Palantir helps authorities track illegal immigrants | Hacker News Reader

Palantir helps authorities track illegal immigrants

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27 pointsphr4ts52 comments

Thiel calls himself a libertarian, but his involvement with Palantir demonstrates that he is just as much a big-government statist as the people he criticizes.

Libertarian doesn't equal open borders, as that's a broad political spectrum.

Hell, even some anarcho-capitalists (like the late Murray Rothbard and Hans-Hermann Hoppe) are against open borders.

I think the point is like Musk, these people hardly refuse government subsidizes. You might argue they provide a service, they are not getting a handout, but it's still paid by the same taxes they want to get rid off at first place.

Libertarians are not universally against taxation or Government involvement at large, it's a pretty wide umbrella.

Musk can also be seen as a libertarian but he does advocate for social programmes like UBI which have to be provided through taxation.

Most libertarians I know are not universally against taxation, they are against double taxation and would prefer to tax corporation and consumption at higher rates rather than individual labor.

Libertarianism is primarily about the role of the government within the life of an individual and about maximizing the agency an individual holds over their own life; It doesn't mean that an ideal libertarian society would have no taxes; If anything most libertarians would rather pay higher local taxes to offset lower national taxation because they have more agency in determining on what and how their money is being spent on.

Libertarians don't want anarchy, they are fully aware that roads, schools, police, firefighters, EMT's the military and for most of them even hospitals and much more have to be publically funded, and the only way to do it is through taxation.

I wish your version of libertarian was more outspoken.

It's not my version; and I find more often than not is that people hear what they want to hear.

It's not about borders or immigration -- that is just this specific case. Palantir helps big government in a variety of ways which are incompatible with a libertarian worldview.

Says who? You can't go up to people and tell them what their views are. They get to decide.

Palantir is hardly a startup

Seriously... I dont know why I bothered clicking the title thinking it was a new company. Just the same datamining company that helps government agencies helping a government agency.

Ok, we put 'Palantir' in the title above.

>"They are not all accounted for, the lost Seeing Stones. We do not know who else may be watching!"

This startup helps hackers track Peter Thiel's immoral startups.

Wait I'm confused. Are you literally upset by this? Why is enforcing the law and following policies so everybody can make a successful transition to become a US citizen a bad thing? If your illegal, and most likely your not going to pay your fair share for the entitlements and services you and others use then I have zero respect for you.

Undocumented workers still pay tax.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_imm...

> The Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy released a report in February 2016, stating that 11 million undocumented immigrants in the United States are paying annually an estimated amount of $11.64 billion in state and local taxes, "on average an estimated 8 percent of their incomes."[25]

That can't be right. According to the Wall Street Journal [1] there is a total of 11 million illegal immigrants in the US as a whole.

[1] - http://www.wsj.com/articles/number-of-illegal-immigrants-in-...

Estimates range from 11 to 16 million illegal immigrants, though a few years ago the highest one was at 20 million.

So you're really telling me on the high end 100% of illegal immigrants pay taxes and on the low end 68% do?

Pretty much, yes. It's a lot harder to avoid the IRS than Immigration Services, and AFAIK the IRS doesn't give a shit as long as you pay your taxes.

Yes, they pay sales tax. Not income or FICA.

A significant number of undocumented workers use a fake SSN for their job so they do pay income taxes and FICA - but can never claim tax refunds, earned income credit, or their social security credits - http://www.politifact.com/punditfact/statements/2016/oct/02/...

Fair enough, but the parent was quoting their total payment (not just payroll) as 8% of their income, which is still an extreme underpayment, and equivalent to the case where they are only paying sales taxes.

That doesn't mean "yup, close the border", but we should still be careful about distinguishing the issues: yes, immigration may be below the optimal level, but it doesn't follow that illegal immigration is unproblematic in this respect.

I was under the impression it can be a massive pain if an illegal immigrant pays taxes with your stolen SSN?

isn't it a felony to use a stolen SSN? there is no such thing as a fake SSN.

I've known people who had been in the US as undocumented workers. When they were, they paid state and federal income and payroll tax, and, as a bonus, had no expectation of ever being able to use the programs funded by payroll tax.

> Why is enforcing the law and following policies so everybody can make a successful transition to become a US citizen a bad thing?

Because the laws are unjust. There is clearly an immigration problem in the United States and I personally don't believe tracking and deporting he people already here will ever contribute to a successful solution.

> If your illegal, and most likely your not going to pay your fair share for the entitlements and services you and others use then I have zero respect for you.

Many illegal immigrants still pay taxes and will never receive direct benifits for their contribution [0]

Illegal immigrants also work jobs that you would never think of working. Remember when they deported a bunch of immigrants in the south and food was rotting in the fields because no one was there to pick it a few years ago?

> Because the laws are unjust

So the solution is just don't obey them? Also, I don't think the laws are unjust. The laws are there to make sure fiscally the United States has the resources and security to protect its citizens.

