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Palantir has no place in UK public services
- mc32 9mo agoThe UK is building/has built a surveillance state using the boiling frog method. So even if you change vendors, surveillance will continue. You have accepted it as par for the course. Unless you reject it and subsequent politicians don't double-cross you, surveillance will continue. No question.
- ronsor 9mo agoUK society has always been surprisingly tolerant of mass surveillance. Whether Palantir is involved or not, I think it may be too late to get off the train.
- throwaway150 9mo agoI know UK is ok with surveillance in public places because there is no expectation of privacy in public spaces. But are they really tolerant of surveillance in non-public places?
- rorylawless 9mo agoNo, not at all. The surveillance state nonsense is overplayed online.
- hexbin010 9mo agoBrit here. Yes because the average Brit is insufficiently educated to understand the harm. They are very easily swayed by "think of the children" or saving just one life. They consume huge amounts of propaganda with little to zero critical thinking
- secretsatan 9mo agoIt’s something that always horrified me, but it was just done without the governments help, they just let private individuals do it and gave away public spaces to private interests
- pjc50 9mo agoJust like the US, saying "immigrants" and "crime" gets the public, or at least the media, to demand authoritarianism.
- etc-hosts 9mo agoThere is a great UK tv show about the surveillance state, from 2019 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Capture_(TV_series)
- inference-god 9mo agoIt's hard not to see a sort of oligarchy vs the people battle shaping up, that's for sure.
- dfxm12 9mo agoYeah, it's important to elect councillors and MP's that represent the people and not monied interests.
- Nextgrid 9mo agoProblem is that you must already represent monied interests before you get anywhere near an MP/councillor seat.
- hexbin010 9mo agoWell, protesting is illegal now
- chrishare 9mo agoIt's not illegal, you just get shot is all
- lifestyleguru 9mo agoFirst one by one but slowly getting to Iran levels. If it feels unthinkable, the current events were unthinkable three years ago.
- ZeroGravitas 9mo agoShot and immediately branded a violent terrorist by the highest levels of government. It's a bit of a catch-22 that they keep shooting and lying about the people who are filming them shooting people to provide evidence that they lie about what happens.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- deaux 9mo agoCorrect. Neither do Microsoft, Amazon, Google and Apple - realistically they're even more dangerous, see the ICC. Ironically the first three being the main hosts of.. you guessed it, Palantir. Picking and choosing US big tech in this context is pointless, they're all as much of a risk as each other. And don't come with "you have to start somewhere", because you do, but then the place to start is slowly step-by-step getting off of the most critical ones, which are the first four I mentioned.
- davidw 9mo agoAmong other things, with everything going on in the US today, the CEOs of Apple and Amazon were apparently at the WH for a screening of the Melania film.
- SilverElfin 9mo agoAmazon funded it. They paid $30 million or so for rights to the documentary for Amazon Prime. I doubt viewers will care about it, but I look at it as a bribe from Amazon to the administration. They give Melania and by extension Trump this money, and they will get better regulatory help and more government contracts.
- add-sub-mul-div 9mo agoI didn't even know this existed, let alone that it was made by Amazon. This makes their Chris Pratt garbage look like cinema.
- rvz 9mo agoIncoming big-tech sympathizers with defense contracts, boosters and hairsplitters in 3, 2, 1.
- deaux 9mo ago"No way, not a cent of my nest egg funded by papa Bezos comes from AWS FedRAMP High GovCloud massive sweet enterprise contracts with the likes of Palantir to host them at scale!" The truth is there's thousands if not tens of thousands of people on here for whom it is incredibly convenient to imagine their vests were granted in a completely different universe to the likes of Palantir. Deep down they know their companies realistically play an unfathomably bigger role in surveillance capatalism, crippling addictions, furthering of current US Party strongarming and a whole lot more. Exactly why many find it so cathartic to latch on to these threads and reinforce that cognitive dissonance. I didn't even mention Meta who bring about as much harm in a day as Palantir wish it could do in a year - make no mistake, I'm not suggesting the latter is for a lack of trying. Although the idea that Zuck is somehow any more ethical than Thiel is of course hilarious. But after all, you and me too are quite culpable in this moment, providing marketing and engagement for the platform behind Flock(YC S17). The exact source of all that data we're so angry about being loaded into the Palantir platforms.
