A privacy-token CEO's 22-point manifesto against Palantir divides Hacker News
Nym CEO Harry Halpin posted a 22-point manifesto declaring Palantir the operating system of a coming surveillance state, and privacy code the only defense. Hacker News, the audience most primed to agree, mostly rolled its eyes.
Nym CEO Harry Halpin published a 22-point "Anti-Palantir Manifesto" arguing surveillance can only be beaten by code rather than law, then added that these are his personal beliefs, not Nym's.
Commenters weren't sold: they note it ran on the company blog beside VPN ads, call it buzzword-heavy, and argue the real barrier to a surveillance state is political will, not missing crypto tools, from a firm that sells exactly those tools.
A privacy founder says only code can stop Palantir
Nym CEO Harry Halpin, a cryptographer by training, published a 22-point "Anti-Palantir Manifesto" on the company's blog. His argument: Palantir is becoming "the operating system of a cross-border global secret state," and surveillance justified by foreign threats always turns inward on immigrants, dissidents, and ordinary citizens. His proposed defense is not regulation but engineering.
"Code, not laws, can be used to uphold the right to privacy."
Halpin runs a company that sells a mixnet VPN and a crypto token, and he closes with a caveat:
"These are my personal beliefs, not those of Nym."
Its natural audience wasn't buying it
The conflict of interest landed first:
"Why are you posting this on your company's site, littered with ads for the company's product?" — a reader questioning the venue for a 'personal' manifesto
A Seattle developer doubted the messenger:
"consumer VPNs primarily help customers fight for their right to stream Netflix. This doesn't strike me as effective advertisement." — an independent software developer in Seattle
The sharpest critique turned Halpin's own logic against him:
"Once you've abandoned the idea of democracy and peaceful self-governance, you're just another technofascist. You are Palantir, just in an earlier stage." — a reader reacting to the manifesto's fifth point
And a newsletter writer questioned the premise itself:
"The fear of an imminent surveillance state just rings so hollow to me…" — a commenter who writes the mleverything newsletter
His point cuts at the pitch: the barrier to mass surveillance is political will, not a shortage of privacy tools, an awkward thesis for a firm whose whole product is exactly those tools.
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