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‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

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Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#101

Post by whatthesmack »

RIMR wrote: post #30
bradley13 wrote: post #22

[flagged]

1. You don't deport millions of undocumented people, you find a way integrate those who are willing to work (most of them) into your society. 2. Obama and Biden didn't get the same level of attention because they weren't being publicly antagonistic and racist, or using deliberately cruel tactics to accomplish their goals. Or breaking the law / violating the constitution to meet their ends.

> 1. You don't deport millions of undocumented people, you find a way integrate those who are willing to work (most of them) into your society.

How is that currently working out for all of Europe? Hint: not well at all.

> 2. Obama and Biden didn't get the same level of attention because they weren't being publicly antagonistic and racist, or using deliberately cruel tactics to accomplish their goals. Or breaking the law / violating the constitution to meet their ends.

You've made a lot of ambiguous accusations right here. Can you please give specific examples?

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#102

Post by cheese4242 »

sippeangelo wrote: post #45
pixelready wrote: post #12

I’ve never worked at Palantir, but once you get past the noisy leadership’s villain virtue signaling, every report I’ve read about the platform itself gives me strong “typical enterprise vendor” vibes. A lackluster software offering that is overhyped to institutional purchasers, then shoved down frontline employees’ throats because the vendor is good at navigating the sales and compliance labyrinth to secure deals. T…

Governments using Palantir services as a loophole to enable mass surveillance by linking data is the evil part.

They also used Google, Facebook, etc... as a loophole for suppressing freedom of speech in the past (and could still be for all I know).

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#103

Post by phoehne »

gegtik wrote: post #64
phoehne wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In another comment, I referenced Eichmann. A train is not a good thing or a bad thing. A rail car is not a good thing or a bad thing. Having an app that aggregates multiple different data sources and puts them together is not a good thing or a bad thing. It's the morality behind the hands into which we put that tools that matters. The more capable the tool, the more good or evil you can do with it. Maybe we should as…

any opinions on the german WW2 engineer laying neutral tracks toward Auschwitz EDIT: sorry, that was glib. However I want to make the argument that the argument of doing "neutral" physical work is not absolutely morally absolving.

Yes. It's not, and I agree. There's no bright line that says you're morally culpable or you are not morally culpable for what you do. But all of us should think about our roles in that light. If Palantir uses Git, does that mean new Git contributions are part of what is arguably an ethnic cleansing? I wouldn't be able to sleep at night and work on this project. (I do not work at Palantir).

But the point is also that maybe we should take one step back and think about the morality of the people we put in decision making roles. The technology is morally neutral, but the intention is not. And helping to realize that intention is not. And sometimes the things we build can be used in horrible ways unless we also think about safeguarding their use.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. It is my very real fear that a lot of information has been aggregated into Palantir and other applications and is usable with no restraint. And that even if you just run the build system, across hundreds of apps, you might be culpable as well.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#105

Post by Y-bar »

hydrogen7800 wrote: post #97
Y-bar wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Producing Cyclon B is a doing a neutral thing apparently? So is building a system cataloguing all Jews and socialists in Berlin also a neutral thing? The officer ordering the legal building of large ovens and carpenter doing the bidding are not guilty? The soldier following the rules written by law that he should coral the ”visitors” and ”workers” is doing no good or bad thing because he has instructions and is not t…

>Producing Cyclon B is a doing a neutral thing apparently? Without searching for references, it's my understanding that Fritz Haber developed this decades before the war, in conjunction with making synthetic fertilizer. It was later used for the purpose you referenced.

I consciously used the word ”produce” rather than ”develop” or ”invent” to try to be clear that I meant ”[produce] from a factory”.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#106

Post by ahazred8ta »

thatguy0900 wrote: post #53
cg5280 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The goals and motivation for using these tools, and their broad allowance of access to what should be highly controlled data (or in some cases even not collected at all) is the problem ... focus on the policy decisions that are leading to agencies wanting tools like this in the first place. That's how Karp seems to justify these things. Palantir's job is to (in theory) make government better at doing government thi…

I mean you can say stuff like that but the reality is they purposefully named themselves after a super villains magical spy apparatus so I'm not inclined to take his word about them being ethically neutral. Like I'm not really sure what they could name themselves after that would be more ominous

The palantirs were made by the elf lord prince Fëanor of Valinor, one of the good guys. The one we see in the film was given to the kings of Gondor and then pilfered by Saruman. (elvish palan 'far', tir 'watch over')

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#108

Post by hydrogen7800 »

Y-bar wrote: post #105
hydrogen7800 wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Producing Cyclon B is a doing a neutral thing apparently? Without searching for references, it's my understanding that Fritz Haber developed this decades before the war, in conjunction with making synthetic fertilizer. It was later used for the purpose you referenced.

I consciously used the word ”produce” rather than ”develop” or ”invent” to try to be clear that I meant ”[produce] from a factory”.

Fair enough. In that case I agree.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#109

Post by coredev_ »

pixelready wrote: post #12

I’ve never worked at Palantir, but once you get past the noisy leadership’s villain virtue signaling, every report I’ve read about the platform itself gives me strong “typical enterprise vendor” vibes. A lackluster software offering that is overhyped to institutional purchasers, then shoved down frontline employees’ throats because the vendor is good at navigating the sales and compliance labyrinth to secure deals. T…

I do not agree at all. The problem is both Palantir AND their customers. You have a choise not to make the tools and you have a chiose not to use the tools.

Re: ‘ELITE’: The Palantir app ICE uses to find neighborhoods to raid

#110

Post by buffington »

1234letshaveatw wrote: post #69
SilverElfin wrote: post #26

These raids are the indiscriminate door to door raids right? There are lots of disturbing reports from these. For example ICE agents showing up at a white family’s door to ask which houses have Asian people living in them. The raids are blatantly unconstitutional (fourth amendment) but also, regardless of laws, they are well beyond the pale in terms of morality. It’s crazy that tech companies are willfully participat…

Doesn't your indiscriminate label preclude the involvement of tools like Palantir? Unless you want us to believe that the tooling is worthless. But then again, I find most of the anti-ICE arguments to be nonsensical.

Indiscriminate can be defined as "done at random or without careful judgment" - I think the latter part of that definition perfectly describes ELITE.

I find it nonsensical to dismiss an anti-ICE argument because of one word.

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