7 ms·

Palantir Admits to Helping ICE Deport Immigrants

49 points by elsewhen 6y ago

wow_yes 6y ago
We must defund and destroy not just ICE but the paramilitary system that it is a part of (FBI/DHS/etc). If you buy into the IPO, if you work at Palantir, or if you financially gain from this ecosystem you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life. I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be?
- beervirus 6y ago
  Do drug smugglers "just want a better life"? Is it racist to deport them? Is it racist for a country to have and enforce borders at all?
  - francis_t_catte 6y ago
    Considering borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity, you could argue the answer to all of your questions is very much "yes".
    - zepto 6y ago
      Where is it defined that ‘borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity’? I meant that seems like something you could argue, but it also seems very reductive and certainly not a given.
      - mrOne1 6y ago
        Stop being naive of history and context for pedantry’s sake, and de-emphasizing well worn narratives to manage the emotions along your preferences Borders define a zone of resource control for those able to protect the borders A physical reality exists aside from whatever logical diagram you can imagine in your head Biology explains it without needing some clean room philosophy defined right here with Mr r/iamverysmart Everyone with a keyboard and net connection thinks they’re unearthing new elements themselves these days by drawing two overlapping circles and jamming whatever they want in it
    - stronglikedan 6y ago
      Borders are not meant to "control access to wealth and opportunity". One thing they actually do is keep social welfare programs in check. That's just not possible when you can't control the number of recipients of these benefits, much less the number of non-contributors, but it is possible when legal immigrants receiving these benefits can be counted as such.
  - thisiscorrect 6y ago
    Many in the US (and to a lesser extent Western Europe and Australia) seem to answer that last question with a "yes." It's never addressed why border controls by China, Mexico, or really any non-Western country aren't also "reprehensible."
- gotoeleven 6y ago
  And the worst part is that Palantir's software often misgenders and deadnames the trans migrants of color and they end up in the wrong holding cell.
  - Cuuugi 6y ago
    So if they were Cis-gendered white people you wouldn't give a crap?
- kongolongo 6y ago
  If you professionally write software that runs on or own any electronics with semiconductors or lithium ion batteries you are profiting from child slavery, war, and exploitation of workers through the rare-earth elements mining industry that provides the raw materials to produce these devices. That's not to mention the crimes committed during manufacturing chain of said devices. This is an impossible moral standard. Yours is just as impossible. The FBI and DHS do a lot more than just deport immigrants. Palantir does more than just aid in deporting immigrants. If everything were so black and white the above statement would likely describe what you do as well.
  - geofft 6y ago
    I'd rather live in a world where we object to all of these crimes than one where we object to none of them.
    - zepto 6y ago
      Sure, but the point I think is that every one of us is actually benefitting from the proceeds of these ‘crimes’ in real time. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care or ‘object’ to them. What it does mean is that finger pointing and trying to act like we aren’t part of the problem but ‘they’ i.e. Palantir etc, are, is simply a way of pretending we aren’t complicit. If borders are a problem, we need to solve that problem by working out a path to eliminating them that actually minimizes harm. We can’t do that if all our energy is spent on branding people ‘criminals’ and ‘objecting’ to them when we’re part of the same system ourselves.
      - geofft 6y ago
        Sure, yes, I agree with that. I think the point here is that Palantir presents itself as not participating in deportations or other widely-considered-distasteful things, and yet they do, and that deserves particular outrage. I think it's quite reasonable for a company to say we don't know exactly what our supply chain looks like and the only way anyone can build electronics is to use somewhat-questionable supply chains, but we'll do the best we can and and take action if we know of specific instances of harm (e.g., avoid known-bad suppliers), because that's the only way to do better. I think there's a number of food companies and clothing companies that do the same thing about working conditions in their supply chains, too. Palantir isn't doing that - they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth, saying "of course we aren't doing it" while directly being involved. If Palantir were to say, for instance, that they understand their product could be used in this way, they're not interested in providing services for deportations and will cut off customers who are using it for that or indirectly providing services for other organizations doing that, then the public reaction would be very different. (They could also say "Palantir fully supports the mission of America's law enforcement including ICE and ERO, work here if you want to support law and order and make America great again," and then nobody would accuse them of hiding what they work on.)
- gruez 6y ago
  >you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life. This seems like a oversimplistic take on undocumented immigrants. Yes, they just want a better life, but they're also violating immigration laws to do so. Not deporting them sends a signal that violating immigration laws okay and disincentives people from going through the proper channels.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- jethro_tell 6y ago
