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Comment by bshoemaker | Hacker News Reader

Corruption at its finest

In what way is this corruption? You will actually find many in the intelligence community who actually like Palantir’s software. I’m really not surprised by the contract.

Peter Theil threw his weight and cash behind getting Trump into office, and joined his transition team once the election was won. As the article says he also helped fill administration positions with right-wing Stanford/Clarium/Palantir pals like Trae Stephens. He founded and is the majority shareholder in Palantir.

Palantir was popular in the intelligence community long before Trump.

Indeed. I imagine they’re about to get a lot more popular though.

So only acceptable option here is to ban Plantir and Theil companies from govt contracts?

Yes. Your political connections should not give you advantages in garnering government money.

That makes no sense. Wouldn't that be like punishing Theil for supporting a political candidate? This fundamental right should be taken away from ppl who have companies that could apply for govt contracts.

Even if assume that this contract was awarded due to corruption. Wouldn't that also mean we have no way to control corruption and hold ppl accountable so we resort to absurd policies like banning ppl from their free speech rights.

Do you really believe that money is speech?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckley_v._Valeo

Palentir exists because unconstitutional, illegal or retroactively legal, and in any case absolutely breathtakingly overreaching mass spying (including domestic spying via incidental collection) programs like Stellar Wind, Muscular, XKEYSCORE, Prism, etc exist. Palantir's job is to take massive amounts of data and make it intelligible using visualization and search tools. It makes money off of programs that either shouldn't exist or should be severely restricted.

> Palantir's job is to take massive amounts of data and make it intelligible using visualization and search tools.

You just described Google and many other tech companies. There's nothing illegal about that.

The purpose matters. Google isn't collecting data to make it easier for an attached organization to kill people or disrupt other societies in calculated ways.

Also important are the fact that Google's collection processes depend on some kind of consent and aren't collected by the state monopoly on force. The state is considered by many to be reneging on its 4th amendment due process protections by engaging in a domestic and worldwide dragnet of breathtaking proportions.

They actually sued the government regarding corrupt practices when awarding contracts. They won the lawsuit.

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