infrastructure of mass surveillance and "rogue" police.
| They might be after specific targets now, but once it's fully
| normalized, you are next. From data collection and aggregation,
| the invasive surveillance like Flock and Ring, the use of AI and
| apps, it's being carefully planned and rolled out for such a
| mission. There should be a platform to track the people who
| worked on building these technologies and apps. I would never
| trust or hire someone who has no morals and worked and spent
| hours making ELITE app or Flock Android systems or similar; these
| people are the enablers for such surveillance and should be held
| accountable.
| bdangubic wrote:
| if you go by "morals" every FAANG employee (current and
| previous) would need to go plumbing school
| Altern4tiveAcc wrote:
| Fair enough, they had (specially their executives and the
| engineers working on ad tech) a negative impact in the world
| as well.
| wan23 wrote:
| Given the choice, end users choose free or cheap and ad
| supported over full price in huge majorities. You have to
| weigh "I don't like ads" against 200 million (!) people on
| Netflix's ad supported plan and how much enjoyment they get
| that they might not otherwise. Not to mention things like
| Google that are ad supported and genuinely useful. In the
| real world things have pros and cons.
| upboundspiral wrote:
| I used to buy this thinking, but no longer. People are
| incredibly resourceful, and instead of innovating towards
| exploiting and manipulating people, we could choose to
| innovate towards conserveration of important things, just
| like we have done in the past.
|
| We don't fund out national parks with advertisements. We
| don't fund our libraries with advertisements. We could
| create the same structures for the internet as well,
| where crucial internet resources are protected and
| stewarded. They don't necessarily need to be in the hands
| of ad companies.
|
| Sure, I will not deny that having things be "free" (and
| paying for them in other ways) has been a huge boon from
| one perspective, but we can also evolve to put "free"
| things in different places. Because things are never
| free. Advertisements are funding mass surveillance. They
| are encroaching our civil liberties and normalizing it.
| There is a total cost to things that extens beyond money.
| What we don't pay out of pocket we pay as a society.
| falloutx wrote:
| If the government can track illegals who haven't interacted
| with government for 40 years and track them down to their
| house, you can imagine how fast they can track a tax paying
| citizen.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| Palantir damage control got to this thread faster than the last
| one.
| therobots927 wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if they have a whole team dedicated to
| running an online bot army to counter dissent. It wouldn't
| surprise me if they plan on selling that service to their
| customers.
|
| Ironically the best solution for this is for websites to start
| de-anonymizing users to the extent necessary to block fake
| accounts from polluting the airwaves.
| stuffn wrote:
| > The Nazis could only dream of having such a capability.
|
| > Imagine working for this company, on this product. Every day,
| you go into work, in what I assume is a beautiful office with
| pine furniture and a well-stocked kitchen, and you build software
| that will help to deport people using what you know are
| extrajudicial means without due process. You probably have OKRs.
| There are customer calls with ICE. Every two-week sprint, you
| take on tasks that help make this engine better.
|
| Ah yes, Schrodinger's Nazi. Simultaneously a fascist paramilitary
| organization, but also capable of being pushed back by policy and
| protest.
|
| "Everything I don't like is Nazi" is the lefty playbook and like
| every other word it's completely lost it's meaning at this point.
| hairofadog wrote:
| Let's say a third party was elected and started implementing
| certain policies. What would they have to do for you to call
| them fascist? Fascism is an actual thing, after all, so there
| must be _some_ line that would separate fascism from not-
| fascism.
| jorl17 wrote:
| When I was 19, an ex-student of my Alma Mater came to give a talk
| about TDD. While I found the lecture interesting, I vividly
| remember that a portion of our community rallied against him,
| attempting to boycott his presence because he worked for
| Palantir.
|
| At the time, I remember thinking how extreme that seemed, and how
| I was "sure" nothing is black-and-white and that, certainly,
| while Palantir had shady connections, for sure it must bring some
| good to the world and, so, why boycott this poor man? It felt
| genuinely baffling to me.
|
| While in many ways I consider myself a more balanced person today
| (precisely thinking less in black-and-white terms), this is a
| topic where I do not agree. I would not work for Palantir and,
| were I to travel back in time, I would join the boycott. Heck,
| given how I was when I was younger, I'd expand on it greatly and
| try to rally some form of physical protest.
|
| A friend of mine once threw me the argument of "well, the enemy
| [presumably China] is doing this kind of stuff, so we have to do
| it, too". This may seem like a compelling argument at first --
| and it may be so for many -- but it can't, to me. It's ethically
| disgusting. The solution to world with decaying ethics is not to
| continue contributing to its decay. It erases accountability, it
| normalizes atrocity, it strips humanity from our very own flesh
| and blood -- it escalates conflict! It. Just. Can't. be.
|
| We must fight this filth.
| therobots927 wrote:
| Welcome to the downvote club. Anyone who criticizes tech
| oligarchs on here gets downvoted by bots.
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