I know we often try to keep it civil around here, but shame on them.
Actually, let me rephrase, Fuck Palantir. There is a point at which I disregard the technical hurdles that they overcome, due to the fact that they're at odds with our constitution. They are far, far past that point.
Yeah, the things they are up to are bad. There's another thread on HN right now about Palantir's involvement with mobile license plate readers and the extent to which these are photographing and tracking the movements of tens of millions of people without warrant or cause and feeding the results into intelligence fusion centers. The article below notes the case of a security consultant who filed a request for his own info and found he had been photographed 112 times by just one of these programs, including one photo that was a photo of his daughters in the driveway of his own house, apparently taken by cameras installed on randomly passing police cars which just scan in everything they see and feed it to computers for analysis.
Anonymous got a lucky break and found out about what was really going on at a few of these firms. There are a lot more firms and it isn't going to be so easy for grey hats to break in and release documents in the future. This doesn't mean that these firms aren't still engaging in widespread programs that make the Stasi look like a child's birthday game.
Actually, let me rephrase, Fuck Palantir. There is a point at which I disregard the technical hurdles that they overcome, due to the fact that they're at odds with our constitution. They are far, far past that point.