Palantir is an evil company run by nasty people.

I wonder what other uses Palantir might have for maps of targets in more or less densely populated areas.

Also, can't help but think about who the Trump administration is actually sending to the most densely populated areas to carry out these raids, and what happens to them if Trump has to kick off a civil war while they're there...

I knew a guy that had been arrested for property damage during the Iraq war, and had been given the option between joining the military or prison, so he joined the army. Never forgotten him telling me the Army always sent the dumbest guys to drive through dangerous areas first, because they usually wouldn't pick up on the fact that they were being sent to clear the roads where they were most likely to be driving over IEDs...

Super fucked up, but that was then. Under the deep state.... Things are different nowadays. Surely the Trump administration would never do something like that to the people they're sending out into the field without training or even bothering to run a background check...

I'm sure if Trump was going to use Palantir maps to do something like that to the American people, he would be sure to give these guys in ICE (who might not even have an official paper trail) a heads up, and he definitely wouldn't allow them to be included as part of the collateral damage Palantir software accounts for in all of its strikes on civilian areas

The Lavender precedent: automated kill lists and the limits of International Humanitarian Law

According to multiple sources, the IDF set pre-approved “collateral damage” thresholds for strikes on Lavender-listed targets, effectively institutionalising a certain level of civilian death as tolerable. In the early weeks of the war, commanders permitted 15 to 20 civilian deaths per airstrike for attacking a low-ranking militant (Abraham 2024) In other cases, “over 100” civilian casualties were allowed for targeting a single high-ranking Hamas commander (Wiese & Langer 2024). These astonishing numbers, disclosed by both Israeli insiders and subsequent investigations, reveal a de facto calculus where the lives of Palestinian civilians were assigned a disturbingly low weight. This may be evidentiary of the international crime of extermination, considering the violently disproportionate attacks launched by the Israeli military.

An Israeli intelligence officer candidly confirmed that during this period “we were told: now we have to **** up Hamas, no matter what the cost. Whatever you can, you bomb” (Abraham 2024). This pressure from above to deliver results “with speed and scale” led the targeting teams to unleash an “unparalleled” wave of bombardments unencumbered by the complex assessment proportionality requires (Shehabi & Lubin).

As a result, magnitude and not precision became the driving metric of the campaign. The practical outcome of these policies was catastrophic civilian loss. By treating every adult male in certain areas or data profiles as targetable, and by approving strikes even knowing that 10% of those targeted could be civilians, the IDF all but guaranteed the violation of distinction.

I guess it's important to keep in mind that even though Trump just gave Palantir a $10 billion contract and randomly gave a bunch of Palantir executives military rank for some reason nobody has ever explained, all of these strikes were carried out on foreign soil. Palantir's AI is probably more accurate and less murder droney in 'Merica. Thank God for those baked in American values aMiRiTe?

Let's make a palantir app that shows where ice will raids. Possible?

There is a page linked in the 404Media article mentioned here that is chilling reading; it is their source for the article, and it describes how ICE chooses where to go to raid and to arrest and uncovers their operating procedure in more thorough detail, obtained from a deposition of an ICE agent. (Innovation Law Lab is a legal firm representing people suing ICE, hence the deposition material.)

It's a short read but worth it. I think it should be required reading for anyone who wants to understand what is going on when ICE is about to show up and/or has the ability to use knowledge of ICE procedures to mitigate their own risk.

Innovation Law Lab's page on ICE procedures:
https://innovationlawlab.org/news-and-analysis/dhss-operation-black-rose-early-analysis

404Media's article "‘ELITE’: The Palantir App ICE Uses to Find Neighborhoods to Raid":
https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-find-neighborhoods-to-raid/

Archive link for 404Media article:
https://archive.ph/6K7R9

Abolish ice and palintir. Arrest every ceo and palantir shareholder and sieze their assets for the restoration of democracy and for the rebuilding of Palestine for the Palestinian people

Outrageous, and unfortunately not surprising given who we're dealing with here.

I have a question. When we talk about how big tech colludes with Trump, we naturally tend to focus on leadership. But someone is writing the code for all the surveillance tracking, and I don't think I've seen anyone focus on the moral responsibilites that comes with being a developer.

I don't mean naming and shaming, I mean instilling hope that they have power to make a difference.

The teacher's protest in Norway during WW2 made Quisling say "you teachers have destroyed everything for me".

Ik im suppose to be scared about ICE raiding my home and deporting me, but I feel so smug seeing the people who laughed at caring about privacy finally realizing the whole point.

The IBM of our times?