There is no particular need to imply conspiratorial intent for a US-based company, especially a US-based government surveillance contractor, when the US government believes non-citizens do not have any right to privacy or even standing to sue over privacy violations (and apparently so does the wider US public to some extent, given how the Snowden headlines there took care to mention “spying on US cizitens”). When a government explicitly and publicly gives itself the right to access foreigners’ data stored by foreign (subsidiary) companies[1], you don’t exactly have to take out your tinfoil hat before expecting it to access that data.
However, I would normally read the quoted line as a piece of evidence concerning Palantir’s general approach to ethics and/or the extent of their entanglement with the US executive, for those who haven’t heard of the company before, not as a sneaky allegation of conspiracy.
(Lest it sound like I’m dunking on the US, I don’t think the government of the UK really needs emergency powers to do whatever the hell it wants to, including secretly granting intelligence agents immunity from inconvenient parts of the law[2],—there isn’t really a separation of powers there except by tacit agreement, as far as I’ve been able to understand.)
Also, why the hell does this matter other than to imply conspiratorial intent?
>Palantir has provided technology used by the CIA and controversial US immigration agency ICE.