Palantir is still a tumor. We don't need people profiting off database joins, Oracle did that and became the most hated company on the planet. If the surveillance industry ends up resembling the other "rice bowl" military contractors, American taxpayers will suffer most. It will inevitably become a cost treadmill with infinite billable hours, Congress has seen this happen hundreds of times.

In truth, the rest of your arguement is fully correct. Palantir is often portrayed as the "hacking American businesses" group, but that's NSO. Palantir is merely buying out the data from morally-flexible telecoms and capricious cookie-laden websites. There is an uncomfortable truth about networked technology that America has swept under the rug for decades, and now we have entire businesses as a symptom of that failure. It's a sickening precedent for a free society.

I'd like to believe in a political solution to this. I've yet to see one, and the consequences of the Snowden leaks suggest we may never correct course here in America.