- tombert 9mo agoThe more I read about Palantir, the creepier and weirder it becomes. The CEO brags about wanting to kill all journalists with fentanyl, or brags about how their software will be used to kill people, and how readily they're willing to work for the convicted fraudster that America felt fit to give the nuclear codes. And despite this company being creepy and weird and bizarre and secretive, they are also trying to make themselves a lifestyle brand by selling merchandise. If I felt like spending $150 for a Palantir-based hoodie, I guess I can normally do that [1], but disturbingly it is apparently "sold out". Apparently a lot of people really want to buy an overpriced sweater, or maybe they're trying to preemptively buy social credit. Who knows. Everything is terrible. [1] https://store.palantir.com/ https://store.palantir.com/
- MagicMoonlight 9mo agoAww, they’re sold out
- tombert 9mo agoI know! How will I get Alex Karp to notice me now????
- nextos 9mo agoIronically, the Danish Government is a heavy user of Palantir systems, including creepy predictive policing solutions. I would be keen to know if citizen data is being handled correctly, following GDPR/LED. Given previous Danish client-state-like cooperation with NSA to spy on other EU countries, I can imagine the answer.
- nailer 9mo ago[flagged]
- potamic 9mo agoAs someone who is neither a Jew nor a Palestinian, I'm going to take this with a grain of salt, because there is so much mud being slung across from both sides.
- boomlinde 9mo agoThere's no need to even take it with a grain of salt. The factual circumstances described in the article are extremely mundane, but the article tries to paint her participation as a problem by supposing that anyone participating in a public event should only do so if they can answer for every disparate opinion of everyone else there.
- nailer 9mo agoPart of the hacker news guidelines is to assume that everyone read the article, so obviously you read the sentence that started with: > One can never control what others say or do at any public gathering but if actions take place that I disagree with, once this has been pointed out, it is right and important to explain one’s own position
- boomlinde 8mo agoI did. Are you trying to make a point here? If so, what is your point? I see a lot of weaseling around what you want to get across, but no actual comment on anything I wrote.
- Daishiman 9mo agoThat entire website looks like Israeli sponsored propaganda.
- nailer 9mo ago
- smi-nvidia 9mo ago[dead]
- ggm 9mo agoI'd be surprised if they cannot provide services which translate to outcomes successive governments want. So in that sense, "has no place" is about alignment to goals, as much as desires. Palantir is able to do things which the government wants done. If this pits government against citizenry in terms of what people think, thats not unusual. The big-4 would happily also do this. Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC Would take money to provide outlines and project management for an in-house, or an outsource to somebody other than Palantir. It wouldn't neccessarily be either cheaper, or faster, or for that matter any more socially acceptable. I don't like the source, I could agree with the opinion (broken clock write 2x a day..) but to pretend government doesn't want what Palantir is selling is faux naieve and stupid. What alternative is there, and why is "don't do it" viable? This is "defund the police" wolf howling at the moon stuff.
- jacquesm 9mo agoLet's rewrite that: any big US tech company has no place in any EU or Asian or African public service. Public services should be as independent and as sovereign as technically feasible.
- penguin_booze 9mo agoIn a few moments from now, you'll be flow out of your country to face Omerican justice. Good bye, fren.
- sscarduzio 9mo agoWe’re at good point with European alternatives https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2025/12/02/palantir-chapsvision-octostar-the-battle-for-european-intelligence-platforms-is-go,110568466-art https://www.intelligenceonline.com/europe-russia/2025/12/02/...
- cassianoleal 9mo agoSomewhat ironic that this is fronted by CloudFlare.
- IndySun 9mo agoThe petition is now a 404.
- Revolution1120 9mo agoIt's unclear whether the perpetrators of sexual assault and pedophilia were Palantir or the CCP and Prince Holding Group. The latter has long established a very thorough surveillance system in China. While Western leaders and business figures frequently have close contact with China, the world's second-largest economy, Western society consistently overlooks both China's power and its potential for malicious activity. The correct approach is to consider both.