  Infact, if all your economic projections are based on continued growth, both in production and consumption, were going to need more people in this country. The process and the legality aside, the only ways to increase GDP growth is to create more efficient workers or increase the number of workers. The other option is a deep, self inflicted, down turn like Japan had for 20 years. There's room for lots of people and there's going to b a need for more people in this country as the boomers finally retire in their 80s.
  - thisiscorrect 6y ago
    The (completely reasonable) alternative is to avoid a system that only works when there's permanent exponential growth in a finite world. On top of that, growing GDP is different from improving average quality of life. If GDP goes up 10% by growing the population 20% through mass immigration, it's plausible quality of life will go down in aggregate. Why is GDP growth the right metric?
    - jethro_tell 6y ago
      I'm with you. Unfortunately, unless we change they system around so it doesn't have to grow forever, the weakest are the ones that get screwed as the economy shrinks. You can't have it both ways, unfettered capitalism with continued growth and negative population growth. GDP is not the right metric to show increase of quality of life, but it is a quick metric to show economic expansion and contraction. There's a much broader conversation about how we want out system to work.
- jmpman 6y ago
  What about the poor people in the US, whose hourly rate is lower because of the flow of illegal immigrants? Aren’t the poor in the US disproportionately minority? Yes, there is a downside of having a large “talent” pool of unskilled labor. If you’re a high school dropout, US citizen, you’re competing with this “talent” for handyman jobs, landscaping, house cleaning, etc. Sure, it’s great to have cheap landscaping, but before you dismantle ICE, go speak with a US citizen who’s doing roofing, and ask if their income would be higher without the illegal immigrants.
  - Jtsummers 6y ago
    Blame the employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants, then. If they weren't breaking the law by hiring them, then there'd be greatly reduced motivation to travel here and work illegally (versus attempting to come in legally).
    - Cuuugi 6y ago
      Why can't you blame both? Both are "technically" breaking the law?
      - Jtsummers 6y ago
        Sure, you can blame them both. Like many things multiple parties are responsible for the issue. But one group, in this case, is tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) inviting the other into the US to participate in the illegal job market. So, at least from my perspective, that puts a larger portion of the blame on the employers. They're also (along with enforcement agencies, again focusing on the employers) the only ones in a position to meaningful reduce the illegal job market. Actually fine these businesses, threaten them with being shutdown and actually shut the worst offenders down. They're probably in violation of quite a few labor and tax laws as well, beyond just the issue of who they hire.
  - geofft 6y ago
    There's a couple of answers here. The big one is that if you're here illegally, you already know you have limited (though not zero!) recourse to the law, so you're willing to take illegal jobs - jobs that pay below minimum wage, jobs that are cheaper for the employer because safety standards are being ignored, etc. Immigration law is one way in which the law regulates the labor market; labor law itself is also part of it, and if we're going to talk about upholding the law, let's take both into account. If we were to include significantly more migrant workers under legal immigration, they would have effective access to the protections of labor law, which means they have less room to undercut US citizens. They'd also have more access to jobs that tend to effectively require work authorization. You can pay a fellow in cash to work on your roof without going through E-Verify; you can't quite easily pay a fellow in cash to work at a major fast food chain or drive a school bus or be an SRE at a thousand-person tech firm or whatever. So increasing legal immigration may have the effect of reducing the labor supply for house and farm work. More generally, the economy is a complex thing, and each change you make has many effects. The wage for roofers is determined by both supply (number of potential roofers) and demand - if more people live here, there are quite literally more roofs. While I'm not saying this by itself is likely to save the roofing-labor market, I do think that there are likely broader effects from increasing our pool of legal immigrants besides the most obvious one of depressing wages, and we should look at more than just the extremely short term. And in the long term, if population growth keeps up, the pool of unskilled labor with domestic work authorization is going to go up on its own. If our economy/society can't handle that, we should be figuring out how to address that anyway. (This is all a bit orthogonal to dismantling ICE - I do agree that having an underclass of laborers without equal protection under the laws is bad for everyone. I just don't think that ICE is a morally justifiable solution to that problem. We should create more "proper pathways" for people to become documented residents and authorized workers, but until we do so, I don't think having ICE around makes things better.)
- foogazi 6y ago
  > I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be? There are already laws in place for expanding the talent pool: student visas, work visas, seasonal worker visas, family visas, lottery visas If more are needed can the allotment be increased instead of relying on black market sources?
- Bancakes 6y ago
  Sorry, but I find that to be an immature, reactionist post - how is it racist if it's about nationality and legla status? Illegal immigrants cheat not just the system, but legal immigrants, and themselves. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by applying for H-1B or other processes to earn a better life. Consequently, you lose nothing if you are deported, since you received a free tour ride out of Uncle Sam's own pocket. Everyone wants an owned house, a nice car, a stable job, and a loving family next to them. You have to earn it. Get in line, haha. If we allow illegal immigration, we're destroying people's chances to stay professionally and legally competitive with each other, and working and integrating yourself in a new country is devalued. You can't keep living under Damocles' sword of being thrown out at a moment's notice, serving as blackmail for your employer and nemeses. Why not earn the citizenship and the right to vote - to do something about Trump, Biden, and other such politicians? To make sure you can fund your children's college before someone from 4chan doxxes you to the authorities? I'm sorry I'm surrounded by people who believe in impossible goals like world peace and lack of borders.
