Re:Palantir’s User Manual for Cops
by sswezey on Friday July 12, 2019 @12:20PM
(#20421840)
Ethics. The amount and scope of information collected by things like Palantir Gotham is beyond invasive. The fact that a police officer can type in your name and know where you were driving is disconcerting. It is about as Big Brother as you can get and not the kind of world I would like to live in. This question is a slippery slope, where people become more and more accustomed to less privacy. If you think this is justifiable, I would highly suggest reading up about the the Stasi in East Germany or read 1984.
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This exact issue was pointed out many times with automated license plate scanning came into existence. Is it really Palantir's fault for making software to aggregate the data? In my view it is our fault as citizens for allowing the government to collect such data in the first place.
Any other company with enough developers and data scientists can do what Palantir does. It's the massive amount of information their software uses that is the concern. But that data is collected by our government, and so we have legal recourse to it, either under current law or by passing new privacy laws.
That’s like asking if it’s really a murderer’s fault for pulling the trigger of a gun manufactured by someone else. Yes, it absolutely is their fault and no, “if they didn’t, someone else would” is not a valid moral excuse, ever.
Who is the murderer in this analogy? To me it's the government misusing such a tool.
Palantir. The government is the gun manufacturer collecting all the needed data in various places.
Why though? Palantir isn't the one using the tools for ill. The government is collecting the information and using it, possibly, to violate civil liberties and constitutional rights.
What can Palantir do to you?