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Comment by cronix | Hacker News Reader

Personally, I find Palantir pretty scummy. I don't see how what they are doing is much different than what China is doing. It's the tech that empowers the modern day police state. They might even be using Palintir there. We can't even find out where it's deployed in the USA. This is the type of tech that we can do without, imho.

https://www.wired.com/story/how-peter-thiels-secretive-data-...

https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel...

https://www.theverge.com/2018/2/27/17054740/palantir-predict...

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This is somewhat tangential, but what exactly does Palantir do? From what I understand, they're a glorified consulting company that does data visualization, so why do they get so much attention?

One of their primary functions is helping governments track people [1]. They market their suite as aiding the fight against crime/terrorism, but many argue that they're providing tools to governments to track their own citizens (see GP's Bloomberg link). I fall into the latter camp.

There are even some old (fairly unrevealing) demos on Youtube [2]

1 - https://www.wired.co.uk/article/joining-the-dots

2 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51YYljuz4u4

It's not that clearcut. Did you know Thiel is a libertarian and hates the police state?

So why is he working with the government then? Well, a combination of something he wants to change and business opportunity. Sometimes to change something, it's best to work within the system and help steer it another way. The government has been invading people's privacy for a long time and increasingly so, with or without Palantir. At least this way he has influence over the direction. But who knows in reality how much is driven by trying to improve it vs making money and how that calculus works out.

On the other hand, maybe he's a hypocrite when it comes to making money. Or maybe he's a libertarian who values making money more than enforcing the NAP. Or maybe he's just really gung ho about arming the night-watchman state.

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