Then it's still an interesting story because it demonstrates the creep of software like this. When you're vacuuming up all sorts of data there's nothing stopping that data being used for a purpose you never intended.

Ya I guess. I mean, if they didn't have this Palantir thing maybe they'd have used Excel. But we've already sort of grandfathered Excel into the "tools taken for granted by civilization" so maybe that wouldn't have made the news.