See how well open borders has worked for Germany. These policies have further strengthened extreme right parties in Germany which potentially will be much worse (see Germany brexit or equivalent of Trump in Germany) which is very possible.

> Because the laws are unjust. There is clearly an immigration problem in the United States and I personally don't believe tracking and deporting he people already here will ever contribute to a successful solution.

Then change the laws, but in order to do that you need to get your own people elected.

It's funny how ultimately the camps that allegedly is for a strong federal government would be better off with a weak "confederate style" federation. If the federal government wouldn't be in charge of immigration policies then whatever state you live in could set whatever immigration laws you want.

It's also curious how only in US immigration laws are seen as as immoral. Try to move to Canada and see how hard it is to survive there illegally. Yet Canada is somehow seen as the heaven of progressiveness somehow ...

Here is the thing, the more illegal immigrants you accept and defend, the harder it is for the people who actually want to respect US laws and go through the official process. That's the only thing that is immoral here. But you don't care about these people.

People tend to ignore the negative consequences of causes they support. We all want to live in the best possible world, and it's hard to accept that any policy we choose will have serious negative consequences. We know for a fact that failing to enforce immigration laws will lead to tens of thousands of murders and kidnappings every year. And yet enforcing them will lead to a lot of misery for those who are deported. There's no convenient solution where everyone wins. It's hard to accept the reality of the situation, and so we often choose to see only one side.

There was a response to this which quoted some statistics, including the argument that overall crime had decreased in the USA while the illegal immigration population had increased. I wanted to respond, but it seems to be gone.

This trend is true, but this is the kind of statistical manipulation that happens when emotions come into play about these kinds of sensitive issues. Comparing trends in overall crime with the growth of a minority population is misleading, as it's a minor contributor to total crime, even if it is disproportionate, especially in violent crimes. Some arguments even switch briefly to talking about legal immigrants, which is a completely different population. Also, this is an international issue.

There's plenty of interesting information in the USA. I like this article because it shows some of the errors on both sides.

http://www.centerforsecuritypolicy.org/2015/12/04/problems-w...

Aren't you the same poster who wrote "The real question is how hard is this permit to obtain? I'm also guessing the permit limits Uber from doing what they want completely."?

Failing to make the connection you're attempting to draw...

Maybe it's time for somebody to start a company aimed at helping illegal immigrants avoid the government?

Are you for open borders? No? Then illegal immigrants are going to exist.

Are you for open borders?

Yes. For the most part, I oppose the idea of nation-states and most of what people call "government" altogether. I support free movement of people, ideas, consumer goods, etc. As far as I'm concerned, as long as no use of coercive force / aggression is involved, it's all good.

I think there's a significant idea hidden in your question. Seeing your username I hope that was intentional.

How about a self-surveillance platform to measure your footprint?

The idea is basically an automated network-level CTF. Get as much data out as possible, then report back with the results. You could do this with a group of friends (feed all your friends data into your analysis box), to yourself (and all your devices baring OS restrictions), or with a larger group of security-minded individuals.

For extra fun, if you're capturing the traffic on your own machines, you could have a tool that extracts network encryption keys from memory, which should work similarly for programs using the same encryption stack, and you then feed that into the network analysis tool.

You could then use this to make sure you're not sending out data you don't want to send out in the first place; ideally you'd get to the point where your analysis tool can decrypt every packet, so that you're sure you're not sending out any data that you don't want to get out.

PANDA looks like an interesting tool to automate the retrieval of encryption keys; it can replay full process executions using a modified version of QEMU, and find procedures that convert high entropy data (i.e. encrypted or compressed data) to lower entropy data.

Coincidentally, if you get this up and running you can also automate the breaking of (encryption-based) DRM; that's just a side effect of gaining fuller control over your general-purpose computer. Oops.

I think there's a significant idea hidden in your question. Seeing your username I hope that was intentional.

Well, it probably wasn't as well thought out as you might have hoped, but there's no question there's at least thin connection between my username and most of my positions on things.

The comment I made above was kind of just spur of the moment, off the cuff, to be honest. I have a fundamental and visceral disdain for government, and especially anything that hints at that Big Brother / Orwell-esque world of Nineteen Eighty Four. And it especially pains me to see technologists/hackers willfully taking part in supporting government oppression of free people. So of course I'm going to make an offhanded comment about how we should do the exact opposite.

And I feel a little snarky now, because people are always referring to Peter Thiel as a "libertarian" and this strikes me as extremely un-libertarian. And as a libertarian myself, I don't want Thiel misleading a lot of people about how libertarian ideals.

Sounds something like an inverse IDS. I know there are some tools out there now for monitoring outgoing traffic, but not sure if there's anything with that specific spin on it. You might be onto something there.

Yes, it's called "people smuggling" or "coyotes".

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coyotaje

I actually was thinking more about "avoiding the government" for immigrants who are already here, and over the long term, than the actual border crossing bit. But that was an interesting read nonetheless. Thanks for sharing.

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