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So your base argument is: Palantir is innocent because someone else would do the things they're doing if they were gone? I'm not even sure how to respond to tha

So your base argument is: Palantir is innocent because someone else would do the things they're doing if they were gone? I'm not even sure how to respond to that. You seem to have dropped the point about them making surveillance software now that I have provided an example. You're on to excusing them because someone else could do the awful things they do. That is not a strong argument.

ng12 7y ago
If you click the timestamp you can respond inline. I never said Palantir is innocent. I didn't weigh in on the morality of it at all, in fact. My point is just that Palantir is just a data consulting company. I posted this comment in another thread concerning your example: > Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance". How hard do you think it would be to replicate that with Oracle, Tableau, and a few half-decent data scientists? Except at least with Palantir I expect them to do a few important things right, e.g. security. I'll leave my final thought here: if you're really concerned about mass surveillance focus your energy on the people doing the mass surveillance and not the people selling them some nice-looking dataviz tools.
- somethingtosay 7y ago
  Thank you for the help! So we agree that Palantir is not innocent. Why then, do we not go after both the people doing the mass surveillance AND the people enabling it? Intent matters.
  - ng12 7y ago
    Because going after Palantir is ultimately futile, even if they were to agree to cease all contracts with ICE very little would change. It is my suspicion that people who think otherwise are doing so out of a misunderstanding of what Palantir's technology actually does.

ng12 7y ago

If you click the timestamp you can respond inline. I never said Palantir is innocent. I didn't weigh in on the morality of it at all, in fact. My point is just that Palantir is just a data consulting company. I posted this comment in another thread concerning your example: > Take a good look at the screenshots in that link. It's a completely generic database -- you fill in some search fields and some data is returned, you can do a join, and then you can plop that data into a chart. Palantir isn't out there collecting data on citizens or scanning license plates or anything else I would consider "mass surveillance". How hard do you think it would be to replicate that with Oracle, Tableau, and a few half-decent data scientists? Except at least with Palantir I expect them to do a few important things right, e.g. security. I'll leave my final thought here: if you're really concerned about mass surveillance focus your energy on the people doing the mass surveillance and not the people selling them some nice-looking dataviz tools.

somethingtosay 7y ago
Thank you for the help! So we agree that Palantir is not innocent. Why then, do we not go after both the people doing the mass surveillance AND the people enabling it? Intent matters.
- ng12 7y ago
  Because going after Palantir is ultimately futile, even if they were to agree to cease all contracts with ICE very little would change. It is my suspicion that people who think otherwise are doing so out of a misunderstanding of what Palantir's technology actually does.