8 ms·

What leads well-off Americans, whose safety and comfort is guaranteed by the constant efforts of law enforcement, to conclude that legal efforts to make law enf

by _iyig 7y ago

What leads well-off Americans, whose safety and comfort is guaranteed by the constant efforts of law enforcement, to conclude that legal efforts to make law enforcement more efficient would make the world a worse place?

fromthestart 7y ago
An understanding of the inevitability of abuse of unchecked power.
imglorp 7y ago
Paying attention to world history, for one. For another, I've personally seen my work get turned from a human safety product in one market into a direct instrument of human oppression in another market. Lots of tech is just a tool, which can be used for good or evil. The thing is, once good people see what is possible, it provides them an easy route to doing evil which they might not have had before.
- _iyig 7y ago
  I'm sorry to hear about your personal experience; I've been in a similar situation myself, related to voice assistant technology. However, I don't think either of our experiences necessarily imply that Palantir is evil. For example: Typewriters can be turned to evil. IBM showed this to the world with their WWII-era Nazi collaboration. That doesn't mean the world should abandon typewriters, or that no self-respecting engineer should work on typewriters, or that they would be necessarily used for evil by the law-enforcement arm of a democratic society. Should police agencies collect and store real-time location data for every private car? Probably not. I'd support legislation to restrict such practices. Should Palantir help police officers sort and present the data they collect, in general including not only LPR data but also criminal records, known associates, and vehicle information? I'd say yes.
  - anigbrowl 7y ago
    Typewriters can be turned to evil. IBM showed this to the world with their WWII-era Nazi collaboration. That doesn't mean the world should abandon typewriters, or that no self-respecting engineer should work on typewriters, or that they would be necessarily used for evil by the law-enforcement arm of a democratic society. IBM's relationship with the Third Reich was not based on the mere supply of typewriters; such a suggestion reduces your credibility on this topic to zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
    - _iyig 7y ago
      >IBM's relationship with the Third Reich was not based on the mere supply of typewriters; such a suggestion reduces your credibility on this topic to zero. "Punchcards can be turned to evil." The specific type of dual-use technology is irrelevant to my point.
      - anigbrowl 7y ago
        Misrepresentation of facts corrodes discourse.
bobthepanda 7y ago
Law enforcement is not without bias, and just because they’re using discretion for you today doesn’t mean they won’t use it against you later.
sswezey 7y ago
Ethics. The amount and scope of information collected by things like Palantir Gotham is beyond invasive. The fact that a police officer can type in your name and know where you were driving is disconcerting. It is about as Big Brother as you can get and not the kind of world I would like to live in. This question is a slippery slope, where people become more and more accustomed to less privacy. If you think this is justifiable, I would highly suggest reading up about the the Stasi in East Germany or read 1984.
- zymhan 7y ago
  This exact issue was pointed out many times with automated license plate scanning came into existence. Is it really Palantir's fault for making software to aggregate the data? In my view it is our fault as citizens for allowing the government to collect such data in the first place. Any other company with enough developers and data scientists can do what Palantir does. It's the massive amount of information their software uses that is the concern. But that data is collected by our government, and so we have legal recourse to it, either under current law or by passing new privacy laws.
  - mdorazio 7y ago
    That’s like asking if it’s really a murderer’s fault for pulling the trigger of a gun manufactured by someone else. Yes, it absolutely is their fault and no, “if they didn’t, someone else would” is not a valid moral excuse, ever.
    - zymhan 7y ago
      Who is the murderer in this analogy? To me it's the government misusing such a tool.
      - mdorazio 7y ago
        Palantir. The government is the gun manufacturer collecting all the needed data in various places.
elbasti 7y ago
Quite simply the belief that: 1) these efforts do not guarantee their safety and comfort (though others might, these don't) and 2) that even if they did, the ethical price of hunting down undocumented immigrants is inexcusably high. That in the same way that you wouldn't behead someone for speeding, you shouldn't separate families and cause people to live in the shadows simply for having the privilege of cleaning your hotel sheets.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
gdubs 7y ago
Defending American liberties often result in uncomfortable situations. For instance, defending free speech. To defend free speech, we often find ourselves having to seemingly defend truly awful things (depending on your personal ethics), because the principle of free speech overrides our feelings on a particular bit of speech; hate speech aside. It’s not like the people against mass surveillance all want their kids to live in unsafe neighborhoods, or be blind to terrorist plots. But everything must be balanced within our set of liberties — and the American way of due process, etc, is purposefully skewed to protect individual rights and liberties. This is why gun rights is such a hot button issue — some would like to see stricter regulations, because they feel unsafe sending their kids to school in a world of mass shootings. Others feel those restrictions place an undue burden on individual liberties afforded by the constitution. When it comes to law enforcement, there is a lot of abuse of Power present in the system, which disproportionately affects people of color. Thus, there’s a very valid argument to be made that some of this tech is too dangerous in the hands of law enforcement, despite how much people of all political stripes want their families to be safe. My aim here is to illuminate the differences in the arguments. I’m not trying to force my (admittedly liberal) point of view on the conversation, because HN isn’t really for politics. My goal here is to show how, despite politics, people can all desire safety for their family, and personal liberties, but have honest disagreements about the best way to achieve that.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
justforyou 7y ago
Given the persistant patterns of unprofessional amd unethical behavior amongst law enforcement, it's understandable that people are against giving them access to more powerful tools that have great potential for abuse.

by _iyig 7y ago

fromthestart 7y ago

An understanding of the inevitability of abuse of unchecked power.

imglorp 7y ago

Paying attention to world history, for one. For another, I've personally seen my work get turned from a human safety product in one market into a direct instrument of human oppression in another market. Lots of tech is just a tool, which can be used for good or evil. The thing is, once good people see what is possible, it provides them an easy route to doing evil which they might not have had before.

