<story><title>Palantir enables immigration agents to look up information from the CIA</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2017/03/17/palantir-enables-immigration-agents-to-access-information-from-the-cia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The first part of this comment is in fact what I&amp;#x27;m saying. The second part, where you call this &amp;quot;witch hunting&amp;quot;, I don&amp;#x27;t agree with. I think our profession is way, way too detached from the consequences of the applications of our work.&lt;p&gt;Nobody bats an eyelash when doctors refuse to help with executions or torture, or pharma companies resist selling execution drug cocktails. But for some reason technologists are just fine selling the technical building blocks of a surveillance and mass deportation system. That&amp;#x27;s not right; it&amp;#x27;s a sign of the diminished professionalism of our field versus other professions, and it does need to change.</text></item><item><author>ng12</author><text>Assuming ICE is operating legally, what&amp;#x27;s the difference? Cisco assumes ICE is using their routers for legal purposes. Same with Oracle or SAP or IBM. At the point at which we&amp;#x27;re witch-hunting tech companies for their involvement it&amp;#x27;s already way too late.</text></item><item><author>Chaebixi</author><text>&amp;gt; My friend Chris Rohlf has a snarky dismissal of a lot of &amp;quot;hardware hacking&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;IOT&amp;quot; security conference talks: &amp;quot;look at this debugger debugging!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Stories like this call that snark to mind. &amp;quot;Look at this database databasing!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a technical story, it&amp;#x27;s a social and governmental one.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; if you&amp;#x27;re angry at Palantir for assisting mass deportation, you should be equally angry at Oracle and Cisco. I am --- in fact, a little more so.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t Palantir&amp;#x27;s assistance clearer and more direct?  Aren&amp;#x27;t they building applications with a lot of knowledge of what they&amp;#x27;ll be used to do?  As far as I know, Cisco doesn&amp;#x27;t sell products like &amp;quot;gigabit mass-deporation cloud router 2239.&amp;quot;  Any assistance they give is much more indirect.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>My friend Chris Rohlf has a snarky dismissal of a lot of &amp;quot;hardware hacking&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;IOT&amp;quot; security conference talks: &amp;quot;look at this debugger debugging!&amp;quot; The subtext is, once you find the debug stubs or the JTAG interface or whatever, the rest of the talk is pretty academic. Also: you have to be in a position to exercise the debugger interface to conduct the &amp;quot;hack&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Stories like this call that snark to mind. &amp;quot;Look at this database databasing!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m loathe to stick up for Palantir, because I think Peter Thiel is a monster, and I have no particular reason to believe that Palantir is an especially moral team in its operations and management. But I think most commentary about Palantir&amp;#x27;s role in surveillance is overblown. From what I can tell, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive consultingware database with a name that has special valence with nerds.&lt;p&gt;Be mean to Palantir all you want, I guess. But don&amp;#x27;t let other tech companies off the hook. I&amp;#x27;ve been trying to make this point for years with, I think, pretty limited success: if you&amp;#x27;re angry at Palantir for assisting mass deportation, you should be equally angry at Oracle and Cisco. I am --- in fact, a little more so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>steven777400</author><text>Interesting to flip it around, though:  is the doctor who administers a (legally ordered) lethal injection a monster?  Why or why not?  Or, who gets to decide yes or no?&lt;p&gt;And where is the line?  Is the programmer who writes code for a surveillance drone ( immoral?  What about one who writes code for a submarine that may carry ballistic missiles?  Or for the missile guidance system itself?</text></comment>
<story><title>Palantir enables immigration agents to look up information from the CIA</title><url>https://theintercept.com/2017/03/17/palantir-enables-immigration-agents-to-access-information-from-the-cia/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>tptacek</author><text>The first part of this comment is in fact what I&amp;#x27;m saying. The second part, where you call this &amp;quot;witch hunting&amp;quot;, I don&amp;#x27;t agree with. I think our profession is way, way too detached from the consequences of the applications of our work.&lt;p&gt;Nobody bats an eyelash when doctors refuse to help with executions or torture, or pharma companies resist selling execution drug cocktails. But for some reason technologists are just fine selling the technical building blocks of a surveillance and mass deportation system. That&amp;#x27;s not right; it&amp;#x27;s a sign of the diminished professionalism of our field versus other professions, and it does need to change.</text></item><item><author>ng12</author><text>Assuming ICE is operating legally, what&amp;#x27;s the difference? Cisco assumes ICE is using their routers for legal purposes. Same with Oracle or SAP or IBM. At the point at which we&amp;#x27;re witch-hunting tech companies for their involvement it&amp;#x27;s already way too late.</text></item><item><author>Chaebixi</author><text>&amp;gt; My friend Chris Rohlf has a snarky dismissal of a lot of &amp;quot;hardware hacking&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;IOT&amp;quot; security conference talks: &amp;quot;look at this debugger debugging!&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Stories like this call that snark to mind. &amp;quot;Look at this database databasing!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;This isn&amp;#x27;t a technical story, it&amp;#x27;s a social and governmental one.&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; if you&amp;#x27;re angry at Palantir for assisting mass deportation, you should be equally angry at Oracle and Cisco. I am --- in fact, a little more so.&lt;p&gt;Isn&amp;#x27;t Palantir&amp;#x27;s assistance clearer and more direct?  Aren&amp;#x27;t they building applications with a lot of knowledge of what they&amp;#x27;ll be used to do?  As far as I know, Cisco doesn&amp;#x27;t sell products like &amp;quot;gigabit mass-deporation cloud router 2239.&amp;quot;  Any assistance they give is much more indirect.</text></item><item><author>tptacek</author><text>My friend Chris Rohlf has a snarky dismissal of a lot of &amp;quot;hardware hacking&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;IOT&amp;quot; security conference talks: &amp;quot;look at this debugger debugging!&amp;quot; The subtext is, once you find the debug stubs or the JTAG interface or whatever, the rest of the talk is pretty academic. Also: you have to be in a position to exercise the debugger interface to conduct the &amp;quot;hack&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Stories like this call that snark to mind. &amp;quot;Look at this database databasing!&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m loathe to stick up for Palantir, because I think Peter Thiel is a monster, and I have no particular reason to believe that Palantir is an especially moral team in its operations and management. But I think most commentary about Palantir&amp;#x27;s role in surveillance is overblown. From what I can tell, it&amp;#x27;s a very expensive consultingware database with a name that has special valence with nerds.&lt;p&gt;Be mean to Palantir all you want, I guess. But don&amp;#x27;t let other tech companies off the hook. I&amp;#x27;ve been trying to make this point for years with, I think, pretty limited success: if you&amp;#x27;re angry at Palantir for assisting mass deportation, you should be equally angry at Oracle and Cisco. I am --- in fact, a little more so.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ng12</author><text>It sounds great in theory but it&amp;#x27;s so divorced from reality I can&amp;#x27;t help but feeling anger at Palantir is misdirected. If Palantir refused the contract ICE would walk down the street and offer it to IBM&amp;#x2F;SAP&amp;#x2F;Northrop&amp;#x2F;Raytheon etc. If by some miracle they all refused it remember most three letter agencies have very skilled in-house teams.&lt;p&gt;All of this is just distracting from the real issues at hand.</text></comment>