- mancerayder 6y ago
  Which first-world countries in the world have open, unlimited immigration? Have we thought critically about the positive aspects of border control? Or have we created drawn a moral line in the sand and refused to take up the rationales that may exist and address them? For example, have we put on our thinking caps and thought about how to preserve welfare states in the face of budgets and headcount?
libraryatnight 6y ago
Isn't this what Palantir does? I just assumed their business model was to take any morally objectionable tech contract?
- zepto 6y ago
  Helping to deport illegal immigrants isn’t morally objectionable unless you believe that border control itself is morally objectionable. Even if it ultimately becomes accepted as morally right, it certainly does not reflect the current views of all but a tiny minority of US citizens. Vice is just profiting from creating moral panic here.
- danpalmer 6y ago
  More specifically, they build data analysis and CRUD apps on top of a ton of ETL for large clients. They skew towards government contracts, and probably due to their founder have a different view on what's morally acceptable. I guess the reason why they're involved in this is that the mechanics of deporting someone is a non-trivial data workflow through a bunch of crappy legacy systems, and given they've already got the ETL set up to get the data out, they can create a quick CRUD interface, or use data analysis to find suitable targets. That, plus the fact the company culturally agrees with the deportations, make it a reasonable business for them. In many ways it's the same role as IBM played in the holocaust. These abhorrent operations are huge logistical undertakings, and that requires investment in tech that governments often aren't able to achieve. Culture comes from the top, I don't think anyone at Palantir can be surprised that this is the result when Thiel is their leader.
beervirus 6y ago
Palantir helped the government detect people breaking the law?? For shame!
- uoaei 6y ago
  Is the law just?
  - beervirus 6y ago
    It is acceptable for a country to have borders and place conditions on who is allowed to cross them.
    - uoaei 6y ago
      Not when those conditions, and their enforcement, challenge basic human rights. This is ethics 101.
      - DuskStar 6y ago
        Can you formulate a way to enforce conditions on international migration and travel that doesn't challenge what you view as "basic human rights"?
        uoaei 6y ago
        Is it appropriate to give human rights abuses a pass until someone can appease your kneejerk reaction for rationalization?
        DuskStar 6y ago
        Generally people will accept "human rights" abuses for ends that they feel strongly enough about if there aren't alternatives. Maintaining the existence of borders as a practical construct is one of those things. So, if you want to end those "human rights" abuses, you'll need to provide alternatives.
SecurityMinded 6y ago
And what is wrong with that. Those people are an invasion force. Regardless they want a better life or whatever else, they need to do this in their own countries, not in the US. Deportation of illegal aliens (let's not mince the words with euphemisms like "undocumented immigrants") is the right thing to do and any organization which can help ICE/USCIS/DHS/Whatever else organization, is doing a big service to the US. I, as an US citizen taxpayer, am not required to hold the pot for those illegal aliens to get better healthcare, better education for their children and better earnings than what they can do in their home countries. At the end of the day, they are not paying taxes (don't start with the sales tax or ITIN rhetoric, I know those and those arguments don't hold water) but using the resources more than the taxpayers do. At the end of the day, my taxes are going to support their lifestyles, instead of coming back to me in the name of services needed. And don;t even get me started with the states like my home state California. They use public tax money to defend illegal alien cockroaches against deportation, which is what they should face, in the legal boundaries.
- bioinformatics 6y ago
  As a legal immigrant, born from parents that legally immigrated to another country, I see illegal immigrants (and I met some of them, scamming the government and society to live illegally) as a spit in the face of those that used legal ways to immigrate.
  - poulsbohemian 6y ago
    >scamming the government and society to live illegally Right, because no US born citizen has ever done that. Dude. There's always some segment of society that is going to try to scam or that is going to wallow around unwilling to provide for themselves. You can either get over it or you can do what our system does over and over again and make it miserable for everyone.
- NewFireStudios 6y ago
  You don’t think the United States should be a little more compassionate towards people trying to find a better deal in life than what their previous home could offer? As an American, I have had life pretty good, but that was purely by luck. I could have been born into any other country on the planet. In reality, many of these people which you call illegal alien cockroaches did not have the means of coming to the United States legally. In some cases, they risked their life just for a chance to make it to the border. Have some compassion.
s9w 6y ago
Company helps government enforce the law.
Temasik 6y ago
why the us attacking other countries but not the cartels down south? rarely anybody wants to leave their country if their lives are ok at home

