
Palantir’s software was used for deportations, documents show - jmsflknr
https://techcrunch.com/2019/05/03/palantirs-software-was-used-for-deportations-documents-show/
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natalyarostova
So? How is software being used to manage the system of national border
enforcement interesting or newsworthy?

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coldtea
How is the software being used to manage the system of national border
enforcement NOT interesting?

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huffmsa
Why aren't there articles about big bad tech companies providing software
which enables the control over the flow of goods at commercial ports?

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coldtea
Because people are more interesting than goods, and software that controls the
flow of people has more immediate repercussions...

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huffmsa
Only because we pretty long ago agreed that it is important for a government
to control the import and export of goods at it's borders.

Pay your tariffs, citizen.

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coldtea
> _Pay your tariffs, citizen._

I'm all pro-tariffs, and against rampant global trade.

Domestic production boosts autonomy, keeps working class jobs, is more
environment friendly (taking into account the externalities in either way),
doesn't lead to a wage race to the global bottom, and makes it more expensive
to build some stuff (hence reducing consumerism).

I'm also in favor of the historical notion of "citizen" \-- e.g. I believe
each person has a duty to his country and community (in the "Don't ask what
your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country" sense, and
in the more historical ancient Athenian sense). I'm not for people basking in
their snowflake individuality while still taking advantage of all that his
country and community made possibly to enjoy like cheapskates.

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PedroBatista
Palantir looks like IBM in the 30s but without the technical excellence and
all the sales force.

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rat87
I'm not sure it's quite the same thing as

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust)

but still not great

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throw2016
There are people actively fighting the dehumanization and there are people
building tools to dehumanize and defend their work. In a movie or artwork
which side do you think are going to be portrayed as the 'good guys' and who
are you going to be rooting for? That is cognitive dissonance.

This is just more evidence of how the lack of a moral compass has led the
software community to not only sell out and build these creepy tools but worse
defend surveillance and police state technologies without a hint of self
awareness in these kind of discussions.

Without push back and dissent it's only a matter of time the software
community is completely tainted with collusion as a group of opportunists with
zero ethics by the general public like those collaborating with authoritarian
police states against the people.

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AsyncAwait
> This is just more evidence of how the lack of a moral compass has led the
> software community to not only sell out and build these creepy tools but
> worse actually defend surveillance and police state technologies without a
> hint of self awareness in these kind of discussions.

I'd only add that there's certainly a small part of the community that
realizes this, in fact the free software movement is also about ethics,
however the kind of developers who are aware are usually not your usual Valley
types.

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glangdale
I'm not 100% sure that the ethics of the free software movement have a single
solitary thing to do with, say, objecting to the sorts of things Palantir's
clients get up to. Speaking from experience, F/OSS provides very little
control over end user behavior; you can turn down a 'evil' client if you are
proprietary but not if you are F/OSS. Not a dig against F/OSS, just a
statement that their ethics don't really address these concerns (I'm sure they
would have arguments that a greater good is served, etc.)

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AsyncAwait
Sure, but I'd differentiate somewhat between "open-source software", (i.e.
ESR) and "free software" i.e. RMS. Which is why I did not use FOSS, but free-
software explicitly. Maybe it's even better to narrow it down to copyleft
only.

Open-source is not at all concerned with what's ethical. It's free-software
made corporate-friendly. Free software certainly is a bit different, if you
for example look at the sort of campaigns the Free Software Foundation
advocates for, there's a lot of political campaigning that has to do with
ethics.

You cannot reasonably restrict software for 'no evil use' as that definition
is subjective and open to abuse, but the FSF is definitely more concerned with
software ethics than the OSI.

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glangdale
Yes, but neither group seems to regard "oh geez, my Kalman filter code is
being used to build baby-killing rocket drones" as part of the range of
ethical questions that software licensing might cover. I'm not saying that
either group on the free/open source software spectrum _should_ be engaging
with this issue or that it would be helpful if they did ("Apache License
Variant Number 57, No Babykilling Plz!") but one of the aspects of free or
open source software is that you have pretty much zero ability to stop what
some folks might consider highly unethical or immoral uses of one's software.

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huffmsa
When did deportation become a dirty word?

> _an operation in 2017 in which immigrants crossing the border were arrested
> for deportation_

Because it is illegal to enter the United States except for at controlled
points of entry. This is true of every nation in the world. The power to
control borders is part of the definition of sovereignty.

