"Internal ICE material and testimony from an official obtained by 404 Media provides the clearest link yet between the technological infrastructure Palantir is building for ICE and the agency’s activities on the ground."
This is racial profiling on a grand scale:
“Palantir is working on a tool for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) that populates a map with potential deportation targets, brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a “confidence score” on the person’s current address, 404 Media has learned. ICE is using it to find locations where lots of people it might detain could be based.”
It apparently looks a lot like Google Maps, but designed to show the richness of an area for “targets”, populated in part by density of immigrants. And then you can dig in:
“Once a person is selected on the map interface, ELITE then shows a dossier on that particular person, according to the user guide. That includes their name, a photo, their Alien Number (the unique code given by the U.S. government to each immigrant), their date of birth, and their full address.”
The Nazis could only dream of having such a capability.
Imagine working for this company, on this product. Every day, you go into work, in what I assume is a beautiful office with pine furniture and a well-stocked kitchen, and you build software that will help to deport people using what you know are extrajudicial means without due process. You probably have OKRs. There are customer calls with ICE. Every two-week sprint, you take on tasks that help make this engine better.
What do you tell yourself? What do you tell your family?
Are you on board with this agenda, or do you tell yourself you need the job to pay rent? To get healthcare?
You receive stock as part of your pay package. It’s going up! You can use it to buy a home, or to build a comfortable retirement, or some combination of the two.
Your co-workers are values aligned and work hard. They’re talented and smart. Man, you might think to yourself, I love working with this team.
Or, you might think, man, I’ve got to find another job.
Either way, you’re proud of your product work. You’re happy to take the salary, the free lunches, the espresso. And regardless of how you feel about it, the thing you do every day is powering an armed force that is kidnapping people on the street and shooting civilians, that shot a mother in the face, that is targeting people to disappear using a beautiful, modern map interface.
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