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The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

washingtonpost.com

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Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#11

Post by creaghpatr »

michaelt wrote: post #8
mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

A great many expansions to the power of the state have been justified with the argument "this is to fight terror and child abuse" Perhaps they signed up naively imagining they were working on a tool that would be used for that and nothing else ?

It's definitely a weird company to work for if you don't believe in enforcing laws, or only partial enforcement of laws; especially border laws.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#12

Post by CydeWeys »

mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

I interviewed with Palantir maybe seven years ago (didn't get the job) and definitely wasn't aware at the time that they were doing this kind of work, if they even were back then.

And had I known they were doing CBP stuff, I may have been OK with it under Obama even. It wasn't until Trump got elected and immigration policy became explicitly racist and enforcement child-separationy and concentration-campy that I really started opposing it.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#13

Post by qazpot »

mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

I am assuming ICE is "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement". I am not from USA but why every comment here is implying ICE to be some evil thing.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#14

Post by throwawaytoday5 »

qazpot wrote: post #13
mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

I am assuming ICE is "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement". I am not from USA but why every comment here is implying ICE to be some evil thing.

ICE is a recent phenomenon whose creation was only due to 9/11 attacks. Prior everything they did was handled by other organizations more effectively.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#15

Post by the-dude »

prepend wrote: post #10
matchagaucho wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The difference is in Pro Services. MS does not send employees from Redmond to help ICE use Excel. Palantir does bundle software and services. Their software is so complex, it is typically Palantir employees building the models and analytics.

MS has professional services and they do send people to ICE to help use Excel. They also have an extensive partner network. Any large software company sells consulting services. I don’t know about Python, but RStudio sells professional services to help with use of R.

> and they do send people to ICE to help use Excel.

source

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#17

Post by sp332 »

mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

The ICE thing has gotten dramatically worse recently. Accepting a certain level of abuse of power in other LE agencies doesn't necessarily mean they're OK with, say, actively pushing back against a DoJ settlement so they can hold children in detention indefinitely, etc.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#18

Post by [deleted] »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #6
prepend wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir is a software company right and sells tools to ICE? Does someone wearing an Excel shirt make you uncomfortable because ICE uses MSOffice? What about OSS projects like R and Python that also enable ICE to analyze data to find people. Is the expectation that Palantir should not sell software to ICE?

Most enterprise software sales aren’t as low touch as an Excel license, and Palantir is very much on the high touch side of the spectrum. When Palantir sells software to a large government agency, that means squads of Palantir employees go to the government agency and help them run it, and that consulting effort is a huge component of what the customer is paying for. Having said that, some people do think Microsoft s…

[deleted]

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#19

Post by inflatableDodo »

creaghpatr wrote: post #11
michaelt wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A great many expansions to the power of the state have been justified with the argument "this is to fight terror and child abuse" Perhaps they signed up naively imagining they were working on a tool that would be used for that and nothing else ?

It's definitely a weird company to work for if you don't believe in enforcing laws, or only partial enforcement of laws; especially border laws.

Well, the owner presumably doesn't think that most laws currently on the books should be enforced, unless I have missed something regarding right wing libertarianism.

Re: The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE under attack by employees

#20

Post by _bxg1 »

qazpot wrote: post #13
mulmen wrote: post #2

Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission but working with LEOs like ICE seems to be their core business. All credit to these employees for standing up for what they believe in but what exactly did they think they were signing up for? I have a new coworker who wears his Palantir t-shirt and it makes me uncomfortable to even see the name in my office.

I am assuming ICE is "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement". I am not from USA but why every comment here is implying ICE to be some evil thing.

Because they do stuff like this

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/border-patrol-agent-deta...

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