This is why government and corporations should not be embedded together as they have near zero laws or punishment for spying on Americans.
It isn't even just about the invasion of our rights but the government shouldn't choose winners and losers like we are seeing. It eliminates the open nature of competition.
- Stones
- Sticks
- Some rope
Takes awhile, but humans eventually make a murder weapon out of that and build armies.
Now take the benign elements of a crud stack:
- Database
- Server
- User system
It takes awhile, but eventually humans will make something (something not good) out of that.
Sticks and stones may hurt my bones, but databases will never hurt me
Right?
Oh there is definitely a way it's just that saying most of it outloud will get you disappeared.
God knows it took long enough.
Some of their stuff for handling data and versioned pipelines seem very well done.
The problem is that they also keep close ties to law-enforcement and (para-)military clients, and while they promise to keep your data safe, they would never inform you if they received a warrant from the government to share the data.
Musk+Thiel is also in the mix with Golden Dome, the space weapons program that was always Musk's mission. The inside "joke" is that Mars = Wars.
What you've described are just benign ingredients. The poison is turning them into a "analytics" or "adtech" system.
Same thing with Tesla.
That's literally it.
It's not even particularly good technology.
Thus, a company performing data collection and sharing it with the government may trigger nerd rage whereas company performing data collection and using the data to help profile ad targets triggers nerd advocacy, i.e., attempts to defend the practice of data collection with "justifications" that have no limit in their level of absurdity
For the surveillance target (cf. the surveilling company), what is significant about data collection is not how the data is used, it is how the data _could_ be used, which is to say, what is significant about data collection is (a) the fact that data is collected at all, not (b) what may or may not happen after the data is collected
Moreover, despite equivocal statements of reassurance in unenforceable "privacy policies" and the like, (b) is often practically impossible for those outside the company and its partners to determine anyway
Hypothetical: Trillion-dollar public company A whose core "business" is data collection and surveillance-supported advertising services takes a nosedive due to unforseen circumstances that affect its ability to sell ad services. Meanwhile, billion-dollar public company B whose core business is data collection and surveillance services for goverments sees their business on the rise. Company A decides to acquire or compete with company B
There is nothing that limits company A's use of the data it has collected for whatever purpose the company and Wall Street deems profitable
As such, the significant issue for the surveillance target is (a) not (b)
Focusing on the fact that company B assists governments whilst company A assists advertisers is a red herring
Once the data is collected, it's too late
In Capitalist Russia, you are on surveillance by bought off government;
In Soviet America, government bought off by surveillence on you!
If you just google ontology you probably end up reading some Heidegger and conclude how deep these guys must be.
Whenever I hear Karp say it I always think of it like he is saying "Database" or "The Database". "What makes Palantir different is Database".
I think so much of Palantir is performative and for sales performances.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
It's been like that for a while; I don't think either side of America's political aisle has the heart to extricate themselves of such a privilege.
They have a lot of "forward deployed engineer" roles which basically means staff with security clearances who get locked in SCIFs and provide on-site technical support.
Which is really why they keep getting hired: when you write into your contract "it stays on premises and technical support can't take logs off site" they agree to it (at a hefty mark up because all of that sucks to do).
FDE is not the only thing they sell.
Software Licenses for their products (Gotham/Foundry/AIP) is why countries (and businesses) deal with them.
They already are.. but.. have you seen the DOW?
Suing your government generates results. Suing a company usually results in it shedding it's shell corporation and taking it's assets where you can't get them.
Selling user data needs to be a federal criminal offense. You need to go to jail for doing this. You need 15+ years in prison for doing this or enabling this in bulk. Let's start talking asset forfeiture next.
A purchase works as follows: I like ice cream. I give you 5$. You give me an ice cream. I enjoy ice cream.
This is: government likes private health data. Hospital gives Palantir 5$, and your health data, repeat for 1 million patients. Palantir gives the health data to government, employs the nephew of the head of the healthcare regulator. Your unemployment gets denied because the doctor said you could work.
Buying means exchanging money for goods and services. This is exchanging money AND goods AND services for nothing. It's highly illegal for private companies, if you try it you'll get sued by the tax office the second they see it and find all company accounts blocked "just in case", but of course if you are the government, directly or indirectly, it's just fine and peachy.
And you might think "this makes no sense". But you'd be advised to check out who appoints the head of the hospital first. It does make sense. (In fact just about the only break on this behavior in most EU countries is that the Vatican still has control over the board of a very surprising number of hospitals. Needless to say, the EU governments really hate that, but there tend to be deals around this. For example, in Belgium the hospitals get 50% less per resident. These sorts of deals were made, but they now mean that if the government wants the Vatican out of the board ... they have to increase spending on that hospital, often by a lot. I'd call them "Vatican hospitals" but one thing government and the Vatican really agree on is that they do not want patients to know the underlying financial arrangements around hospitals, and in many cases it's quite difficult to find who controls a hospital even though it's technically public information)
PBS's _spying on the homefront_ piece from 2007 already described this very kind of omniscient private database.