49 points by elsewhen 6y ago

We must defund and destroy not just ICE but the paramilitary system that it is a part of (FBI/DHS/etc). If you buy into the IPO, if you work at Palantir, or if you financially gain from this ecosystem you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life. I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be?

beervirus 6y ago
Do drug smugglers "just want a better life"? Is it racist to deport them? Is it racist for a country to have and enforce borders at all?
- francis_t_catte 6y ago
  Considering borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity, you could argue the answer to all of your questions is very much "yes".
  - zepto 6y ago
    Where is it defined that ‘borders are meant to control access to wealth and opportunity’? I meant that seems like something you could argue, but it also seems very reductive and certainly not a given.
    - mrOne1 6y ago
      Stop being naive of history and context for pedantry’s sake, and de-emphasizing well worn narratives to manage the emotions along your preferences Borders define a zone of resource control for those able to protect the borders A physical reality exists aside from whatever logical diagram you can imagine in your head Biology explains it without needing some clean room philosophy defined right here with Mr r/iamverysmart Everyone with a keyboard and net connection thinks they’re unearthing new elements themselves these days by drawing two overlapping circles and jamming whatever they want in it
  - stronglikedan 6y ago
    Borders are not meant to "control access to wealth and opportunity". One thing they actually do is keep social welfare programs in check. That's just not possible when you can't control the number of recipients of these benefits, much less the number of non-contributors, but it is possible when legal immigrants receiving these benefits can be counted as such.
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  Many in the US (and to a lesser extent Western Europe and Australia) seem to answer that last question with a "yes." It's never addressed why border controls by China, Mexico, or really any non-Western country aren't also "reprehensible."
gotoeleven 6y ago
And the worst part is that Palantir's software often misgenders and deadnames the trans migrants of color and they end up in the wrong holding cell.
- Cuuugi 6y ago
  So if they were Cis-gendered white people you wouldn't give a crap?
kongolongo 6y ago
If you professionally write software that runs on or own any electronics with semiconductors or lithium ion batteries you are profiting from child slavery, war, and exploitation of workers through the rare-earth elements mining industry that provides the raw materials to produce these devices. That's not to mention the crimes committed during manufacturing chain of said devices. This is an impossible moral standard. Yours is just as impossible. The FBI and DHS do a lot more than just deport immigrants. Palantir does more than just aid in deporting immigrants. If everything were so black and white the above statement would likely describe what you do as well.
- geofft 6y ago
  I'd rather live in a world where we object to all of these crimes than one where we object to none of them.
  - zepto 6y ago
    Sure, but the point I think is that every one of us is actually benefitting from the proceeds of these ‘crimes’ in real time. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t care or ‘object’ to them. What it does mean is that finger pointing and trying to act like we aren’t part of the problem but ‘they’ i.e. Palantir etc, are, is simply a way of pretending we aren’t complicit. If borders are a problem, we need to solve that problem by working out a path to eliminating them that actually minimizes harm. We can’t do that if all our energy is spent on branding people ‘criminals’ and ‘objecting’ to them when we’re part of the same system ourselves.
    - geofft 6y ago
