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Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

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Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#141

Post by asveikau »

javert wrote: post #49
pekk wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't tell what you even mean by "fascist". The word has a specific meaning. A good example of a fascist was Mussolini. An example of a fascist view is that the nation (which should be holy) has been taken over by degenerates, liberals, the weak and people of impure ancestries or ancestries which don't belong here, and that it must be purified through violence such as purges and wars of glory.

Personally, I consider the left-wing leadership of the country to be nihilists: they seek to gain self-esteem by destroying others' values (e.g. wealth, rights, etc.). They do it via egalitarian ideology. Hence, egalitarian nihilists. If you have noticed a subtle ideological change between Democrats of the previous "generation" (such as Bill Clinton) and the "Young Turks" of the party (like Obama), this is the differ…

Such Randian nonsense. If the dems are such egalitarians and want to destroy the wealth of others, why do you have growing disparity and retain the Bush tax rates? And if you say Obama has more of this than Clinton, why are wealthy people paying less taxes now than they did in the 90s?

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#143

Post by 0xdeadbeefbabe »

rollo_tommasi wrote: post #139
0xdeadbeefbabe wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We are not domain experts; we are problem solving experts Eeek!

Out of curiosity, what sparked this reaction? Is "problem solving" a euphemism for technical drudge-work? Glorified IT contracting?

Because it seems to emphasize doing over thinking. Maybe not a bad idea, but in the context of the comments about blackwater, immoral and illegal things, and indoctrinating fresh grads it sounded spooky.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#144

Post by notahacker »

Anderkent wrote: post #30
lucian1900 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is an argument for voluntarily joining the most despicable of organisations with the goal of fixing them from the inside. That is foolish.

>That is an argument for voluntarily joining the most despicable of organisations with the goal of fixing them from the inside. More 'damage control' than 'fixing them', but sure, close enough. The point is, do not compare 'this job is evil, I produce -10 units of global utility' and then 'this job is good, I produce +20 units of global utility' looking only at your output. Instead, compare 'By taking this job, I wil…

I've seen that argument advanced seriously quite a few times, but it seems like a weird combination of utilitarianism taken to it's reductio ad absurdum form and the Nuremberg Defence

If asked what I chose to do with my life, I don't really want to say "I chose to commit acts of evil to order, but at least I was selective about which acts of evil, and not too competent at carrying them out"

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#145

Post by dclowd9901 »

acchow wrote: post #6
dclowd9901 wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can't deny that their developers probably take on some pretty novel and interesting challenges.

What kind of challenges? Please elaborate.

I was thinking since they are probably on the fringes of legality, but with government sign-off, they probably get a lot of free reign to solve problems you typically wouldn't delve into, for fear of legal backlash. So basically you become a legal hacker. That would be kinda neat, and appealing, from a geek perspective.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#146

Post by laurenia »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #134

Full Disclosure: I'm ex-Palantir Government Dev Ok guys. Let's use Occam's Razor for a second. What's more likely? 1) A company that purposefully goes around blackmailing people to make deals, uses underhanded tactics, and spies on the people, yet is able to hire amazingly talented (and opinionated supporters of the EFF) engineers from Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT. Or 2)a company that builds a data analytics pl…

Those options aren't mutually exclusive.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#147

Post by Permit »

mratzloff wrote: post #126
Permit wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you disclose that publicly? That pretty much reads as: "Don't use Repustate" to me.

Palantir uses Linux, too. So I guess you can't use Linux now.

I wasn't boycotting his company because Palantir used them. (I'm not in his company's target demographic anyway) I was saying that it seems like a poor business strategy to badmouth clients because of an anoymous comment that somehow made it into a blog post. Especially when the evidence against Palantir consists of:

1. They have a project that happens to be named Prism.

2. They don't publicly disclose their own clients/operations.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#148

Post by Permit »

potatolicious wrote: post #2

Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.

>Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work

Wow. That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. You must be able to see the hypocrisy in all of this.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#149

Post by dragonwriter »

Permit wrote: post #148
potatolicious wrote: post #2

Not really a surprise. Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work. Also the reason why I've ignored every contact from a Palantir recruiter so far. This smells like working for the white collar, air-conditioned, catered-lunch version of Blackwater.

>Palantir has always been secretive about what exactly it is they do every day, though it's always been implied and rumored that a large part is government intelligence work Wow. That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. You must be able to see the hypocrisy in all of this.

> That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide.

People who use TOR are being secretive and have something to hide.

They may have very good reasons to want to hide it because of threats from bad actors (including, potentially, their own governments), but if they didn't have something to hide, they wouldn't be expending additional resources to actively hide things, which is exactly what using TOR is .

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#150

Post by acchow »

SkyMarshal wrote: post #100
bri3d wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think Palantir is a sinister NSA conspiracy so much as a manifestation of a certain kind of corporate culture present both in and outside of the intelligence community. At least from my interaction with employees there, it's not an NSA feeder nor an NSA nepotism apparatus, just a corporation that hires aggressively out of Ivy Leagues and then indoctrinates into a specific culture. In my experience Palantir em…

A lot of them also obtain US Govt security clearances, and it's a bit of a process to obtain and something of an achievement in and of itself. But the ones I know also take the responsibility seriously, and I can't help but wonder if that influences some of them to spend more time with each other where they don't have to watch what they say, and less with the "outside" world where they have to be a little more on gua…

If you're born and raised in America, with a clean record, and sane, shouldn't getting clearance be easy?
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