_iyig 7y ago
I'm sorry to hear about your personal experience; I've been in a similar situation myself, related to voice assistant technology. However, I don't think either of our experiences necessarily imply that Palantir is evil. For example: Typewriters can be turned to evil. IBM showed this to the world with their WWII-era Nazi collaboration. That doesn't mean the world should abandon typewriters, or that no self-respecting engineer should work on typewriters, or that they would be necessarily used for evil by the law-enforcement arm of a democratic society. Should police agencies collect and store real-time location data for every private car? Probably not. I'd support legislation to restrict such practices. Should Palantir help police officers sort and present the data they collect, in general including not only LPR data but also criminal records, known associates, and vehicle information? I'd say yes.
- anigbrowl 7y ago
  Typewriters can be turned to evil. IBM showed this to the world with their WWII-era Nazi collaboration. That doesn't mean the world should abandon typewriters, or that no self-respecting engineer should work on typewriters, or that they would be necessarily used for evil by the law-enforcement arm of a democratic society. IBM's relationship with the Third Reich was not based on the mere supply of typewriters; such a suggestion reduces your credibility on this topic to zero. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust
  - _iyig 7y ago
    >IBM's relationship with the Third Reich was not based on the mere supply of typewriters; such a suggestion reduces your credibility on this topic to zero. "Punchcards can be turned to evil." The specific type of dual-use technology is irrelevant to my point.
    - anigbrowl 7y ago
      Misrepresentation of facts corrodes discourse.

bobthepanda 7y ago

Law enforcement is not without bias, and just because they’re using discretion for you today doesn’t mean they won’t use it against you later.

sswezey 7y ago

Ethics. The amount and scope of information collected by things like Palantir Gotham is beyond invasive. The fact that a police officer can type in your name and know where you were driving is disconcerting. It is about as Big Brother as you can get and not the kind of world I would like to live in. This question is a slippery slope, where people become more and more accustomed to less privacy. If you think this is justifiable, I would highly suggest reading up about the the Stasi in East Germany or read 1984.

zymhan 7y ago
This exact issue was pointed out many times with automated license plate scanning came into existence. Is it really Palantir's fault for making software to aggregate the data? In my view it is our fault as citizens for allowing the government to collect such data in the first place. Any other company with enough developers and data scientists can do what Palantir does. It's the massive amount of information their software uses that is the concern. But that data is collected by our government, and so we have legal recourse to it, either under current law or by passing new privacy laws.
- mdorazio 7y ago
  That’s like asking if it’s really a murderer’s fault for pulling the trigger of a gun manufactured by someone else. Yes, it absolutely is their fault and no, “if they didn’t, someone else would” is not a valid moral excuse, ever.
  - zymhan 7y ago
    Who is the murderer in this analogy? To me it's the government misusing such a tool.
    - mdorazio 7y ago
      Palantir. The government is the gun manufacturer collecting all the needed data in various places.

elbasti 7y ago

Quite simply the belief that: 1) these efforts do not guarantee their safety and comfort (though others might, these don't) and 2) that even if they did, the ethical price of hunting down undocumented immigrants is inexcusably high. That in the same way that you wouldn't behead someone for speeding, you shouldn't separate families and cause people to live in the shadows simply for having the privilege of cleaning your hotel sheets.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

gdubs 7y ago

Defending American liberties often result in uncomfortable situations. For instance, defending free speech. To defend free speech, we often find ourselves having to seemingly defend truly awful things (depending on your personal ethics), because the principle of free speech overrides our feelings on a particular bit of speech; hate speech aside. It’s not like the people against mass surveillance all want their kids to live in unsafe neighborhoods, or be blind to terrorist plots. But everything must be balanced within our set of liberties — and the American way of due process, etc, is purposefully skewed to protect individual rights and liberties. This is why gun rights is such a hot button issue — some would like to see stricter regulations, because they feel unsafe sending their kids to school in a world of mass shootings. Others feel those restrictions place an undue burden on individual liberties afforded by the constitution. When it comes to law enforcement, there is a lot of abuse of Power present in the system, which disproportionately affects people of color. Thus, there’s a very valid argument to be made that some of this tech is too dangerous in the hands of law enforcement, despite how much people of all political stripes want their families to be safe. My aim here is to illuminate the differences in the arguments. I’m not trying to force my (admittedly liberal) point of view on the conversation, because HN isn’t really for politics. My goal here is to show how, despite politics, people can all desire safety for their family, and personal liberties, but have honest disagreements about the best way to achieve that.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

justforyou 7y ago

Given the persistant patterns of unprofessional amd unethical behavior amongst law enforcement, it's understandable that people are against giving them access to more powerful tools that have great potential for abuse.