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ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

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Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#31

[flagged]

> Any use or benefit obtained via the state apparatus should be viewed from the lens it will be wielded

This is nonsense. Given the same tendency is shared by large private organisations, this is throwing one’s hands up with extra steps.

Regulations and laws work. The fact that a section of the INA seems to compel pretty ridiculous amounts of inter-departmental data sharing is the issue.

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#34

Private surveillance is so much more scary than regular government surveillance because they have every incentive to invent new ways of surveilling you that they then try to sell to governments, or private actors who want to influence the world. It's like classic government surveillance but every company you interacted with and every app you use may at some point turn on you and use your data against you, just becaus…

I don't really mind private surveillance. It's when the data gets sold or otherwise obtained by state powers that it gets scary.

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#35

Private surveillance is so much more scary than regular government surveillance because they have every incentive to invent new ways of surveilling you that they then try to sell to governments, or private actors who want to influence the world. It's like classic government surveillance but every company you interacted with and every app you use may at some point turn on you and use your data against you, just becaus…

> Private surveillance is so much more scary than regular government surveillance because ... ... because the private sector tends to be far more competent and able to get shit done fast and effectively.

The private sector is only "more competent" at a certain size. Google, Microsoft, Meta - they're all largely inefficient and only effective as it pertains to the dollars they spend in lobbying. All of these companies are largely wasteful with respect to the money they spend on executives and initiatives that go against their own customers. They mirror the USG more and more year over year.

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#37
If I'm reading this correctly, they're just straight up violating the law. They're sharing information with ICE under an obligation to share information of aliens, but they're actually sharing everyone's information in an effort to identify aliens. That seems like a pretty slam shut case if there were any mechanism to investigate and prosecute it.

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#38

How are Palantir so effective (as this article is alluding)? From a cynical British perspective, when I think of government departments and civil servants. I think inefficiency, data siloing, politics and lack of communication between departments and also internally not communicating between teams. Not withstanding a lack of cooperating and willingness to change. Did Palantir have a political mandate, or can they jus…

> How are Palantir so effective?

What are you using to conclude their effectiveness?

It appears Palantir “brings up a dossier on each person, and provides a ‘confidence score’ on the person’s current address” [1]. That’s like VLOOKUP.

On effectiveness, Trump is deporting fewer people than Obama did with a tenth of the budget.

[1] https://www.404media.co/elite-the-palantir-app-ice-uses-to-f...

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#39
post #9

The "small government" conservatives really showed their true faces in 2025 and 2026. Anyone espousing these ideas will not be taken seriously by me going forward.

Do you hear how this reads? It reads like you're not going to take warnings about the dangers of government power seriously because the people espousing them are trying to use government power dangerously themselves.

If you can't see the irony in that, that their warnings are twice as important if the pool of potential abusers if government power is twice as big, then nobody's really losing anything when you opt out of engaging these people.

Re: ICE and Palantir: US agents using health data to hunt illegal immigrants

#40
From the leftist-Communist rag (/s) Wall Street Journal:

> It started out that way. At the beginning of 2025, 87% of ICE arrests were immigrants with either a prior conviction or a criminal charge pending, according to ICE data obtained by the Deportation Data Project. Only 13% of those arrested at the beginning of 2025 didn’t have either a conviction or a pending charge.

> But the criminal share of apprehensions has declined as the months have gone on. By October 2025, the percentage of arrested immigrants with a prior conviction or criminal charge had fallen to 55%. Since October, 73% taken into ICE custody had no criminal conviction and only 5% had a violent criminal conviction, according to a Cato Institute review of ICE data.

* https://archive.is/https://www.wsj.com/opinion/mass-deportat...

Under Obama 3M illegal immigrants were removed, and there wasn't all of this drama.

(Hint: this isn't about public safety or illegal immigration.)

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