[deleted]
Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
41–50 of 168 posts
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#42[deleted]
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#43Palantir has hundreds of employees swarming around downtown Palo Alto. Hundreds. Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something. There is something very weird about the employees in Palo Alto: I never see them at local meetups, events, parties, and such. They are truly strangers who keep to themselves and don't engage with the local community... and very young. I get the feeling they come from afar and…
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 employees tend to work late and party with other Palantir employees. A friend lived with a Palantir employee and I worked in one of their buildings (100 Hamilton). In my limited observation I noted a definite "wake up, go to Palantir, work, go out with Palantir, go back, after-party at Palantir, sleep" lifestyle that many Palantir employees subscribe to.
It's very "corporate cult"-esque: they hire inexperienced fresh grads from top-tier universities, and put them all together so that they foster relationships with each other, then build social events and in-office parties so people are reluctant to go out.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#44Okay I may be nighmar-ishing here, but is it possible that since Peter Thiel owns/owned large chunk of Facebook and also owns Palantir that works for government contracts, is it possible that Thiel could have been passing by info from Facebook servers via Palantir to the Government?
Wouldn't that make sense? I mean, lets say you own Facebook so what you say needs to be programmed or Facebook employees get pink slips, simple. Is it possible that Government does not tap into Facebook servers, BUT it does contract Palantir that the owner owns Facebook at the same time and thats how Governement gets up to date access to Facebook servers?
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#45Palantir has hundreds of employees swarming around downtown Palo Alto. Hundreds. Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something. There is something very weird about the employees in Palo Alto: I never see them at local meetups, events, parties, and such. They are truly strangers who keep to themselves and don't engage with the local community... and very young. I get the feeling they come from afar and…
> Somebody is paying that company a LOT of money for something.
As they've made perfectly clear, their major clients are the department of defense and hedge funds. Of course they're getting paid a lot of money.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#46This is our future. A fascist with asymmetrical hair standing in front of a hip, edgy bit of art, who's funded by a fascist who calls himself a libertarian, waxing eloquently about how good a person he is because the company he founded is protecting the shire by injecting the increasingly unaccountable security apparatus into every single aspect of our lives where they will enforce conformity.
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.
[deleted]
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#47I'd like to see that blurb about Fikri at the bottom rewritten multiple times over for each of the 205 people on the list that McCarthy bandied about during his Wheeling speech in 1950.
That story sounds very different when it can be used to describe the escapades of a free citizen, especially when the details of those escapades can be used as blackmail against them by another individual with an agenda.
What stops a politician with ties to the intelligence community from using this system to coerce others around him. This is the conversation we should be having, because this very real possibility is what makes these systems sound reprehensible to red-blooded terrorist hating 'mericans who generally defend these actions by the government in day-to-day conversations.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#48I cannot believe the link between palantir and prism is by the mere NAME of the software package as alleged in this article. That's some weak journalism. I mean, just check out github while you're at it: https://github.com/search?q=PRISM&ref=cmdform
I think the link is that, in addition to creating software under the same name, they received early funding from the CIA, and their software serves the same general purpose of sifting through large amounts of disparate data from various sources.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#49This is our future. A fascist with asymmetrical hair standing in front of a hip, edgy bit of art, who's funded by a fascist who calls himself a libertarian, waxing eloquently about how good a person he is because the company he founded is protecting the shire by injecting the increasingly unaccountable security apparatus into every single aspect of our lives where they will enforce conformity.
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 difference.
That said, I don't think this applies to the rank-and-file of intelligence community at large. They're too close to mainstream American culture to be nihilists. Any theories on why they would work to implement these kinds of spy systems would be appreciated. Maybe they have simply been drained of all critical thinking by the education system and just do what they're told since that's their job.
Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
> refusing the job only means someone else will take it, Isn't that true for almost any moral stance? Should I stop being a vegetarian because someone else will eat the meat anyway?
>Isn't that true for almost any moral stance? That part on its own is not enough. Only when: 1. someone else will do AND 2. it would be better for you to be doing than someone who takes it up then you should take it instead of them.
I understand and somewhat agree with your point, but sometimes people anticipate that, given the incentives of the job, they're unlikely to be any better than anyone else when push comes to shove (your pt 2). Think of "golden handcuffs" as one example.
This particular example doesn't apply to me, but I think I'd personally be able to rationalize a lot of selfish behavior following that logic so I try to avoid putting myself in situations where it would come up, even if both points might apply.