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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

#91

Post by mc32 »

windexh8er wrote: post #35
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

One big difference is that public companies restructure when things aren’t looking rosy. Government organizations don’t often reorganize and structurally they don’t have much flexibility.

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

#92

Post by [deleted] »

rudhdb773b wrote: post #53
mothballed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but at least in places like Venezuela and Philippines it can be bought cheap enough the common man might be able to access it. It's almost worse in the USA because the corruption is only accessible to those in quasi-oligarchical roles. There's some point at which increased corruption actually becomes more egalitarian (though obviously, not as egalitarian as zero corruption).

I don't know why this is down voted. It's a very valid point. In countries where the police and government officials can be bought for pocket change by the middle class, the masses have relatively more power vs the elite who control the central government.

[deleted]

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

#93

Post by tomaytotomato »

NVHacker wrote: post #87
tomaytotomato wrote: post #27

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…

You do know that Palantir is now in the UK and getting access to data through the same "health" channels, don't you ? https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-56590249

UK government departments are slow and hostile to change, so I am skeptical that Palantir being parachuted in, would produce anything more than a CSV file with a few hundred rows in it.

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

#94

Post by javierpresnsr »

tomaytotomato wrote: post #27

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…

It is easy to be "effective" when you get paid to circumvent any check and balances

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

#95

Post by sejje »

voidUpdate wrote: post #42
hardreality wrote: post #21

[flagged]

How many rights are you personally willing to give up so that people can be deported?

People have been deported as long as I've been alive.

I haven't lost any of my rights yet. Certainly not in the past month. All the mechanisms to deport people were already there.

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

#96

Post by JumpCrisscross »

rudhdb773b wrote: post #53
mothballed wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but at least in places like Venezuela and Philippines it can be bought cheap enough the common man might be able to access it. It's almost worse in the USA because the corruption is only accessible to those in quasi-oligarchical roles. There's some point at which increased corruption actually becomes more egalitarian (though obviously, not as egalitarian as zero corruption).

I don't know why this is down voted. It's a very valid point. In countries where the police and government officials can be bought for pocket change by the middle class, the masses have relatively more power vs the elite who control the central government.

It’s a stupid point that ignores how corruption actually works, particularly when someone thinks being able to bribe the local police means an ordinary person in Venezuela has more power than an average American.

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

#97

Post by sgarland »

QuadmasterXLII wrote: post #70
londons_explore wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

A well behaved market is much more efficient than a government, but there’s no real difference in efficiency between a random corporation and a random government - you really need a diversity of sellers and buyers, privatizing into a monsopony or monopoly is reliably disastrous. Sorry, I know this is off topic but the conflation between “markets are efficient” and “private enterprises are efficient” is so frustrating…

If the market was critically examining fundamentals and thinking beyond the next quarter, I might agree with you. As it is, by and large it cares about the next earnings report.

I work in fintech, at a market leader. We are wildly inefficient, but there is little interest in fixing it, because we’re making money hand over fist.

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

#98

Post by andruby »

rudhdb773b wrote: post #74
torben-friis wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would non state actors be any less scary? Large companies colluding to reject potential hires due to surveilled ideology, sexual preferences of people in the closet filtered to scammers, hate groups learning about the family members of activists, insurance rejecting customers based on illegally obtained data… the list of risks is giant.

> Why would non state actors be any less scary? Non-state actors can't easily use violence to throw me in jail.

Blackwater, Wagner, Aegis, Triple Canopy, DynCorp, etc enter chat..

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

#99

Post by api »

petterroea wrote: post #6

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…

Starting way back in the early 2000s I was predicting all this and was consistently called nuts and paranoid.

In retrospect what has actually happened with mass surveillance has been far worse than what the most unhinged conspiracy nut on shortwave radio or some crazy end times Geocities web site was predicting back then. The predictions of the conspiracy nuts were conservative.

The big thing everyone got wrong was that we assumed people would care and put up resistance. We assumed people would choose technologies that protected their privacy and would get mad when highly invasive things were foisted on them. That never happened. Give people convenience and shiny and fun "content" like TikTok and YouTube and they'll consent to live in a total panopticon. They don't care.

We're also seeing that people will choose wealth and comfort over rights and freedom. This bargain is being made all over the world to varying degrees, and the trend is toward increasingly authoritarian societies that offer a comfortable lifestyle as long as you don't question it too much. A quote I read a while back described the emerging system like this: "it's Brave New World unless you question it, then it turns into 1984 real fast."

This is all a devil's bargain, but like the devil's bargain in fiction it's great at first. The devil really does deliver. It's all fun until you get dragged off to hell at the end.

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

#100

Post by JumpCrisscross »

delichon wrote: post #44
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's still a good heuristic when it comes to giving your PII to the government The heuristic is to not participate in modern medicine?

Sometimes you have to give it up, sometimes not, which is why it's a heuristic and not a firm rule.

> Sometimes you have to give it up, sometimes not, which is why it's a heuristic and not a firm rule

Which is practically useless when we’re discussing HHS data.

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