California law enforcement misused state databases more than 7k times in 2023

Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by int_19h on Thursday January 30, 2025 @05:55PM (#42883054)

Everybody knows what purpose those tools are made for in practice simply by looking at who buys them and how they're used. So, no, Palantir does not get to claim some kind of neutrality here. It is a company knowingly enabling mass government surveillance and the associated abuses for the sake of profit.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by p_j_w on Thursday January 30, 2025 @06:17PM (#42883219)

>Everybody knows what purpose those tools are made for in practice simply by looking at who buys them and how they're used.

The name of the company itself is another dead giveaway.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by chii on Friday January 31, 2025 @11:19AM (#42888989)

Palantir (in tolkien lore) isn't evil itself - it's only used for evil in the hands of those who wield it.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by hindsightbias on Thursday January 30, 2025 @07:00PM (#42883498)

Mass scale surveillance wasn't practical or affordable until Linux HPC and OSS. The whole community is enabling.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by nxobject on Thursday January 30, 2025 @08:43PM (#42884018)

Well, ring me up when "Linux HPC" and "OSS" becomes a majority-government contractor, and I'll switch to rack Mac Pros.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by matthewaveryusa on Thursday January 30, 2025 @07:43PM (#42883716)

Your premise is that absent of Palantir there would be no tooling. Someone is going to do it and it might as well be Peter Thiel & co because they're already doing all the other data surveillance.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by nemomarx on Thursday January 30, 2025 @07:53PM (#42883766)

"Someone else will just do this thing anyway, so I might as well do it" is a fairly weak excuse. I doubt it would hold up as a defense of a crime.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by sangnoir on Thursday January 30, 2025 @07:51PM (#42883756)

You are going to die someday, right? How close do you have to be to deaths door for it to be morally okay for me to smother you with a pillow[1]? It was going to happen anyway, why would it matter that I did it?

1. Or carbon monoxide mask, if the distress of asphyxiation is throwing you off the from point I'm trying to make

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by heavyset_go on Thursday January 30, 2025 @09:25PM (#42884201)

You can justify anything after the fact with this reasoning.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by Analemma_ on Thursday January 30, 2025 @10:12PM (#42884406)

"If I don't, someone else will" can be said about pretty much anything, it is not an ethical get-out-of-jail-free card.

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Re:California law enforcement misused state databases more t... by int_19h on Thursday January 30, 2025 @10:39PM (#42884506)

No, my premise is that whoever is doing it bears full moral responsibility for it, unless they're literally forced into it.

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