Nobody bats an eyelash when doctors refuse to help with executions or torture, or pharma companies resist selling execution drug cocktails. But for some reason technologists are just fine selling the technical building blocks of a surveillance and mass deportation system. That's not right; it's a sign of the diminished professionalism of our field versus other professions, and it does need to change.
And where is the line? Is the programmer who writes code for a surveillance drone ( immoral? What about one who writes code for a submarine that may carry ballistic missiles? Or for the missile guidance system itself?
When a doctor assists in an execution, they participate in what is a murder, just under some other context. Lift that action up and out of the auspices of state and governance, and you have a murderer, accessory to before or after, or an accomplice to.
This isn't a particularly rare occurrence, but someone is there to cut the life short, do harm, and achieve a goal. Justice, revenge, passion, grudges aside. There's a winner and a loser.
It could be a misanthrope and henchmen, or it could be a doctor, somehow more distinguished than a common thug. The doctor chooses gets hands dirty for different reasons, there they are all the same. But the doctor gets to walk away from his murder, and commit more, so long as the state and government are not deposed.
All of this is just distracting from the real issues at hand.
As anyone with the pleasure of having contracted with IBM or Lockheed can tell you, there is a significant difference between working with giant government contractors versus the best funded Silicon Valley firms.
What what we debating here? ICE's conduct or Palantir being an enabler? Because if we're talking about Palantir, "someone else would have done it" is not a good excuse.
I think the long term question is: how can we make these choices less okay and less profitable?
How so? Exposing and holding people and companies accountable for wrong behavior does not stop anyone from trying to change the government policies that encourage the wrong behavior. The added media exposure probably helps, especially with people that are interested in the person/company but are not aware of the government policies and their impact.
That's the question, right? Is this wrong behavior? It's legal, that's for sure. Just because you don't agree with ICE's actions doesn't mean every Palantir employee agrees with you.
1. "Someone else would have done it."
2. False dichotomy.
And now piling on:
3. Moral relativism.
4. Finish the Job. (#49 in http://utminers.utep.edu/omwilliamson/engl1311/fallacies.htm)
But it turns out that no one (initially) cares when doctors do help with torture, either. The APA helped design the American torture program, and despite some inflammatory articles never saw any real consequences for it.
I don't think this devalues your point about technologists, but it does make me suspect that our uniqueness is overstated; quite a few 'respectable' professions have at one point or another joined in on horrific government overreach.
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/01/us/report-says-american-p...
Are (using your example) Cisco and/or Oracle offering material support, other than making the products that are used? If not, I don't see how they could prevent the government from using their products - the government would just buy the products through a cutout if they had to.
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/04/ciscos-latest-attempt-...
> Isn't Palantir's assistance clearer and more direct?
Are you aware that the name "Oracle" comes from the original CIA contract?
(crappy reference I found via wikipedia in case you didn't realise this, but it's not a secret part of company history: https://www.theguardian.com/g2/story/0,3604,215072,00.html )
I'm not saying that companies should shun the CIA, so that's irrelevant. The distinction I was making was between providing generic products which can be used to implement a policy and products specifically designed to that policy's business requirements. My understanding is Palantir produces the later, and if the policy in question is problematic then they are more culpable than if they developed something generic.
Also, your link doesn't really support your characterization that Oracle Database was developed for the CIA:
> Ampex was developing a giant database for the CIA, and Ellison was assigned to the project, along with Bob Miner and Ed Oates. The CIA's codename for the project was Oracle. The project was something of a disaster, but it led eventually to the formation of Oracle Corporation and its current hugely successful range of databases.
If you pay attention, it says Ampex was the company with the CIA contract, and that project inspired Ellison to found Oracle.
"Ellison was wrong about the success of massively parallel processing computers (though he invested his own money in the idea), wrong about the success of so-called video-on-demand (as Oracle found when it ran a pilot with British Telecom), wrong about network computers replacing PCs (or at least, there's no evidence yet), and wrong about several other things - though we might have to revise that view in 10 years and say he was right but too early."
looks like history has proven that he was right about all of these things!
> Stories like this call that snark to mind. "Look at this database databasing!"
This isn't a technical story, it's a social and governmental one.
> if you're angry at Palantir for assisting mass deportation, you should be equally angry at Oracle and Cisco. I am --- in fact, a little more so.
Isn't Palantir's assistance clearer and more direct? Aren't they building applications with a lot of knowledge of what they'll be used to do? As far as I know, Cisco doesn't sell products like "gigabit mass-deporation cloud router 2239." Any assistance they give is much more indirect.