https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

Ok, so Palantir was used to prevent terror attacks in Europe, which would have presumably led to (even more) popularity of the far right. Palantir is also being used by the current far-right US administration (who, unlike the Nazis, like Jews and are even in part Jewish, but hate immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, liberals etc. etc.) to hunt down immigrants based on their medical data. I fail to see how these two are connected, except for the same tool being used in both cases? This is actually one of the fears that data protection advocates had all along: first, these tools will be used to catch terrorists, then mostly harmless illegal immigrants, and then anyone else the regime doesn't like.

You are correct, but the way you word your comment makes it seem like you are an apologist for Karp. I can't tell if that's why you are being downvoted, or the HN Fascist brigade.

These kinds of mass surveillance data ops should be illegal, regardless of who is doing it.

> I think it’s very important to focus on how data collection of this nature is bad, not that “because Nazis did it” it’s bad.

It's bad for both reasons. Palantir is the IBM of our time, using scaled data engineering to handle the tracking and incarceration of ethnic minorities, who are quickly shipped off for worse persecution, including torture, at government-run camps, all without any due process.

> he can turn around and say he’s actually preventing Nazis

Anyone can say anything absurd, counterfactual, and unconvincing, regardless of circumstances. For us to consider it true, we'd need some evidence that it is at least more true than the opposite.

> Say thank you," Karp added.

Thanks for the link. Wow, I didn't realize that he was such an insufferable, sociopathic, abusive douchebag as a person. Like a wife-beater who insists his victim thank him for it.