      Sure, yes, I agree with that. I think the point here is that Palantir presents itself as not participating in deportations or other widely-considered-distasteful things, and yet they do, and that deserves particular outrage. I think it's quite reasonable for a company to say we don't know exactly what our supply chain looks like and the only way anyone can build electronics is to use somewhat-questionable supply chains, but we'll do the best we can and and take action if we know of specific instances of harm (e.g., avoid known-bad suppliers), because that's the only way to do better. I think there's a number of food companies and clothing companies that do the same thing about working conditions in their supply chains, too. Palantir isn't doing that - they're speaking out of both sides of their mouth, saying "of course we aren't doing it" while directly being involved. If Palantir were to say, for instance, that they understand their product could be used in this way, they're not interested in providing services for deportations and will cut off customers who are using it for that or indirectly providing services for other organizations doing that, then the public reaction would be very different. (They could also say "Palantir fully supports the mission of America's law enforcement including ICE and ERO, work here if you want to support law and order and make America great again," and then nobody would accuse them of hiding what they work on.)
gruez 6y ago
>you are profiting from the racist deportation of people who just want a better life. This seems like a oversimplistic take on undocumented immigrants. Yes, they just want a better life, but they're also violating immigration laws to do so. Not deporting them sends a signal that violating immigration laws okay and disincentives people from going through the proper channels.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
jethro_tell 6y ago
Infact, if all your economic projections are based on continued growth, both in production and consumption, were going to need more people in this country. The process and the legality aside, the only ways to increase GDP growth is to create more efficient workers or increase the number of workers. The other option is a deep, self inflicted, down turn like Japan had for 20 years. There's room for lots of people and there's going to b a need for more people in this country as the boomers finally retire in their 80s.
- thisiscorrect 6y ago
  The (completely reasonable) alternative is to avoid a system that only works when there's permanent exponential growth in a finite world. On top of that, growing GDP is different from improving average quality of life. If GDP goes up 10% by growing the population 20% through mass immigration, it's plausible quality of life will go down in aggregate. Why is GDP growth the right metric?
  - jethro_tell 6y ago
    I'm with you. Unfortunately, unless we change they system around so it doesn't have to grow forever, the weakest are the ones that get screwed as the economy shrinks. You can't have it both ways, unfettered capitalism with continued growth and negative population growth. GDP is not the right metric to show increase of quality of life, but it is a quick metric to show economic expansion and contraction. There's a much broader conversation about how we want out system to work.
jmpman 6y ago
What about the poor people in the US, whose hourly rate is lower because of the flow of illegal immigrants? Aren’t the poor in the US disproportionately minority? Yes, there is a downside of having a large “talent” pool of unskilled labor. If you’re a high school dropout, US citizen, you’re competing with this “talent” for handyman jobs, landscaping, house cleaning, etc. Sure, it’s great to have cheap landscaping, but before you dismantle ICE, go speak with a US citizen who’s doing roofing, and ask if their income would be higher without the illegal immigrants.
- Jtsummers 6y ago
  Blame the employers who choose to hire illegal immigrants, then. If they weren't breaking the law by hiring them, then there'd be greatly reduced motivation to travel here and work illegally (versus attempting to come in legally).
  - Cuuugi 6y ago
    Why can't you blame both? Both are "technically" breaking the law?
    - Jtsummers 6y ago
      Sure, you can blame them both. Like many things multiple parties are responsible for the issue. But one group, in this case, is tacitly (and sometimes explicitly) inviting the other into the US to participate in the illegal job market. So, at least from my perspective, that puts a larger portion of the blame on the employers. They're also (along with enforcement agencies, again focusing on the employers) the only ones in a position to meaningful reduce the illegal job market. Actually fine these businesses, threaten them with being shutdown and actually shut the worst offenders down. They're probably in violation of quite a few labor and tax laws as well, beyond just the issue of who they hire.
