Not that it excuses any of it but they really don't try to hide it.

http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPositionLanding

   "Embedded Analyst, Government: Canberra"
   "Embedded Analyst, Government: London"
   "Embedded Analyst, Government: New Zealand"
   "Engineer, Developer Support Team (McLean, VA)"
   "Forward Deployed Engineer: Singapore"
   "Forward Deployed Software Engineer, Government: Berlin"
   "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Denmark"
   "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Finland"
   "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Norway"
   "Forward Deployed Software Engineer: Stockholm"

Now I'm not saying Gotham isn't used by gov't, I just wanted to explain what the word actually stood for.

http://www.glassdoor.com/Interview/Palantir-Technologies-Int...

For the "FDE" positions, it's much closer to being onsite support/tech/contractor. I assure you Palantir is less shitty to interview for/work for than virtually any "traditional defense contractor", which is their comparison (I've never interviewed at Palantir, but know a lot of people there, including their recruiters, and have worked for the alternatives.)

This is all independent of their "mission". (I support national security but not unlimited monitoring of US citizens; It's annoying that stuff like PRISM deters good people from working for government, lowering our capability to respond, and thus hurting national security...)

Exactly. I had a chat with a recruiter a couple years ago and he was upfront about contracts with government agencies and data mining. But sure, someone internet gumshoe totally _cracked the case_ by going to Palantir's official website and clicking 'What we do' ( https://www.palantir.com/what-we-do/ )

Which doesn't mean people aren't getting shot and blown up, it just means I'm not closely involved with it. My stance is not beating people over the head with morality, it's purely personal and self-centered. It helps me sleep better at night when I'm not building tools that directly spy on people. I'd like to be as many degrees removed from that as possible, really. Don't take my post to mean that I'm prescribing this morality onto others.

We could do a Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon that proves that my work actually does lead to pain, death, and suffering throughout the world in a convoluted and indirect way, and it may in fact be true - but I don't think it's a stretch to say that there is a large moral difference between directly working on something with ill effects and being far removed from it with no intentional contribution.

Side note though: I don't buy this argument that we can't condemn things unless our hands our perfectly clean. The fact that we all are products of war, suffering, and other terrible things does not remove our ability to steer the ship forward.

You might find this interesting: https://gist.github.com/zmaril/5326884

TL;DR: if you've contributed to open source in some way, you've probably given Palantir the tools they need to do their work.

Software developers are generally no more responsible for the misdeeds of others using their software than anyone else that produces almost any kind of tool.

There's no way you could ever realistically prove your position (ditto the parent).

Of course creating a credible second strike ability is so easy ( merely hide x weapons with delivery systems controlled by PALs ) that it has been a solved problem from the 1960s.

(I do not have an opinion on the morality of working for Palantir.)

Wow. That's just as bad as saying since a person uses TOR, they're being secretive and must have something to hide. You must be able to see the hypocrisy in all of this.

People who use TOR are being secretive and have something to hide.

They may have very good reasons to want to hide it because of threats from bad actors (including, potentially, their own governments), but if they didn't have something to hide, they wouldn't be expending additional resources to actively hide things, which is exactly what using TOR is .

Is this because you would not like to work at a company handling such data, or because you think you are making a difference by not doing so?

If the former, fair enough. If the latter, you might want to rethink the approach - refusing the job only means someone else will take it, and is likely to be 'worse' according to the values that prevent you from taking the job (less likely to blow the whistle, less likely to challenge sales on projects that are evil etc.)

- I'm uncomfortable working for a company that has this much power over private citizens but is not even nominally accountable to said citizens.

- I'm uncomfortable with the (sadly popular) tactic of shoving ugly and disdainful things onto private contractors as a way of distancing and plausible deniability. In both the government and private contexts.

- The job market for programmers is good enough that I have the freedom to be hoity toity with my morality.

I realize full well that given how much Palantir pays, they will fill the seats they need to fill to do the work they do. The world may be on an unavoidable course to hell, but I don't need to jump out and push.

Simply put, they said that if you don't feel comfortable working on a project, you just say so, and get moved elsewhere.

If he's the only person who refuses the job, yes. But the overall effect depends on how many people refuse the job. If a significant percentage of technologists with in-demand skills refuse to do a particular kind of work, it will become harder for a company to hire that kind of employee. Lots of companies in the Valley are already having trouble hiring enough skilled staff, and competing on intangibles, ranging from perceived interestingness of work to perks like gourmet lunches, is one axis they use to try to get employees.

That's how the military does it after all, even in very technically demanding occupations.

Isn't that true for almost any moral stance? Should I stop being a vegetarian because someone else will eat the meat anyway?

That part on its own is not enough. Only when: 1. someone else will do <the job> AND 2. it would be better for you to be doing <the job> than someone who takes it up then you should take it instead of them.

This particular example doesn't apply to me, but I think I'd personally be able to rationalize a lot of selfish behavior following that logic so I try to avoid putting myself in situations where it would come up, even if both points might apply.

More 'damage control' than 'fixing them', but sure, close enough. The point is, do not compare 'this job is evil, I produce -10 units of global utility' and then 'this job is good, I produce +20 units of global utility' looking only at your output. Instead, compare 'By taking this job, I will produce -10 units of global utility, instead of someone else producing -50', in which case the gain from you taking the job is +40.

If asked what I chose to do with my life, I don't really want to say "I chose to commit acts of evil to order, but at least I was selective about which acts of evil, and not too competent at carrying them out"

Now that I think about it, calling it Palantir is ridiculously apt.

http://books.google.com/books?id=J0w3ER2fWv4C&pg=PA93 http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~cjreg/ethicsModule4.htm

All are very interesting challenges.

http://www.palantir.com/careers/OpenPosDetail?id=a0m80000000...

Eeek!