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The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

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Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#651
post #560

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…

First, all of what you say is true. I'm going to try to add a little context as someone who is here on the ground, in the city in question. There is the imminent threat of mass death, and no one here is under any illusions about it. Every ICE agent is armed, and most have ready access to automatic weapons. These are not well-trained members of an elite organization with a storied, patriotic culture. ICE is a personal…

Last night a man was shot by ICE agents, who were (reportedly) attacked with shovel(s) while trying to capture the man, injuring one ICE agent.

BEFORE this began we had 7 million people protesting simultaneously nationwide—they are "out on the street". Minneapolis has organized hundreds into rapid response teams against ICE. The killings get more news than the protests, particularly as much of the media has been bought up by republican owners.

In Philadelphia, residents are being filmed patrolling with automatic weapons in advance of ICE supposedly heading there next. Read what @asa400, another local like myself, is saying in another comment to parent.

Many locals on social media are cheering on the shootings. America is incredibly polarized right now. It's not like all the public is against the government. Nearly half of those most likely to vote in past elections support this. “It wasn’t Hitler or Himmler who abducted me, beat me, and shot my family. It was the shoemaker, the milkman, the neighbor, who were given a uniform....” —Karl Stojka, Auschwitz survivor EDIT: added "(reportedly)" and rearranged sentence

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#652

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…

I think it's something different than "Americans are passive" - rather, many of them/us perceive the context of what you're seeing very differently. I can share some of this perspective though I don't insist it's the only way to feel. 1. Americans on the ground are clearly feeling the effects of illegal immigration. As an example: a an African American janitor in our kids' school voted republican in 2024 for the firs…

A shanty town? In Brooklyn? Yeah, all those hipster trusties who couldn't afford Manhattan (but can still drop 5k a month on a studio in BedStuy or Williamsburg) are really making things bad there.

You ever visited Brooklyn back when it was actually a tough place?

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#654

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

You do yourself a disservice by having a storybook version of the Holocaust in your head. It did not start with gassing and boxcars of people. Relative to how things turned out, the victims were treated quite "humanely" at first. The problem is that they were completely dehumanized, which made mass murder the "obvious" choice once resources and logistics started to get strained.

There was a recent story that described cramped jail cells full of dozens of wailing and weeping detainees while ICE agents nearby were laughing. We’re seeing dehumanization happen here at an alarming pace. And already, the administration seemed to relish sending noncriminal migrants to foreign torture/rape camps for essentially a life sentence. The components are all there for a repeat of the recent past. Will they coalesce? What’s going to stop them?

Remember: most Nazis were not gleeful, cackling sadists. They were normal-ass bureaucrats who'd been conditioned to see their victims as non-human.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's something different than "Americans are passive" - rather, many of them/us perceive the context of what you're seeing very differently. I can share some of this perspective though I don't insist it's the only way to feel. 1. Americans on the ground are clearly feeling the effects of illegal immigration. As an example: a an African American janitor in our kids' school voted republican in 2024 for the firs…

I suspect that these people misattribute poverty and urban decay to illegal immigration when it’s largely a home-grown issue -- in large part due to a concerted effort from right-wing media to slander those immigrants.

And right wing media NEVER blames employers for knowingly hiring illegal laborers.

I wonder why.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#656

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I don't see much moderation of criticism of meta and their employees behavior. Anti authoritarian politics has always been popular on HN. It's only the byzantine team color politics that is moderated.

Of course you don't see it.

This entire submission got artificially pushed off the front page. This is exactly what I'm talking about.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#657

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…

> Why are Americans so passive? Decades of copaganda paired with police brutality. A fairly large portion of americans view anyone with a badge as "the good guy" by default. But, I think people are also fearful about what happens after the riots start. Nobody is excited about Trump using a riot as an excuse to declare martial law and deploy the military everywhere. There's still some hope that cities and states will…

>" But even centrist and slightly left mainstream media is bending over backwards to give excuses and "both sides" this."

Our "leftist" or "centrist" news sources are owned by right wing billionaires. There is no real actual leftist or even centrist news source that has any sort of clout here in the US.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Palantir is built explicitly for surveillance, in a way the other companies you listed are not. There is no comparison here. It's like saying the City of Minneapolis is complicit because they maintain the roads ICE is driving on.

Not really. Palantir is data integration and analysis software that in some cases (like ICE) can be used for surveillance. There are also thousands of commercial clients who use Palantir for completely non surveillance workflows, as well as many other government teams who use Palantir for non surveillance things. This is all public information.

From the article

> Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.

Is ICE using a general purpose app for surveillance or is Palantir making a deportation-centric app for ICE?

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#659

If you work for Palantir and if you work on these systems: You have blood on your hands. You know that it's not right what is happening on the ground right now. Do something.

The US gov (including ICE) uses all of Microsoft Office for coordination and planning: email, spreadsheets, powerpoint, document generation, etc. Would you say Microsoft employees have blood on their hands too? If not, what makes Microsoft different?

Microsoft is a modern IBM holocaust tabulation machine. Yes, many of the people who work for Microsoft should be prosecuted and put in prison for war crimes, with varying degrees of culpability. There are people in MS who knowing negotiated deals that aided and abetted war crimes, and those who wrote morally repugnant military surveillance software that was used to automate mass murder in the Gaza holocaust.

Re: The Palantir app helping ICE raids in Minneapolis

#660

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 tha…

I am pro-immigration-control, in a pretty strong sense. Not "anti-immigration", since it's a valuable tool when controlled properly, but I believe we have not been properly controlling it, by a long shot. The consequences have been disastrous, so I sympathize with the desperation and anger born from that.

But no amount of sympathy can excuse the general behavior of ICE and the stain it leaves on the idea of the USA. In this case - I have watched all the same videos, and there is simply no way to view that murder as clearly self-defense without leaning on a pre-decided hatred of the victim as an "enemy".

Just as the left's ideas on immigration are clouded by idealism in the name of anti-racism, the right's ideas on immigration are clouded by racism. What's best for a society lies somewhere in between, and at this point may require some tough enforcement, yes, but ICE is not enacting that - they are just enacting the right's hatred, terrorizing America in an un-focused, illegal, immoral, violent, unprofessional manner. As Americans understandably push back against that (as Americans are famous for), you will get escalating messes like this.

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