News for hackers. Stuff that matters.
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by kd3 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:40PM (#20770560)
It's not just ICE but the entire government that is a problem. I personally stopped accepting any work from any government a few years ago. Once you realize what government is, there's no going back.

"The State […] is an anti-social institution, administered in the only way an anti-social institution can be administered, and by the kind of person who, in the nature of things, is best adapted to such service [a psychopath]. Taking the State wherever found, striking into its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those of a professional-criminal class. As Dr. Sigmund Freud has observed, it can not even be said that the State has ever shown any disposition to suppress crime, but only to safeguard its own monopoly of crime." - Albert J. Nock in “Our Enemy, The State”

Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by pjc50 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:45PM (#20770611)
We should not allow the observation that some states collapse into lawlessness to turn into a blind "government is bad" attitude that ends with people being held hostage by government-sized private companies. The state can be lawless, but escaping lawlessness is impossible without the efforts of a state.
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by kd3 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:03PM (#20771337)
Well it's more the fact that government exists by the use of force and coercion, which makes it a violent and basically terrorist organization. And that is so dispite having laws. Laws != morality.
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by duqd_ on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:45PM (#20770615)
It makes me sad that so many people are unwilling to engage with this position. Anarchism is unreasonably vilified imo.
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by frenchyatwork on Thursday August 22, 2019 @02:23PM (#20770965)
A big problem with anarchy is that it's really complicated and is usually either misunderstood by the proponent or the listeners. Anarchy is about levelling the playing field and reducing the power that the most powerful structures have in our society. The problem of removing power structures in institutions, is that they will naturally get replaced by other ones, and the replacements are often as authoritarian as the originals.

In the US, it's popular to think that you can somehow replace elected government (where power is somewhat dependant on votes, and somewhat dependent on advertising budgets/capital) with business (where power is dependent entirely on capital), and that somehow this is more "anarchist". This is a naive idea.

Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by GhostVII on Thursday August 22, 2019 @01:59PM (#20770756)
What is the alternative to having a government? If the current government was completely defunded, it wouldn't prevent governance entirely - we would just be governed by some private company or organization instead. How long are you expecting a country to survive without a government before some group of armed individuals take control of it again, this time without any form of democracy?
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by kd3 on Thursday August 22, 2019 @03:00PM (#20771314)
The alternative is of course no government. That is what the word anarchy means, no rulers. Larken Rose has a mini book out with nice illustrations, which discusses how we might live without government. Free download in pdf format: https://www.dropbox.com/s/yd18waixbva1jae/WhatAnarchyIsnt-FR...
Re:The war inside Palantir: Data-mining firm ties to ICE und... by maxlamb on Thursday August 22, 2019 @05:21PM (#20772470)
Except that are plenty of examples where the state is a pro-social institution. Take Norway for example. Societies before states (i.e. prehistory) had much higher rates of homicides by all evidence collected.