The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis • Hacker News Board

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#541

Post by mempko » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:42 PM UTC

I have a message to all Palantir employees. You can quit, you don't have to make this technology. Palantir cannot function without you.

Let me tell you a story. When I was young, just out of college, I worked for a tech startup. The tech startup was a mapping company. At some point I overheard the company CEO talking about how the software I built was being used. I thought it was being used to help track miners and equipment working in mines so that if there is an accident, they know where all the people and equipment are so they can be saved.

I learned by overhearing him that the software was being used in the Iraq war to track people to kill. I wasn't supposed to know since I didn't have a security clearance to know.

I quit that job over this.

I told this story because there are certainly employees there that don't have the clearance to know what is happening. But the reporting is making it clear. You can quit your job. They can't function without you.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#542

Post by NoMoreNicksLeft » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #344

NoMoreNicksLeft wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Why would I want to riot over immigration enforcement enforcing immigration laws? So you are not seeing the same news the outside world are seeing? Is there censorship happening? Because what we're seeing, isn't "enforcing immigration laws", it's brutal murder of civilians, together with actually being worse at getting people out of the country. Obama did a better job at kicking out illegals, yet without these publ…

>So you are not seeing the same news the outside world are seeing?

Yes. Me personally, at least, in that I don't watch broadcast television at all. Hell, quite alot of it from the same links and tweets you click on. No Fox News or anything like that, but I suspect that if I gave you my personal opinions you'd swear that I was parroting those outlets. (Something I've noticed all my life... most people can't accept that I might independently arrive at the same conclusions.)

>it's brutal murder of civilians,

I watched it from 5 angles. It wasn't murder, it was self-defense. Open and shut. Cars are deadly weapons, she pointed the car at him as if she was bullet-proof. Found out otherwise. Everything to the contrary is sophistry. "Sure, she waved a gun around, but she didn't point it at his face!" and so forth. He had milliseconds to react, but he's supposed to see the wheels that he's not looking at turned away and he's supposed to care when on a Minnesota road with a bad driver and slush the direction the wheels point might not even matter.

>Obama did a better job at kicking out illegals,

Perhaps. So? If Trump appoints him deportation czar, I won't object.

>yet without these public broad-daylight murders. How does that compute to be "enforcing immigration laws"?

Plainly false. Did you bother to look this up? Not only were federal agents accused of this during his tenure, several of them were ICE and CBP in manners similar to what we're seeing now. Maybe the news outlets you favor didn't bother to report those, selectively.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#543

Post by embedding-shape » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

spit2wind wrote: post #530

embedding-shape wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all those things happened in Spain where I live, I'm 99% we'd have actual riots on the streets, together with a lot of other unpleasant-but-needed civilian action, until things got better, like we've done in the past (sometimes maybe went slightly overboard with it, but better than nothing). Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How…

Americans are not passive. Look at the videos of any of these incidents. People are supporting those under attack, collecting evidence, and protesting. The message is clear. Peaceful protest is the key. Riots, violence, and fighting are not peaceful and only play into the administration's aims. When Americans resist and protest peacefully, as they have been in the largest numbers ever in the country's history, it exp…

Those things work in democratic and ordered societies though, and you need to figure out other approaches when democracy and freedom stops being something the government still cares about. The current leader of the country attempted an insurrection, yet was still allowed to become the leader after that? I think you're beyond being able to change this through just peaceful protests, although it's definitively a part of the answer.

Who are you gonna report this brutality to, when the judicial arm of the government is just following the directions of the administration? How do you hold people accountable, when the system to hold anyone accountable is being undermined?

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#544

Post by potato3732842 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

deeg wrote: post #512

embedding-shape wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If all those things happened in Spain where I live, I'm 99% we'd have actual riots on the streets, together with a lot of other unpleasant-but-needed civilian action, until things got better, like we've done in the past (sometimes maybe went slightly overboard with it, but better than nothing). Why are Americans so passive? You're literally transitioning into straight up authoritarianism, yet where are the riots? How…

Americans have had 100 years of stable government and in the past political solutions have eventually been enacted. The Civil Rights bill was passed. Nixon pulled out of Vietnam. I think a lot of people are still expecting sanity to return. I hope they're right.

You've got three groups here. Federal cops, undocumented immigrants and the kind of people who turn out to protest the former acting against the latter. Very few people in this country finds any one of these groups particularly sympathetic and there's wide demographic swaths of the country that actively hate two if not all three of them. So yeah, everyone sees stuff that's very, very, wrong here, but nobody's really in any rush to intervene except the people who already are protesting.

A political solution will likely come of this, as everyone with a brain knows that the preconditions for all this shit are something that need to be prevented in the future.

Edit. To be clear, I'm talking about the people who are actually physically involved here.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#545

Post by alex43578 » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #489

alex43578 wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

> Are any of those things threatened and need defending? If you don't think authoritarianism or fascism actually has a way of harming those things, then no, I guess not. I think for most people who had to learn about these things in school growing up, for like 7 years or something, together with grandparents who experienced these things for themselves, it's pretty clear what's happening, but without actually having t…

It’s a disservice to the horrors of the Holocaust to implicitly compare returning Mexican nationals to Mexico, Somalis to Somalia, or hell, even Venezuelans to El Salvador with sending box cars of people to death camps.