- geofft 6y ago
  There's a couple of answers here. The big one is that if you're here illegally, you already know you have limited (though not zero!) recourse to the law, so you're willing to take illegal jobs - jobs that pay below minimum wage, jobs that are cheaper for the employer because safety standards are being ignored, etc. Immigration law is one way in which the law regulates the labor market; labor law itself is also part of it, and if we're going to talk about upholding the law, let's take both into account. If we were to include significantly more migrant workers under legal immigration, they would have effective access to the protections of labor law, which means they have less room to undercut US citizens. They'd also have more access to jobs that tend to effectively require work authorization. You can pay a fellow in cash to work on your roof without going through E-Verify; you can't quite easily pay a fellow in cash to work at a major fast food chain or drive a school bus or be an SRE at a thousand-person tech firm or whatever. So increasing legal immigration may have the effect of reducing the labor supply for house and farm work. More generally, the economy is a complex thing, and each change you make has many effects. The wage for roofers is determined by both supply (number of potential roofers) and demand - if more people live here, there are quite literally more roofs. While I'm not saying this by itself is likely to save the roofing-labor market, I do think that there are likely broader effects from increasing our pool of legal immigrants besides the most obvious one of depressing wages, and we should look at more than just the extremely short term. And in the long term, if population growth keeps up, the pool of unskilled labor with domestic work authorization is going to go up on its own. If our economy/society can't handle that, we should be figuring out how to address that anyway. (This is all a bit orthogonal to dismantling ICE - I do agree that having an underclass of laborers without equal protection under the laws is bad for everyone. I just don't think that ICE is a morally justifiable solution to that problem. We should create more "proper pathways" for people to become documented residents and authorized workers, but until we do so, I don't think having ICE around makes things better.)
foogazi 6y ago
> I've never heard of a downside to having a large talent pool - how could there be? There are already laws in place for expanding the talent pool: student visas, work visas, seasonal worker visas, family visas, lottery visas If more are needed can the allotment be increased instead of relying on black market sources?
Bancakes 6y ago
Sorry, but I find that to be an immature, reactionist post - how is it racist if it's about nationality and legla status? Illegal immigrants cheat not just the system, but legal immigrants, and themselves. You have nothing to lose and everything to gain by applying for H-1B or other processes to earn a better life. Consequently, you lose nothing if you are deported, since you received a free tour ride out of Uncle Sam's own pocket. Everyone wants an owned house, a nice car, a stable job, and a loving family next to them. You have to earn it. Get in line, haha. If we allow illegal immigration, we're destroying people's chances to stay professionally and legally competitive with each other, and working and integrating yourself in a new country is devalued. You can't keep living under Damocles' sword of being thrown out at a moment's notice, serving as blackmail for your employer and nemeses. Why not earn the citizenship and the right to vote - to do something about Trump, Biden, and other such politicians? To make sure you can fund your children's college before someone from 4chan doxxes you to the authorities? I'm sorry I'm surrounded by people who believe in impossible goals like world peace and lack of borders.
mancerayder 6y ago
Which first-world countries in the world have open, unlimited immigration? Have we thought critically about the positive aspects of border control? Or have we created drawn a moral line in the sand and refused to take up the rationales that may exist and address them? For example, have we put on our thinking caps and thought about how to preserve welfare states in the face of budgets and headcount?

