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I worked there for 7+ years, I'm not a bad person, and I don't feel bad. If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing fut

by dbt00 10y ago

I worked there for 7+ years, I'm not a bad person, and I don't feel bad. If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing future terrorist attacks. I was someone who spent a lot of time thinking and caring about privacy and overreaching law enforcement in the '90s. When the original PATRIOT act was passed in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, they weren't based on a deeply nuanced understanding of the intelligence failures that lead up to that event. They were a laundry list of things that the FBI (and others) had been proposing for years that they immediately dusted off and rammed through a congress terrified to say no. If you want to roll back the surveillance state, you have to actually empower people carrying out anti-terrorism to intelligently correlate data gathered through lawful and privacy-respecting means to succeed in their mission so that lawmakers and voters trust their own safety to allow that to happen -- and prevent as many massive terrorist attacks as possible, because every one that succeeds will lead to more demands for more data and whatever it takes. Palantir was specifically founded to give the authorities the right tools to solve anti-terrorism based on a focused dataset. The tools aren't designed around mass surveillance nor is anyone I know who works there interested in or motivated to solve that particular problem.

forgetsusername 10y ago
>I'm not a bad person When push comes to shove, your personal opinion on whether you're good or bad is irrelevant. Others might judge you differently. I've said it before; if we ever have a violent proletariat uprising, I think there will be a few people here who are surprised to see what side they're considered "on". The HBGary leaks showed a slide deck of Palantir suggesting a few very underhanded tricks to kill WikiLeaks and discredit people trying to do "good" work, for money. How and why is that acceptable?
CamperBob2 10y ago
If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing future terrorist attacks You can't prevent them all, and I don't want you to try. More precisely, I don't want you to do what's necessary to prevent every likely form of attack. Terrorist attacks in the USA happen when a few nutcases get lucky and succeed in wielding disproportionate force in an asymmetrical fashion. Only a ubiquitous Panopticon of a police state has a chance of stopping them all. In infosec terms, patching all of the vulnerabilities will require us all to live sandboxed lives far away from the metal, and that's not what this country was supposed to be about. So, go find something else to do, please... or at least, someplace else to do it. Failing that, maybe name your company after something besides a powerful magical artifact that was captured and subverted by malicious forces. The real terror will begin when the next J. Edgar Hoover takes control of what you've built. If you want to roll back the surveillance state, you have to actually empower people carrying out anti-terrorism to intelligently correlate data gathered through lawful and privacy-respecting means to succeed in their mission Bullshit. The authorities had all the data they needed to stop terrorist acts from 9/11 to the Boston Marathon bombing. They needed more brainpower, not more CPU power.

by dbt00 10y ago

forgetsusername 10y ago

>I'm not a bad person When push comes to shove, your personal opinion on whether you're good or bad is irrelevant. Others might judge you differently. I've said it before; if we ever have a violent proletariat uprising, I think there will be a few people here who are surprised to see what side they're considered "on". The HBGary leaks showed a slide deck of Palantir suggesting a few very underhanded tricks to kill WikiLeaks and discredit people trying to do "good" work, for money. How and why is that acceptable?

CamperBob2 10y ago

If you're opposed to a surveillance state, you should care deeply about preventing future terrorist attacks You can't prevent them all, and I don't want you to try. More precisely, I don't want you to do what's necessary to prevent every likely form of attack. Terrorist attacks in the USA happen when a few nutcases get lucky and succeed in wielding disproportionate force in an asymmetrical fashion. Only a ubiquitous Panopticon of a police state has a chance of stopping them all. In infosec terms, patching all of the vulnerabilities will require us all to live sandboxed lives far away from the metal, and that's not what this country was supposed to be about. So, go find something else to do, please... or at least, someplace else to do it. Failing that, maybe name your company after something besides a powerful magical artifact that was captured and subverted by malicious forces. The real terror will begin when the next J. Edgar Hoover takes control of what you've built. If you want to roll back the surveillance state, you have to actually empower people carrying out anti-terrorism to intelligently correlate data gathered through lawful and privacy-respecting means to succeed in their mission Bullshit. The authorities had all the data they needed to stop terrorist acts from 9/11 to the Boston Marathon bombing. They needed more brainpower, not more CPU power.