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Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

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Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#351

Post by viccis »

sys32768 wrote: post #321
jmyeet wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's quite clearly a war crime. You're putting booby trapped devices into supply chains where civilians will foreseeably get them and be injured or killed by them. This includes medical professionals and their families, who were both victims [1]. It's the equivalent of blowing up a commercial plane or bus because there's a military commander on it. Or, you know, levelling a residential apartment building [2]. If anyo…

Would you be here pushing the war crime narrative if Hamas had pulled off this operation on the IDF?

Of course not. The IDF aren't civilians. Hezbollah officials, unless they are part of its military sub-organization, are civilians.

A better comparison would be if Hamas pulled off this operation against the members of the Knesset (or, even more comparable, against a specific party like Likud) while they were at home.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#352

Post by ebbi »

hersko wrote: post #233
ebbi wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I can't imagine why Israel was carrying out strikes in Lebanon after October 8th. It's a total mystery.

I can't imagine why the attacks on October 7th happened. It's a complete mystery given life started on October 7th.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#353

Post by tiku »

dundarious wrote: post #219
joecool1029 wrote: post #119

So, what exactly did Palantir provide? I'm staying out of commenting whether or not this was legal/justified and asking strictly what service this was that was sold. Is this like, live location information provided from social media/carriers/etc? Is it AI guessing who might be a target based on collected data? EDIT: I ask because this sort of claim could just be marketing on Panantir's end and the quotes and this pos…

I believe 972mag.com have reported on Palentir tech involved in the "AI target selection" programs that the Israeli military has used in Gaza. My recollection is they use a logic similar to the subprime ratings agency scandal: collate info on individuals (cell tower proximity, movement patterns, social media leanings), and find the top 5% of target candidates, call those "high quality" regardless of any absolute metr…

The human in the loop gets a few seconds to decide if it's a target or not, do not know the exact number.

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#354

Post by mdni007 »

amarcheschi wrote: post #280
fortran77 wrote: post #276

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

Monitoring people for... Supporting opinions that don't agree with you?

There's a specific group of people that have this notion of thinking and I don't even need to explain further because most people will know who I am talking about

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#355

Post by baskin31 »

viccis wrote: post #345
bunji wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The intended targets of the exploding papers weren't civilians. Very few actual civilians ended up hurt by the detonations, much fewer than attacks by conventional weapons. It's about as targeted an attack as one can achieve from a distance. As an act of warfare, Israel did a splendid job on this. Thoroughly impressive work.

Did it only focus on Hezbollah military officials? Hezbollah is a political party. This is like package bombing US congressmen, Presidential cabinet members, etc. Which would be considered a terrorist attack obviously (and was when Israel sent our politicians, including our President, mailbombs shortly after WW2)

Does a political party shoot missiles over international borders and stockpile arms?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#356

Post by dang »

kyboren wrote: post #270
dang wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221729 sounds like cross-examining to me. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221631 is not flagged. That might be because we'd already turned off flags on it (I can't remember). https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46221972 I agree should not be flagged and I've unflagged it.

The point isn't so much to litigate each flagged comment, just to highlight how pervasive the flag abuse problem is. And of course, when the flag abusers 'defect' and gain some utility, it is only rational for the 'victims' to themselves defect from the civil conversation and start to abuse flags. In threads that are, unfortunately, adversarial, abusing the flag button is a stable Nash equilibrium. I think it's a shi…

I don't assess it that way. In any case, I am certain that turning off flags on controversial topics would have a devastating effect. To me that's like saying "let's turn off the immune system for the most fatal viruses".

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#357

Post by viccis »

richardfeynman wrote: post #241
jmyeet wrote: post #195

There are a few different angles to this. 1. If any other state had done this, we'd be correctly calling this a terrorist attack and there wouldn't be any question about it; and 2. Palantir was a partner in developing several AI systems used for targeting missile strikes in Gaza. Collectively these tend to be called Lavender [1][2]. Another of these systems is called "Where's Daddy". What does it do? It targets alleg…

* * *

Would you call it terrorism when Israel sent mailbombs to US top brass, including our president?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#358

Post by Cyph0n »

richardfeynman wrote: post #315
Cyph0n wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was indiscriminate in timing, location, and device possession. Unless you’re saying that the country behind a self-evaluated >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio in Gaza went through rigorous protocols to minimize harm in this attack?

The timing was during a war, the location was in a belligerent country, and the pagers were only and exclusively given to hezbollah leadership. The very definition of discriminate. Also, Israel has not "self-evaluated" a >80% civilian to combatant kill ratio. There was a Haaretz report that said the IDF was able to ID about 20% of those killed as militants against known databases, which is remarkably high compared to…

Re: timing - They were triggered to explode en masse, which implies that there was zero consideration to minimizing civilian harm.

Re: location - They exploded everywhere you can think of, while these targets were doing civilian activities near other civilians, and not in a combat setting.

Re: possession - Given the above, and Israel’s horrendous kill ratio, there was definitely no consideration for possession of these pagers at the time of the attack. For example, who is to say that some pagers weren’t in use by members of the political bureau, or unofficially resold to a hospital for use by oncall doctors?

Re: Israel used Palantir technologies in pager attack in Lebanon

#360

Post by tptacek »

zug_zug wrote: post #109
dralley wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Targeted attacks against military/militia leadership is not terrorism - almost by definition. If it was just random devices exploding, then sure, that could be considered terrorism. But it wasn't random devices, it was communication devices procured by Hezbollah and directly given by Hezbollah to their own members for their own purposes.

Two things Firstly, generals, like anybody else can be terrorized. Secondly, even if you only kill generals, that doesn't mean you didn't cause terror for everybody else. Imagine for example that Hezbollah found a way to poison the food for Israel's top X military personnel. It would cause a state of emotional terror for many people in Israel about their food safety for decades most likely, even if they weren't in th…

No, generals in an operational military force are definitionally combatants, and cannot in fact be "terrorized".
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