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

washingtonpost.com

221–230 of 231 posts

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

#221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if the other corporations they serve are subcontracted by LEO, ICE and CBP? Palantir is deeply in cahoots with CBP/ICE and Peter Thiel (isn't even a US Citizen so I can't even call him a traitor, but) is an enemy of the American people. Fuck ICE, Fuck Palantir, Fuck Peter Thiel

I believe Peter Thiel is a US citizen (previously a German and, more recently a NZ citizen) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Thiel

Oh cool, Peter Thiel is a traitor.

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

#222

I want to join Palantir just to disrupt their business because Peter Thiel is a scum sucker and deserves the absolute worst workforce. Palantir should be liquidated and the proceeds returned to tax payers.

Ok, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to HN, and especially not ragey unsubstantive comments. They just make this place worse, and we're hoping for better here.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

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

#223
post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I highly recommend the book Dreamland for more on this topic: https://www.amazon.com/Dreamland-True-Americas-Opiate-Epidem...

I’ve read it. I remain unmoved by your cruelty.

Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong or annoying some other comment is. Would you please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and stick to the rules when posting here?

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

#224
post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK. Why not change the law, if you want to make undocumented migration legal?

Most people trying to boycott ICE don't think undocumented migration should be legal. They just don't think ICE is a good agency. (Again, ICE is not the only agency responsible for undocumented migration, so undocumented migration isn't automatically legal if they can't do their job.)

OK but we're getting close to circular logic here. If ICE is not bad because it enforces border laws, why is ICE bad?

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

#225
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure what ICE is doing is really all that much different and what’s instead dramatically different is your awareness of every even borderline thing ICE is doing now? Just how familiar were you, or are you for that matter, with the full scope of ICE’s activities circa 2015?

ICE was not routinely separating children from their families back in 2015. They weren't putting kids in fucking cages. This false equivalence is nonsense.

Even if we look at the phrasing "kids in cages" it's an obvious talking point that's coming straight from someone that coined it for a reason.

It's pretty obvious that a bunch of people that have their moral outrage cranked up to 11 right now are played like finger puppets. You all haven't the foggiest idea of the history here, and frankly you don't seem to care.

I look forward to seeing your posts taking positions on the fires in the amazon or whatever else the people manipulating you decide is the next big thing, no doubt written as if you were lifelong expert after having read one article and four tweets.

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

#226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a very interesting gradient that you bring up. Most of us probably have no issue with the baker who sold Hitler his daily loaf of bread. But many of us do have problems with Hugo Boss for designing Nazi uniforms, even though the design work would have been before most of the Nazi war crimes had occurred. Does not resisting to the fullest of your ability constitute enabling evil? Would you take Pablo Escobar's do…

As for the donation, who is going to disagree with the idea of getting money out of bad hands and into good ones. What do you want to do otherwise, burn it? And that's got nothing to do with removing the Escobars of this world.

Plenty of people have issues with taking money from bad people.

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation? Even if the donation doesn't buy any influence or soft power it allows the "bad" actor to clean their reputation.

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

#227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As for the donation, who is going to disagree with the idea of getting money out of bad hands and into good ones. What do you want to do otherwise, burn it? And that's got nothing to do with removing the Escobars of this world.

Plenty of people have issues with taking money from bad people. Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation? Even if the donation doesn't buy any influence or soft power it allows the "bad" actor to clean their reputation.

Why did Bernie Sanders have to return Martin Shkreli's donation?

From a political perspective there is also the reputation cost to consider. Even if you're morally fine with taking "bad" peoples money, having to answer "why is Shkreli funding you campaign" all the time has a pretty big political cost, even if you have a perfectly legitimate answer.

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

#228
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.

>but what exactly did they think they were signing up for?

The last 15 years of big "tech" have been a giant collective rationalization that building mass surveillance is innocuous.

They think they're singing up to enable palatable use cases of collecting and analyzing that data, and nothing bad will ever happen. Just the same as anyone singing up to work at google/facebook/etc...

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

#229
post #67
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.

> Maybe I misunderstand Palantir's mission nope - just WaPo's use of selective editorial bias to paint problems endemic to both parties & us society in general to partisan ends.

On one hand, I am grateful for this comment. But on the other hand, I know that it is a low effort comment that you are likely able to use on many a WaPo article.

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

#230
post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you sure what ICE is doing is really all that much different and what’s instead dramatically different is your awareness of every even borderline thing ICE is doing now? Just how familiar were you, or are you for that matter, with the full scope of ICE’s activities circa 2015?

ICE was not routinely separating children from their families back in 2015. They weren't putting kids in fucking cages. This false equivalence is nonsense.

Remember that first iconic, heartwrenching photo of kids in fucking cages that started to circulate on social media? It was literally a photo from 2014 that was being misrepresented from the Trump era - and it keeps happening. Apparently some Democrat congressional members managed to misrepresent other photos from the same set just last month: https://nypost.com/2019/07/10/house-dems-use-obama-era-photo...

No-one described those kids in cages as kids in cages until Trump was elected. From what I could tell, only one local news outlet even ran with that shocking, arresting image of a kid in a cage looking into the camera when it was actually news.

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