Hey, John Doyle here (CEO of Cape). I'm happy to dig into how I run the company, or the infra providers we use. I actually think we're pretty upstanding! If there are questions I can answer that will put your fears to rest, let me know.

Can you please respond with a full throated opinion of what Palantir is today? This seems to be what everyone is thirsting for and what you are perhaps inadvertently dancing around.

I'm 4 years removed from the company at this point, so any opinion I could offer would not be much more than any rando on the internet reacting to news stories.

Thank you for being honest and up front about your background. It is very meaningful that you do not try to hide it, and I feel it increases trust.

...care to elaborate?

This probably doesn't cover what OP said, but after reading the CEO's intro post, I left a little more depressed. Make money off surveillance, and then make money off selling a privacy product.

> At Palantir, where I started in technical roles more than 10 years ago, I learned about a wide array of vulnerabilities in the cellular network that present a threat not only to mission-focused organizations in government, but also to everyday people. I came to see mobile phones — and the networks that power them — as perhaps the largest risks to our privacy and security.

> If you told Americans twenty years ago that corporations and governments would conspire to attach powerful tracking devices to nearly every adult worldwide, it would’ve sounded like science fiction. And yet, that’s not far from where we are today.

https://www.cape.co/blog/building-the-future-of-mobile-priva...

I hear what you're saying, though another framing would be "learn about serious problem, build company to fix serious problem."

Appreciate you sticking in here and answering the hard questions.

How does the company handle the split between your defense and consumer products? Do you see there being conflicting interests here?

Great question. The product is basically the same-- it's a cell phone network and we sell connectivity to it.

A helpful thing to keep in mind is that everyone has basically 2 use cases for their cell phones:

1. Send and receive calls and SMS 2. Connect to the internet

Whether you're a national security professional, an investigative journalist, or an average consumer who values privacy, that's what you do with your phone. So if we can build features that make you more secure and more private across those two use cases, we have a product that can help both government and consumer users.

Sometimes when people ask the "conflict" question they mean some version of "but doesn't the government then ask you for a backdoor to get all the data?" All we can really do here is stand by our privacy policy. We store the minimum amount of data possible, we promise not to sell your data to anyone, we notify our users if we receive legal process on their account that is not subject to a gag order, and we pledge to push back on any law enforcement request we receive that is not well formed and narrowly tailored as required by law.

The backdoor/honeypot fears are often related to the Anom story that came out a few years ago. It's not a perfect rebuttal, but the reporter that broke that story has written about Cape a couple of times. You can read those articles here:

https://www.404media.co/privacy-telecom-cape-introduces-disa...

https://www.404media.co/i-dont-own-a-cellphone-can-this-priv...

Appreciate the transparency. Curious: What percentage of legal process on your users' accounts are subject to a gag order?

Similar to OP – I appreciate you hanging around and answering regardless of how hostile it feels.

We may or may not be convinced by the details you're able to give us, but regardless of that you've made the discussion more informed, technical, and less speculative, which is in the best spirit of HN.

Palentier and A16Z connections...

"but... but... trust me!"

By the way, if you look at this thread you can see Cape has deployed narrative control.

I’m open minded.

Seeing a warrant canary would be encouraging…

They're a US mobile telco, a warrant canary wouldn't last a year here. That's not, on the surface, a useful differentiator between mobile service providers. Did you have a specific kind of warrant canary in mind that would act as a differentiator, or is there some aspect of warrant canaries I've overlooked that makes them meaningful for US telecoms that are governed by US federal and state laws, or..?

This is correct. We talked about canaries a bunch internally and came to the same conclusion-- not really worth it in this context (but please do offer up a model that makes sense if you see one).

I came to the conclusion the best we can do is what you see in our privacy policy: we notify our users when we're served with legal process that is not subject to a gag order, and we pledge to push back on any law enforcement request we receive that is not properly formed or narrowly tailored as required by law. I'd love input/ideas on how to be stronger here.