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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

#401

Post by dfxm12 »

bri3d wrote: post #20
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…

This is my understanding of Palantir too: it's a consultancy with a map, a graph database, and some "AI" nonsense. They sell expensive "forward deployed engineers" (aka, consultants) to customize this map and graph database to specific use cases. I'm not trying to argue Palantir is an ethical company; my views on "company ethics" are nuanced but I wouldn't put them anywhere near my "places I want to work" bucket. But…

they're not some weird deep demonic trove of personal information; that's supplied to them by their customers, which is where change needs to happen.

The line blurs when you consider Thiel's personal motivations (e.g. Project 2025) and investments/involvement in the current administration.

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

#402

Post by duskdozer »

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.

There are people who would not sleep at night knowing that the tool they created was enabling such things. I believe some are looking to make "semi-open" source licenses that add more restrictions.

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

#403

Post by TitaRusell »

senordevnyc wrote: post #348
tick_tock_tick wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ... "We" (a lot of people, not everyone who posts here) don't believe that. Lots of people disagree with immigration control as a concept period. I mean sure but you have to acknowledge that is an extremely fringe belief that basically no one in the USA supports. The debate is on "how" it's being done not that we shouldn't have immigration control.

Why is this being downvoted? The primary reason Trump was able to win is because Biden waited until it was far too late to address the surge of illegal immigration at the southern border. We don't have to wonder or argue about whether Americans support open borders, we already had something mildly in that direction (that still didn't remotely approach the idea of "no immigration control, period"), and in response Ame…

Not everyone believes this is about "the border" but rather a Christian conservative takeover of society.

The immigrants are just an excuse for the fascist goons in the street.

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

#404

Post by duskdozer »

phoehne wrote: post #171
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…

My point was, if you do invent something like Zyklon B, you need to consider its uses. While the gas itself is just a molecule, devoid of morality, not everyone who employs it will be a moral person. In the case of Palantir, should we allow the federal government to combine databases (which may have been hoovered up by DOGE and held in a private sector company that isn't subject to FOIA)? Should there be judicial rev…

No, but it's also the engineer at Palantir who is enabling it with their efforts. If every engineer there immediately resigned and no other agreed to work there, the situation would end. One can try to hide behind the idea that they are only 1/n_employees responsible (typical corollary: therefore not responsible at all), but this doesn't change the fact that they are participants in what is happening.

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

#405

Post by wahnfrieden »

TitaRusell wrote: post #400
wahnfrieden wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IBM designed and serviced such a system when it was known to be used by a genocidal government as the customer

Meh American oil companies were literally selling the oil that German tanks ran on until Roosevelt finally got them to stop. And I am not going to single out the Americans here lots of people in my country made money on the Atlantik wall.

IBM wasn't only providing commodity infrastructure. They designed schema for labeling Jews and other categories of people for targeted internment and extermination

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

#408

Post by tstrimple »

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…

> every report I’ve read about the platform itself gives me strong “typical enterprise vendor” vibes.

Isn't this the banality of evil in action?

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

#409

Post by antonvs »

db48x wrote: post #163
datsci_est_2015 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This almost makes it funnier? As if it’s the folly of creators to believe that their creations are by virtue untethered to morals and ethics, and it’s only through their use by amoral or unethical actors that they become so.

Tools are always neutral. The hammer doesn't become evil merely because you used it to bash someone's brains in. Tools do not make choices; humans do.

It depends on your moral framework. For example if you believe killing is always wrong, then guns are not neutral - they're a tool designed for evil uses.

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

#410

Post by oenton »

ChromaticPanic wrote: post #326
hairofadog wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's say a third party was elected and started implementing certain policies. What would they have to do for you to call them fascist? Fascism is an actual thing, after all, so there must be some line that would separate fascism from not-fascism.

It's only fascism when it comes for them personally. Mask wearing when sick ? "How dare you, that's fascist" . Entering private domiciles without a proper warrant? "Democracy, as the founding fathers intended"

> Entering private domiciles without a proper warrant? "Democracy, as the founding fathers intended"

Or my personal favorite, "a mandate."

Interestingly I don't recall any other US President in recent memory (last 30 years) referring to their policies, or more accurately the fact that they won an election, as "a mandate given by the American people."

But you only need to go back a few more decades to find similar phrases used by a certain country's infamous authoritarian regime. Are the frogs boiling yet? It's starting to get really uncomfortable really fast.

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