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forgotmylogin2 | 5 years ago

This is a ridiculous stance to take. If true, then open sourcing any form of software is morally corrupt since the government could then use it for evil.

Quite frankly, I don't think any reasonable person would consider selling software to the government to be morally corrupt unless they were reasonably confident the government would use it for evil. Right now, nobody has made a compelling-enough argument to make me believe the government will use this software for evil.

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int_19h|5 years ago

Intent matters. Palantir specifically makes surveillance tech, and specifically markets it to governments.

As for compelling arguments... is the history of most of the world's governments not enough for you? In US, you can look at the census for a case in point: this data was used to chase draft dodgers during WW1, and to compile list of Japanese for internment during WW2. Curiously, by WW2, the federal census law had specific provisions preventing the Bureau from disclosing that information to any other government agencies, precisely to prevent this kind of use - Congress simply repealed those provisions. Nevertheless, the Bureau subsequently denied sharing that data and buried any leads, so we didn't have definitive proof until this century.

Or we could talk about COINTELPRO, PRISM etc.

heavyset_go|5 years ago

> This is a ridiculous stance to take. If true, then open sourcing any form of software is morally corrupt since the government could then use it for evil.

There are popular licenses with such clauses.