The US has had and enforced immigration laws for decades, with Obama alone deporting 3 million people.

What aspect of Trump doing it is uniquely fascist/authoritarian?

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#546

Post by dragonwriter » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:43 PM UTC

embedding-shape wrote: post #418

afavour wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A broad answer: because America is more violent. The ICE officers are armed and absolutely will use their weapons if given half a chance to. Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think any rioters in countries like Spain go to a protest with a bet real chance on their minds that they might die.

> Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think any rioters in countries like Spain go to a protest with a bet real chance on their minds that they might die. That's the thing, they do, and have in the past too. Some might even recall riots ~70 years ago that kind of spiraled out of control and led to a civil war. Looking at what's happening in Iran as we speak might be a good idea as well, where they've had enough, know that th…

> So this was the whole point with the 2nd amendment right, that when/if the government repress you in that way, you have weapons to fight back?

The point of the second amendment was, in no small part, so that the central government wouldn't deny the states the means to commit genocide against the indigenous population on their own, because the states didn't trust he central government to be sufficiently enthusiastic about it. That was the major security concern alluded to by the “necessary to the security of a free state” bit.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#547

Post by ceejayoz » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

mosura wrote: post #400

lokar wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I accept that US law, and its execution on border crossings and asylum was disastrous. Over many administrations. That in no way justifies this move to an unaccountable paramilitary force attacking US citizens who are legally exercising their rights.

Many people have been pointing at Waco for years. Even Janet Reno later admitted regretting that episode, and yet you do not hear the left in the US saying at all that this was a problem - in fact it is stereotypical far right recruitment material. This is why it is clear the problem with ICE is not their mode of enforcement, which is far less egregious than the Waco situation, but the fact they are remotely effectiv…

> yet you do not hear the left in the US saying at all that this was a problem

Sure you do. The left has been very critical of this sort of police militarization. They gave the cops an M1 Abrams to play with, FFS.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#548

Post by mindslight » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

alpine_accentor wrote: post #458

andrewvc wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you describe at what point someone would “have blood on their hands” in your view? The problem in my mind is that these systems are exclusively in service of dishonesty. ICE is clearly being used to further political ends. If it were actually trying to stem immigration it wouldn’t concentrate its officers in a state with one of the lowest rates of illegal immigrants. Are you saying you agree with that cause or th…

It makes perfect sense to concentrate law enforcement in a state that is in defiance. Even if the absolute numbers are low, the state cannot back down from enforcing the law because some people are resisting. Otherwise you invite anyone to disregard any law they don’t like. The state won’t allow this and the only way to overcome this is either to change the law or toss out the government, and only one options is real…

> It makes perfect sense to concentrate law enforcement in a state that is in defiance

Using the word "defiance" indicates that your perspective is decidedly not American.

Both the States and the Federal government are co-sovereign, mediated by the US Constitution that spells out the rights and responsibilities of each. The Federal government is currently in willful and flagrant default of this founding charter - both overall in terms of how it is supposed to function (offices being executed in good faith forming checks and balances), as well as openly flouting the handful of hard limits outlined in the Bill of Rights. As such, the Federal government has lost the legal authority to dictate anything to the States.

It is of course still prudent to recognize the realpolitik of the "Federal government" having command of a lawless paramilitary force currently unleashing terror and mayhem on civil society. But the point is that we need to work towards re-establishing law and order in terms of the remaining functioning sovereigns.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#549

Post by krapp » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

m_fayer wrote: post #528

embedding-shape wrote: post #418

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Maybe I’m wrong but I don’t think any rioters in countries like Spain go to a protest with a bet real chance on their minds that they might die. That's the thing, they do, and have in the past too. Some might even recall riots ~70 years ago that kind of spiraled out of control and led to a civil war. Looking at what's happening in Iran as we speak might be a good idea as well, where they've had enough, know that th…

(White) Americans of the center and left have long since lost the conviction that you may just need to bleed for your children’s freedom. It’ll come back, hopefully not too late.

The thing is, to most white Americans, their childrens' freedom isn't at stake. The majority of white voters have always supported Trump, and probably support ICE, whereas most of the rest simply don't don't consider it their problem.

And unfortunately that probably won't change until ICE kills more of them and makes it their problem.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#550

Post by 3form » Thu, Jan 15, 2026, 5:44 PM UTC

basket_horse wrote: post #441

pixl97 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The particular problem here is the vast majority of people that are writing this software 1. Don't care, blood is great. 2. Think they are the good guys. 3. Are more worried about their next paycheck and having bad things happen to them related to not paying rent.

I don’t think it’s really this simple. Palantir is a major government contractor that enables it to be more tech savvy. It’s embedded through hundreds of teams / agencies. You can’t remain a credible partner if you play morality police on every workflow. Palantir has worked through multiple administrations of both parties and have to support whoever is in power to have a seat at the table. Ultimately the question is…

> You can’t remain a credible partner if you play morality police on every workflow

Sure. That's the price to pay for not setting morality aside. One that they're not willing to pay.