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Comment by uniqueid | Hacker News Reader

Not misguided.

It's not like Palantir is selling hamburgers to millions of faceless individuals. They themselves want to take the responsibility for their consulting for government agencies. I assign responsibility to them, too.

Can you think of examples of amoral company decisions from history? I can...

  "Our bank just facilitated the deposit of enormous quantities of paper money. We didn't do the drug-smuggling."

  "Our company simply supplied The Republic of ___ with ammunition. That was our only involvement."

  "The government needed to sort incoming prisoners by religion. We merely won the bid to do the data-processing."

Palantir's arguments are more annoying, though, since the company management is not just amoral, but proud of itself.

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I don't see the point of any of those examples. You don't blame the bank when fraud happens through it's accounts unless the bank knowingly let it happen, your second example is a false equivalence as selling ammo to another country is definitely grounds for treason if we are at war with that country, not to mention the regulation surrounding the sale, and the third example is silly - if the government needed to discriminate against you, they don't need Palantir to do that, so why would you blame Palantir if they choose to get paid for something that will inevitably get done?

My point is you should be directing your criticism to government data collection practices that enable them to have data to process, once that 1st step is achieved, it doesn't matter who achieves step 2, 3, 4 or beyond, so your focus on Palantir is fleeting at best.

    > My point is you should be directing your criticism to government data collection practices

I agree. It's not a binary choice, though: if I rob a bank, and you drive the getaway car, I'm clearly guilty, but you share some responsibility.

The point is that there is enough culpability to go around.

Re: my examples (in the same order)...

HSBC https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hsbc-usa-idUSKBN1E50YA

EDO MBM Technology ltd https://www.undocs.org/en/S/2018/594

IBM https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_and_the_Holocaust

It's a reasonable position to complain about a company who knowingly enables bad behaviour of a third party, even if they don't directly carry it out.

It still doesn't make any sense.

Tell me: is the bus driver culpable if the murderer took the bus to get away from the scene of the crime?

In many cases: yes. It depends on whether the driver aids the criminal knowingly (eg: overheard "To my ex-husband's, driver! Can't wait to shoot him in the face"), and of the driver's own free will (eg: did not overhear "if you don't take me, I'll shoot you, too!")

Ok, if the government says, "Hey Palantir, we have this data and we need you to group everyone by religion and political affiliation", is it then also Palantir's fault if the government uses that resulting analysis for discrimination?

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