"Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." and "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something."
Perhaps it's plainly true in some trivial sense (all large orgs have committed some crimes), but not in any legally-relevant sense. Otherwise people have to explain the obvious incongruity between this "plain truth" and the obvious fact that Palantir is not facing the sort of legal problems that would be expected of a "criminal organization" (and no, saying "the US judiciary is just very very corrupt" is not a "plain truth" either.)
By all means criticise away, by constructing an argument and preferably providing sources.
Saying "X is bad" is cheap and does not further discussion or teach anyone. In fact, that kind of behaviour being normalised is the most susceptible to brigading and bot farms.
no person on earth -- who is informed by anything aside from safeguarding or expanding their own capital -- would make that argument.
Comments such as: > Yeah, no shit. That's what I'm saying, Peter
Are in contradiction with HN guidelines and what makes this site valuable, in my opinion, is informed discussion. There are multiple forums where sarcasm and low effort comments are the norm; HN should be more than that.
This isn’t like a big conspiracy theory people have won Pulitzer Prizes over it and all that.
It’s a completely reasonably inference that this person advocating for fewer restrictions on a powerful new technology is hoping to use it to conduct more sophisticated mass surveillance on Americans.
As I said, nothing could be more substantive to this thread.
Even were that the case, it's unclear to me that merely providing material aid to a criminal government organization would make a company a "criminal enterprise".
Perhaps uncharitably, this seems akin to arguments that would condemn a large share of contractors involved in military / police / intelligence work as "criminal".
Yes of course the inability of the legal system to deal with it is a deep problem.
My argument is that people who break the law are criminals. It’s not a subtle point I’m making here.
The only point of confusion seems to be your surprise to discover that people with power commit crimes openly and with impunity.
In any case, even when illegal government programs exist it's again unclear to me what sort of due diligence a contractor would have to make to avoid being labeled as a "criminal organization". Similarly, a lot of people consider soldiers who fought in Iraq to be murderers, and I see the point but it would come off as confusing in a normal conversation about a particular person to just casually label them as a murderer because of this.
I am pleased that all in this discussion have now demonstrated such a rigorous grasp of the obvious.
To your more specific point, my first recommendation for government contractors who wish to avoid being labeled as a “criminal organization” would be to avoid repeatedly and blatantly committing crimes.
Has there ever been an era in American history where there aren’t private entities with high government officials as allies who engage in organized criminal activity to further our international trade interests while avoiding consequences?
Not sure if you’re a history buff, but…
"Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it treason."
It may be illegal, but this is not legally relevant at the moment.