[cg5280]

> The goals and motivation for using these tools, and their broad allowance of access to what should be highly controlled data (or in some cases even not collected at all) is the problem ... focus on the policy decisions that are leading to agencies wanting tools like this in the first place.

That's how Karp seems to justify these things. Palantir's job is to (in theory) make government better at doing government things. It's up to voters to keep the government in line.

[thatguy0900]

I mean you can say stuff like that but the reality is they purposefully named themselves after a super villains magical spy apparatus so I'm not inclined to take his word about them being ethically neutral. Like I'm not really sure what they could name themselves after that would be more ominous

[ahazred8ta]

The palantirs were made by the elf lord prince Fëanor of Valinor, one of the good guys. The one we see in the film was given to the kings of Gondor and then pilfered by Saruman. (elvish palan 'far', tir 'watch over')

[ceejayoz]

> they purposefully named themselves after a super villains magical spy apparatus…

Worse, that spy apparatus inherently corrupts its users.

[tokioyoyo]

Even if they’re the most evil corpo ever, the buyer is still the government. If a democratically elected government buys this products, I would assume, in large scale of things, the general population wants the most evil corpo.