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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

#211

Post by bri3d »

jakelazaroff wrote: post #200
bri3d wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The big legal loophole is that the government needs a particularized warrant (per the 4th Amendment) to ask for any user data, but if the government buys commercial data, well, there's no warrant needed. Right; but as far as I know Palantir don't sell commercial data. That's my beef with this whole Palantir conspiracy theory. I am far from pro-Palantir but it really feels like they're working as a shield for the pi…

Pretty sure GP is saying that the data Palantir sells are commercial because they're being sold by Palantir.

Right, and what I’m saying is that to the best of my knowledge, Palantir don’t sell data at all, which is the fundamental misunderstanding people seem to have about them.

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

#212

Post by idle_zealot »

cheese4242 wrote: post #201
idle_zealot wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope. Access to food, water, shelter, and freedom of movement are fundamental human rights. I'm not a proponent of executing useless eaters. If you commit a crime with a prison sentence then you serve that sentence where you committed the crime.

Thanks for taking the time to clarify your position. So if China or some other country decided to send 10 million people here for whatever reason, you think our official policy should be to welcome then in and provide them food, shelter, etc...? What about 100 million people? Should they also be given citizenship and right to vote in addition to food/shelter?

The only issue would be logistics. Getting supporting infrastructure and housing set up. But yeah, ultimately. More hands, more consumers. Why wouldn't we want as many citizens as possible, we certainly have the land for it.

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

#213

Post by phoehne »

Shalomboy wrote: post #122
phoehne wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Well that's clearly an example of putting the cart before the horse. You should be able to sleep at night so long as you remember that Git isn't what enables Palantir to power an army of federalized brownshirts; it's the people making the tools explicitly for an army of federalized brownshirts with Git that are morally culpable.

Okay, that's where you draw the line. But someone provides power to their data center and their offices. Someone provides hand-held devices. Someone provides network connectivity. Someone has a contract to house and feed these agents. Someone has the logistical and fleet services for their vehicles. Someone is likely the landlord to their buildings. Someone has a contract to clean the buildings. Someone is a deciding to buy a block of Palantir stock versus some other software company. Someone runs the private prison into which people are herded. An attorney has a choice to file a charge or not file a charge. A judge has the choice to bend over backward to give ICE/CBP the benefit of the doubt, or be skeptical.

Baking a roll of bread is not immoral. Baking bread as part of a contract to feed the gestapo, is.

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

#214

Post by evan_ »

db48x wrote: post #202
J_McQuade wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is an incredibly silly thing to say. If someone makes a knife that is terrible at carving wood or cutting food but is the perfect shape for, say, clitorectomies... then maybe that tool is bad and we should probably stop making it. Yes, people choose to make it and people choose to use it. But, like... stop those people, right?

This hypothetical knife that you've invented still doesn't make any choices. A person still makes the choice of how and when to use it. That's all that matters. Only things that can choose to act can be judged as ethical or unethical.

The tool is a lump of metal apart from ethics, but making the cliterectomy-knife was a choice someone made. We can judge that decision.

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

#215

Post by tencentshill »

anon291 wrote: post #135

[flagged]

Even trying to follow the existing law is punishable by exile without trial. You can go to all your legally appointed court dates, follow every rule in the book, and get snatched and deported from the courtroom the next minute.

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

#217

Post by swsieber »

anon291 wrote: post #135

[flagged]

> the idea of deporting people who have no legal status in this country is immediately branded Nazi

It's not just that idea though. Plenty of presidents have done that without pushback. It's that idea combined with:

* Rhetoric dehumanizing the immigrants

* Raiding churches, courts, jobs, etc

* Revoking legal status of immigrants

* Reducing training time for new hires

* Detaining U.S. citizens and threatening them

* Saying it'll help the U.S. citizens, when data shows it doesn't

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

#218

Post by ceejayoz »

db48x wrote: post #194
ceejayoz wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they purposefully named themselves after a super villains magical spy apparatus… Worse, that spy apparatus inherently corrupts its users .

That's a common misunderstanding. The Palantir never corrupted anyone. They only became dangerous to use once Sauron got his hands on one. You know, that immortal demon god who always uses mind control to get what he wants? If you use a Palantir he’ll notice and start working you over. If he is stronger than you are then he can force your Palantir to show you things of his choosing. When Denethor used Gondor’s Palant…

> If he is stronger than you are then he can force your Palantir to show you things of his choosing.

I mean, that's worse.

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

#219

Post by tshaddox »

whatshisface wrote: post #180
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…

The fact that there is a demand for fake evil, functioning like fake piety did in the 1600s, is a flaw of difficult-to-encompass proportion. Our culture is totally bankrupt if companies are now pretending to be worse than they're in reality able to be. Of course, in contrast to piety all fake evil is also real evil.

You mean virtue signaling with the sign flipped?

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

#220

Post by basch »

periodjet wrote: post #134

Why have we all lost the ability to think in a nuanced way? It’s very disturbing to witness, particularly on a forum like HN, ostensibly populated by smart people. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that ICE has a clear and ethical mandate while also believing that they are going about fulfilling that mandate via bad methods that need to change. It’s possible to simultaneously believe that people shouldn’t be ma…

nuance exists plenty it just doesnt float to the top.

by definition, groupthink will get more upvotes than mishmashthink.

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