libraryatnight 6y ago

Isn't this what Palantir does? I just assumed their business model was to take any morally objectionable tech contract?

zepto 6y ago
Helping to deport illegal immigrants isn’t morally objectionable unless you believe that border control itself is morally objectionable. Even if it ultimately becomes accepted as morally right, it certainly does not reflect the current views of all but a tiny minority of US citizens. Vice is just profiting from creating moral panic here.
danpalmer 6y ago
More specifically, they build data analysis and CRUD apps on top of a ton of ETL for large clients. They skew towards government contracts, and probably due to their founder have a different view on what's morally acceptable. I guess the reason why they're involved in this is that the mechanics of deporting someone is a non-trivial data workflow through a bunch of crappy legacy systems, and given they've already got the ETL set up to get the data out, they can create a quick CRUD interface, or use data analysis to find suitable targets. That, plus the fact the company culturally agrees with the deportations, make it a reasonable business for them. In many ways it's the same role as IBM played in the holocaust. These abhorrent operations are huge logistical undertakings, and that requires investment in tech that governments often aren't able to achieve. Culture comes from the top, I don't think anyone at Palantir can be surprised that this is the result when Thiel is their leader.

beervirus 6y ago

Palantir helped the government detect people breaking the law?? For shame!

uoaei 6y ago
Is the law just?
- beervirus 6y ago
  It is acceptable for a country to have borders and place conditions on who is allowed to cross them.
  - uoaei 6y ago
    Not when those conditions, and their enforcement, challenge basic human rights. This is ethics 101.
    - DuskStar 6y ago
      Can you formulate a way to enforce conditions on international migration and travel that doesn't challenge what you view as "basic human rights"?
      - uoaei 6y ago
        Is it appropriate to give human rights abuses a pass until someone can appease your kneejerk reaction for rationalization?
        DuskStar 6y ago
        Generally people will accept "human rights" abuses for ends that they feel strongly enough about if there aren't alternatives. Maintaining the existence of borders as a practical construct is one of those things. So, if you want to end those "human rights" abuses, you'll need to provide alternatives.

SecurityMinded 6y ago

And what is wrong with that. Those people are an invasion force. Regardless they want a better life or whatever else, they need to do this in their own countries, not in the US. Deportation of illegal aliens (let's not mince the words with euphemisms like "undocumented immigrants") is the right thing to do and any organization which can help ICE/USCIS/DHS/Whatever else organization, is doing a big service to the US. I, as an US citizen taxpayer, am not required to hold the pot for those illegal aliens to get better healthcare, better education for their children and better earnings than what they can do in their home countries. At the end of the day, they are not paying taxes (don't start with the sales tax or ITIN rhetoric, I know those and those arguments don't hold water) but using the resources more than the taxpayers do. At the end of the day, my taxes are going to support their lifestyles, instead of coming back to me in the name of services needed. And don;t even get me started with the states like my home state California. They use public tax money to defend illegal alien cockroaches against deportation, which is what they should face, in the legal boundaries.

bioinformatics 6y ago
As a legal immigrant, born from parents that legally immigrated to another country, I see illegal immigrants (and I met some of them, scamming the government and society to live illegally) as a spit in the face of those that used legal ways to immigrate.
- poulsbohemian 6y ago
  >scamming the government and society to live illegally Right, because no US born citizen has ever done that. Dude. There's always some segment of society that is going to try to scam or that is going to wallow around unwilling to provide for themselves. You can either get over it or you can do what our system does over and over again and make it miserable for everyone.
NewFireStudios 6y ago
You don’t think the United States should be a little more compassionate towards people trying to find a better deal in life than what their previous home could offer? As an American, I have had life pretty good, but that was purely by luck. I could have been born into any other country on the planet. In reality, many of these people which you call illegal alien cockroaches did not have the means of coming to the United States legally. In some cases, they risked their life just for a chance to make it to the border. Have some compassion.

s9w 6y ago

Company helps government enforce the law.

Temasik 6y ago

why the us attacking other countries but not the cartels down south? rarely anybody wants to leave their country if their lives are ok at home