If you don't think it should be illegal to enter the United States at any
location, call your Representative and get the law changed.

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manigandham
They also used software from Google, Microsoft, and every other big company.
If there's an issue with the agency and government then that's where the
attention should be, not with some corporation.

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darawk
Are we now against all forms of deportation? This is pretty silly.

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pjc50
Rather like the War On Drugs, it's worth asking what all this life-ruining use
of violence is actually achieving.

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darawk
There are lots of reasons that open borders might not be a good idea. There
are certainly reasonable arguments in favor of them as well. But if you're not
going to have open borders, then you have to deport some number of people. So,
either you're making the case for completely open borders and all that comes
with it, or you're in favor of deportation.

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speedplane
> So, either you're making the case for completely open borders and all that
> comes with it, or you're in favor of deportation.

It's this type of black and white thinking that is so poisonous to current
discourse. There are many people that are okay with deporting illegal
immigrants, as long as they are treated with some modicum of respect during
the process, families are not separated, asylum laws are upheld, and children
brought across the border at a young age that know no other place are allowed
to stay.

There are pretty reasonable solutions to these problems. Unfortunately,
everyone prefers to see only my side versus your side.

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darawk
> It's this type of black and white thinking that is so poisonous to current
> discourse. There are many people that are okay with deporting illegal
> immigrants, as long as they are treated with some modicum of respect during
> the process, families are not separated, asylum laws are upheld, and
> children brought across the border at a young age that know no other place
> are allowed to stay.

Nothing I said contradicted any of that.

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AsyncAwait
> Nothing I said contradicted any of that.

You made it seem as if the people arguing for decent treatment of illegal
migrants are somehow for 'open borders', when nobody on the left is seriously
talking about having open borders.

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fche
> nobody on the left is seriously talking about having open borders.

This is a blatant lie.

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AsyncAwait
Ok, strong statement, any evidence?

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cpgeier
How does Palantir actually make their money? I know probably a lot though
government contracts, but I've never heard of them out side of the comp sci
field until now.

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ascar
Same as other consultancies and software companies. They get hired by other
companies for ridiculously high daily wages and sell their platform for
recurring fees. E.g. in a recruiting event they demonstrated how they setup
their data analytics platform for a chemical plant to optimize production.
Most of the work is transforming and structuring the data.

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tus87
\- high pressure sales tactics convince management its cheaper to "buy off the
shelf" than build your own

\- but we aren't selling you a finished product (didn't we mention that?),
just a base framework that needs customization. Cue fly-in-fly-out consultants
for exorbitant daily rates.

\- to lower costs, why not send your own staff to our "university" for
thousands of dollars for a 5 day class?

\- hire said staff to become consultants after customer pays for their
training. They don't appear out of thin air!

\- when customer finally ditches product, blame them for lack of investment
and use contacts to complain at highest levels of bureaucracy.

\- rinse and repeat.

A tried and tested formula.

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londons_explore
Palantir combines those techniques with one extra thing... Government.

Government is far less concerned about money-efficiency, and nobody working in
government has a direct interest in profitability (like being a shareholder
would). Hence those tactics work all-the-better.

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dsfyu404ed
Combine that with the fact that government can't go bankrupt. If some
department blows through way more money than it should either it just doesn't
get it's job done or it gets more money. Pretty painless compared to what
happens to a company that blows through a bunch of money without delivering
results.

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londons_explore
I wonder what would happen if government departments were allowed to go
bankrupt?

Simply say "this is your budget for the year, if you spend more, we'll fire
every one of you and sell the office".

And then hire an entirely new team of non-overlapping staff next year.

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dgudkov
How about Excel? Is anyone using Excel for something bad and immoral? Watch
out, Microsoft. Social justice might be coming after you soon.

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aioprisan
This is custom software built for these use cases, not something generic like
Excel. They're worlds apart

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dgudkov
I don't think Palantir has a purpose-built app for immigrant children
separation and deportation. As far as I can understand (from the product
videos that I've seen), Palantir is rather general-purpose software for data
mining and analysis. If it's less generic than Excel then only by a small
margin.

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aioprisan
Important to highlight because Palantir initially lied about what they're
building and what it's supporting. Makes you think about what else they have
their hands in

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educationdata
This stupid article should be simply flagged. There is no good discussion can
come out of it.

