This is a protest against a government contractor, not against surveillance state. It's misplaced, which is a pity. I don't see anything good coming out of protesting against Palantir, not even favorable PR.
Yeah, but it tells them wrong story about what the root cause is. That is wrong IMHO. This is not a rogue corporation that has to be stopped, this is a rogue government that has to be stopped.
Activists constantly hear people from the sidelines telling them they're protesting the "wrong" way. If you really want to make a difference, stop criticizing and start doing the work you think is more important yourself.
A great deal of that sideline protest is cynical anyway. One doesn't want to argue the basic point, so instead of doing so one talks about a "better" way of going about it. Some call this "concern trolling".
Please re-read what I wrote. What I want is to argue the basic point - that surveillance is wrong and the government is overstepping a boundary. None of these can be argued against a corporation that simply sold the government what it asked for.
Surveillance in USA, like every other authoritarian institution in USA, is inherently asymmetric. The NSA lizards hear our intimate conversations, but we don't know a thing about NSA lizards. We'd love to vote against NSA, but that isn't an option. (Even protesting them seems a dicey option: how far can the Ft Meade fence snipers shoot?) For some reason some of the lizards have emerged from cover in the guise of a mysteriously never-profitable parallel construction firm, so naturally they're going to receive some of the scrutiny we would otherwise apply to their inaccessible brethren.
You have repeated ITT that you object to this, but you haven't given us a reason why. That invites speculation as to personal motivations.
I think I am doing enough, but thank you for the suggestion. I don't think there is anything wrong with discussion,if that's what you were suggesting. Perhaps activists would hear less of stuff like what I say if they protested against the government instead of hopping on the populist anti-business bandwagon. Sadly many activists are trying to portray business in general as bad.