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> Honestly a bit disturbing to see people coming out of the wood works to defend palantir. > They've assisted NSA, and now they're using some skills to help ag

• vkou 10y ago
  If you believe the job is immoral, yes. IBM supplied computation systems to Nazi Germany, where they were used to carry out the murder of millions of people. Had it done so knowingly, its management should have been taken out back and shot, right alongside the other perpetrators.
  • 67726e 10y ago
    Deporting immigrants who decided to violate the law is in no way comparable to the systematic murder of millions of people. Get a grip.
  • jeff_petersen 10y ago
    As with every Nazi comparison with the current administration, this is neither helpful nor honest.
    • vkou 10y ago
      I have implied nothing of the sort. I have, however, implied that "Helping the government do its job" has no bearing on the morality of your actions. What the job is does.
      • AckSyn 10y ago
        It's intellectually dishonest to draw a comparison of IBM helping the Nazi's commit a genocidal action to the US government deporting illegal aliens, and then say "well I didn't _imply_ anything" Either that or you're being deliberately obtuse and are trolling.
        • vkou 10y ago
          It's intellectually dishonest to dismiss any ethical controversy about your behaviour with "Well, I'm making a lot of money by helping a government do what it wants, so surely I'm in the clear." Palantir assists with quite a number of... Ethically controversial government activities.
    • kbenson 10y ago
      Blanket dismissal of a comparison because it uses include Nazis is not useful. The point of learning from history is to actually be able to compare current events to the past. Putting Nazi Germany on a pedestal as uniquely evil is harmful, in that it prevents us from learning from those mistakes. Using it where unwarranted is also harmful, but we should not got to such lengths to avoid that as to reduce this historical period to uselessness. Comparisons to the current administration are likely overblown, but are not entirely without merit. Comparisons could also be made to past administrations. The important thing is to consider how well the comparison matches, how problematic the features being compared are in each item, and how that works within context. If those that cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, so too are those that refuse to consider the past.
  • brilliantcode 10y ago
    Fuck IBM too for helping with the holocaust. Palantir and Peter Thiel wouldn't hesitate to do the same. source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust edit: downvote means you deny holocaust and IBM's role in the massacre of Jews
  • mikeyouse 10y ago
    There's a fair amount of evidence that IBM knew exactly what their customers were doing with their computing systems. There were IBM engineers on site to operate the counters and they had classifications for why they were in the camps (disabled, gay, Jewish) and the methods in which they died - including 'death by gas chamber'. All of that info was being compiled by employees of IBM. http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1301691 http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1301691
• mikeash 10y ago
  Well, yes. Not everything the government does is supposed to be about efficiency. The legal system is very deliberately inefficient. We make police and prosecutors jump through all sorts of hoops when investigating and prosecuting crime, because the goal isn't to make their jobs as easy as possible, the goal is to ensure that innocent people don't get convicted.
  • danso 10y ago
    Reminds me of when I was robbed in NY and had to go to a police station to talk to a detective. After I described the physical features of the suspect, he had me use an antiquated program that brought up hundreds of suspects' mugshots who were known criminals in the area that matched my description. The computer and software was comically slow, and after paging through about a dozen slowly loading pages of (poorly lighted) mugshots, I gave up. I was initially annoyed at how inefficient that software was, how its slow speed and clunky interface inevitably made it hard to focus on the work of identifying suspects. I could think of a lot of ways to make it easier to filter and interactively rank/pin photos for easier on-the-fly comparison. But then on further reflection, I realized it's probably a good thing that that software is so clunky. Making the software slicker (i.e. as portrayed in CSI shows) could mislead or pressure users (both police and victims) into thinking that their human ability to identify people from mugshots is more accurate than it actually is.
    • semione 10y ago
      >into thinking that their human ability to identify people from mugshots is more accurate than it actually is Identifying in mugshot does nothing, you have to identify suspect in person and detective will interrogate suspect and you both. There are multitude of checks before anything is done. So still failing to understand how good software which could possible show the suspect is the problem? The main reason possibly could be that they(government) cannot hire good programmers who could build useable systems.
      • danso 10y ago
        I know, they ended up catching him and I had to identify him in a lineup. He ended up pleading guilty. Identifying a mugshot isn't "nothing". It can be used as evidence for probable cause in getting a search warrant or at least paying the suspect a visit.