53 comments

[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 63.7 ms ] thread
Make no mistake, the immigration enforcement operations in Minnesota are only a training ground for how to undermine civil rights for us all. Everyone is ok targeting te immigrant populations because they are "illegal" or live in a gray area of legality. But eventually these same tools will be used against us.
Per the WSJ, as of January 10th this year, ICE has identified 13 instances of agents firing at or into civilian vehicles, leaving eight people shot with two confirmed dead. Five of those shot were citizens. According to court records, only one of these civilians was armed and never drew his weapon.

There is a sickness curdling in the dark corners of Silicon Valley. These people need to be humiliated for being the sniveling, authoritarian toads that they are.

I don't know how much people outside of MN know about what's going on, but it's fucking dire here. However bad you think it is, it's worse.
For an idea as to how this gets translated into the reality on the ground here in Minneapolis this is an article on what’s going on from the main newspaper in the state.

> In the past week alone, ICE boxed in a Woodbury real estate agent recording their movements from his car, slammed him to the ground and detained him at the Whipple Federal Building near Fort Snelling for 10 hours. A 51-year-old teacher patrolling the Nokomis East community told the Star Tribune she was run off the road into a snowbank by ICE for laying on her horn. Officers shattered the car window of a woman attempting to drive past a raid in south Minneapolis to get to a doctor’s appointment nearby, then carried her through the street. Feds pushed an unidentified motorist through a red light into a busy intersection, reportedly fired projectiles at a pedestrian walking “too slowly” in a crosswalk and shoved Minneapolis City Council President Elliott Payne while he was observing their actions from a public sidewalk.

You can read the full thing here: https://www.startribune.com/have-yall-not-learned-federal-ag...

I remember hearing the "imagine if Stasi/Gestapo had the data Facebook and Twitter have on us" argument for years. Turns out they were right to be worried.
And ppl were worried about China's 1984 style use of Ai, lol. In the end it was greedy software developers that enable this.
The Palantro CEO, Alex Karp, is on the record that he approves of what the president is doing in regards to immigration enforcement and the striking of boats in international waters.
I am all for criticizing and pointing fingers at trump and this entire administration.

But it does say they have been working with ICE for “years” in the article. What is not really clear to me is was the app made worse recently, was it originally commissioned under trump?

Nothing about that changes that they should not be working with ICE and they deserve any pressure they get to cut ties. But there is some history here I am very curious about.

All of that being said, I am concerned about how this will be turned around and used in more than just ICE and targeting everyone. Especially since we can be sure this will be used in largely blue big cities.

If you work for Palantir and if you work on these systems: You have blood on your hands. You know that it's not right what is happening on the ground right now. Do something.
You can apply similar arguments to many companies including Facebook. The programmer community as a whole is not ethical.
It's crazy that anybody who has read books could learn about the company "Palantir," know where the name comes from, and join it thinking it's anything other than evil.

The thing is, I know palantir engineers are well paid. Money warps people's brains. It's much easier enable evil if you can go back to a home you own in Silicon Valley.

Mods are going to boot this off the front page.
(comment deleted)
I've been on the receiving end of federal enforcement (DOJ, high-profile "cybercrime"). When they want you, they don't need a confidence score. There is no quota—they take time to build a case. The existence of these tools tells you this isn't targeted enforcement, it's industrial-scale population processing dressed up in an algorithm.

I live in Minnesota. This is my backyard.

I remember in the 2010s when Silicon Valley was full of founders who genuinely wanted to use technology to make the world a better place, and now it's just fascists who want to use technology to kill brown people more efficiently
Frick Trump and frick all the pieces of dump that vote red! I hope you and all your loved ones de a horrible deth. You are ruining the entire world!

Why am I being downvoted? Has HN been invaded by Trump's scum too?

Why is this allowed to reach the front page, but any technical talk relating to the slaughter of Iranians gets quietly removed?
As always, I like to point out that someone here is probably very proud of their work on this.
Can anyone explain a user flow for how a Palantir product enables ICE to go from app launch to ‘target arrested’?