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Palantir has no place in UK public services

opendemocracy.net

21–30 of 96 posts

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#21
post #17
post #12

The more I read about Palantir, the creepier and weirder it becomes. The CEO brags about wanting to kill all journalists with fentanyl, or brags about how their software will be used to kill people, and how readily they're willing to work for the convicted fraudster that America felt fit to give the nuclear codes. And despite this company being creepy and weird and bizarre and secretive, they are also trying to make…

Ironically, the Danish Government is a heavy user of Palantir systems, including creepy predictive policing solutions. I would be keen to know if citizen data is being handled correctly, following GDPR/LED. Given previous Danish client-state-like cooperation with NSA to spy on other EU countries, I can imagine the answer.

> including creepy predictive policing solutions.

Minority Report coming right up.

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#22
post #6

It's hard not to see a sort of oligarchy vs the people battle shaping up, that's for sure.

Yeah, it's important to elect councillors and MP's that represent the people and not monied interests.

Problem is that you must already represent monied interests before you get anywhere near an MP/councillor seat.

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#24
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Among other things, with everything going on in the US today, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon were apparently at the WH for a screening of the Melania film.

Amazon funded it. They paid $30 million or so for rights to the documentary for Amazon Prime. I doubt viewers will care about it, but I look at it as a bribe from Amazon to the administration. They give Melania and by extension Trump this money, and they will get better regulatory help and more government contracts.

I didn't even know this existed, let alone that it was made by Amazon. This makes their Chris Pratt garbage look like cinema.

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#25
post #5

Correct. Neither do Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple - realistically they're even more dangerous, see the ICC. Ironically the first three being the main hosts of.. you guessed it, Palantir. Picking and choosing US big tech in this context is pointless, they're all as much of a risk as each other. And don't come with "you have to start somewhere", because you do, but then the place to start is slowly step-by-step g…

It's easy to start with Palantir because it simply doesn't provide any legitimate value. They don't do anything, at all, other than enable spying by weaving snippets of private data into a coherent whole. You don't have to explain the decision to well-meaning people who are inconvenienced, nor provide a transition plan for essential services, you can just yank the plug tomorrow and tell everyone who complains to buzz off.

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#26
post #10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Incoming big-tech sympathizers with defense contracts, boosters and hairsplitters in 3, 2, 1.

"No way, not a cent of my nest egg funded by papa Bezos comes from AWS FedRAMP High GovCloud massive sweet enterprise contracts with the likes of Palantir to host them at scale!" The truth is there's thousands if not tens of thousands of people on here for whom it is incredibly convenient to imagine their vests were granted in a completely different universe to the likes of Palantir. Deep down they know their compani…

Correct.

I expect the author of the article must also recognize that Big Tech is in the same basket and are just as complicit for the sake of consistency. The problem is, we just don't hear about it often.

When I brought this up last time in [0] all I saw was constant hairsplitting, attempts to seperate Big Tech from Palantir and lots of 'whataboutism' accusations, which doesn't work because I agree.

So when I saw this in the article:

> Palantir’s tentacles are already extending into our communities. In my constituency of Coventry, the Labour-run council awarded the company a £500,000 contract to develop an AI tool for children’s services.

Google [1], Microsoft [2], Amazon [3] are no different and these are just a few of them and they are just as bad as Palantir and all of them are in the SNP 500 directly in the portfolios of pension funds.

So it is indeed a waste of time trying to picking and choose US tech companies on this.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46407683

[1] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366634759/Google-wins-mu...

[2] https://www.digitalhealth.net/2023/06/nhs-signs-new-microsof...

[3] https://www.computerweekly.com/news/366566172/AWS-secures-89...

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The sales problem being there isn't anything viable to compete with the established players. Europe has the capability, even without immigration from the US, it just needs a kick to make good enough products.

The EU should also create a new regulation to force everyone on the continent to move away from American companies. That’s one way to give the local startups a market to sell to.

I’d be interested in arguments that EU providers could be equivalent to Azure … is it realistic to move a large university across for email and other cloud services? Might be the right time to start campaigning for institutions to divest from US tech stacks…

Re: Palantir has no place in UK public services

#30
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That entire website looks like Israeli sponsored propaganda.

Well Jews are from Israel so yes. What’s your point? Are you saying Zultana wasn’t at that event?

Israelis may be from Israel. Jews live all over the world. Do we need to explain the difference between Judaism and Zionism?
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