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Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

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Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#91

Post by hollerith »

Spooky23 wrote: post #57
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.

Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.

If you're implying that the internet would not exist if the US government had not seen it as a way to prepare for nuclear war, I disagree.

(I do not have an opinion on the morality of working for Palantir.)

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#92

Post by dsl »

sheri wrote: post #12
Anderkent wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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. Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or because you think you are making a difference by not doing so? If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the approach - refusing th…

> 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?

Yes. For every animal you don't eat, I'll eat two.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#93

Post by bernardlunn »

potatolicious wrote: post #89
Spooky23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.

Sure, but I wasn't alive then, and the work I've done personally hasn't contributed to nuclear war or anything of that sort. Through my college years I had a couple of opportunities to work in the defense industry, but chose not to. Which doesn't mean people aren't getting shot and blown up, it just means I'm not closely involved with it. My stance is not beating people over the head with morality, it's purely person…

I agree, its "first do no harm" mantra

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#94

Post by scarmig »

wslh wrote: post #36
w1ntermute wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could say that about a lot of immoral/unethical jobs.

Yes: solving drug trafficking routes with several constraints, making the best scams, exploiting vulnerabilities to install a botnet. All are very interesting challenges.

Drug trafficking is a relatively honorable occupation that delivers a highly demanded consumer good that's affordable for a broad cross section of society. It's unfair to compare it to the Stasi or consumer scams.

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#95

Post by bernardlunn »

rayiner wrote: post #70
Spooky23 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Be careful with moral judgements like that. You basically work in an industry that exists due to it's role in preparing for nuclear war.

I'd go further than that. A bunch of people are expressing surprise/outrage that a bunch of companies that spy on for profit you at the service of the advertising industry are sharing the fruits of that spying with the government for national security.

The greatest minds of our generation are figuring out how to get a sated consumer to click

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#96

Post by starpilot »

natch wrote: post #33

Palantir 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…

On the other hand, they openly and frequently share information about their work on Quora: https://www.quora.com/Palantir-Technologies. Here they sort of address the apparent secrecy:

> This is a common misconception. We do have clients whose names we can't share, but we try to be as open as we can, both internally and externally. We put as much of our customer work as we can on our Analysis Blog (http://www.palantirtech.com/gove...). We participate in the open source community (https://github.com/palantir/). We have engaged with press who have pretty thoroughly profiled the company (http://www.washingtonian.com/art...). We share how our technology works on our white videos (Google "white videos"). We even tell people exactly what we look for when we interview candidates and give tips (see entries in (http://blog.palantir.com/)

http://qr.ae/pgHRy

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#97

Post by freyr »

Permit wrote: post #73
freyr wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I attended a conference in Montreal where Palantir demoed their software. They used a large amount of data on an ecoli outbreak to map out and track the point of origin. Simply because a company isn't public about all its activities and deals with "large amounts of disparate data" is not grounds to call for their cruxifixion. This story had brought out the absolute worst in HN commenters.

It's great that they showed a demo tracking a disease outbreak, but that doesn't really mean anything.

The company readily admits that their software has primarily been used in the defense and finance industries. They don't hide this fact, nor should they feel pressured to.

I'm not crucifying anybody, I was just pointing out that the OP's speculation was based on slightly more than just the name alone (but I agree, it's still pretty weak).

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#98

Post by scarmig »

zht wrote: post #9

is this what stands for journalism now? taking random anonymous reader email, googling it casually, and then writing a story on it behind the facade of "oh please don't hold us responsible, we're just quoting random anonymous email"

Well, when the government keeps tens of billions of dollar worth of activities totally secret--not just the details of, but the very existence of--what are you supposed to do?

Wait until the NSA does a press release of everything it's doing?

Re: Palantir and Prism: A Possible Link

#100

Post by SkyMarshal »

bri3d wrote: post #43
natch wrote: post #33

Palantir 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 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 guard.

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