The government itself isn't constitutionally allowed to build or run anything of the kind, but it can commission friends in the private sector to do one and query it with little to no oversight
I am definitely not uploading my face and ID on Discord or any site
I talked with cousins about it 8 years ago and I got laughed at as a conspiracy nut for saying that our personal data will be used against us if we allow it. People either don’t understand or don’t care because they’ve grown comfortable with it.
Ice cream was sellers when they were selling it, but not the data, data belongs to someone else, who didn't explicitly allow selling it
If you want to actually contribute to this very difficult topic, please refrain from welding disparate labels together in the introductory materials.
Unless the court shrinks down to three seats (or four, if the Circuits cooperate) Alito and Thomas alone can’t dictate the way the Court treats the issue.
I don’t see why anyone is downvoting this, it’s trivial to see the history of votes on 4th amendment cases. Terry v Ohio is a great example.
Legally this should be treated as signing under duress and invalidated.
If someone's life or well-being depends on it, and undergoing services in not a choice, terms and conditions should not be legally allowed to be unilaterally dictated by one party.
There are multiple layers of corruption at work here. (They also cap the number of doctors, and clinics, etc).
>Needless to say, the EU governments really hate that
> if the government wants the Vatican out of the board ... they have to increase spending on that hospital, often by a lot. I'd call them "Vatican hospitals"
> one thing government and the Vatican really agree on is that they do not want patients to know the underlying financial arrangements around hospitals
> in many cases it's quite difficult to find who controls a hospital even though it's technically public information)
I am responding to these somewhat "breathless" statements that imply more than they delineate. My rebuttal is that these words frame a kind of inquiry that is common among conspiracy-attracted commentors.
The subject deserves more rigor and less insinuation IMO.
They went from warrant, to FISA, to just write a request about a name, to more or less describe a vague group of ppl on whom you want the data
You should watch this show. It's available online and pretty informative.
If things weren't bad enough in 2007, things that have changed since then are most notably the cloud act that was created, Ring that started to "backup" your home CCTV in the cloud, then also Ring that enabled so called "Search Parties" and made a superball ad about it
This doesn't seem surprising on its face given that a hospital is, not unreasonably, a heavily regulated entity.
New York City’s public hospital system is paying millions to Palantir, the controversial ICE and military contractor, according to documents obtained by The Intercept.
Since 2023, the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation has paid Palantir nearly $4 million to improve its ability to track down payment for the services provided at its hospitals and medical clinics. Palantir, a data analysis firm that’s now a Wall Street giant thanks to its lucrative work with the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence community, deploys its software to make more efficient the billing of Medicaid and other public benefits. That includes automated scanning of patient health notes to “Increase charges captured from missed opportunities,” contract materials reviewed by The Intercept show.
Palantir’s administrative involvement in the business of healing people stands in contrast to its longtime role helping facilitate warfare, mass deportations, and dragnet surveillance.
In 2016, The Intercept revealed Palantir’s role behind XKEYSCORE, a secret NSA bulk surveillance program revealed by the whistleblower Edward Snowden that allowed the U.S. and its allies to search the unfathomably large volumes of data they collect. The company has also attracted global scrutiny and criticism for its “strategic partnership” with the Israeli military while it was leveling Gaza.
But it’s Palantir’s work with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that is drawing the most protest today. The company provides a variety of services to help the federal government find and deport immigrants. ICE’s Palantir-furnished case management software, for example, “plays a critical role in supporting the daily operations of ICE, ensuring critical mission success,” according to federal contracting documents.
“It’s unacceptable that the same company that is targeting our neighbors for deportation and providing tools to the Israeli military is also providing software for our hospitals,” said Kenny Morris, an organizer with the American Friend Service Committee, which shared the contract documents with The Intercept.
Established by the state legislature, New York City Health and Hospitals is the nation’s biggest municipal health care system, administering over 70 facilities throughout New York City, including Bellevue Hospital, and providing care for over 1 million New Yorkers annually.
New York City Health and Hospitals spokesperson Adam Shrier did not respond to multiple requests to discuss the contract’s details. Palantir spokesperson Drew Messing said the company does not use or share hospital data outside the bounds of its contract.
Palantir’s contract with New York’s public health care system allows the company to work with patients’ protected health information, or PHI. With permission from New York City Health and Hospitals, Palantir can “de-identify PHI and utilize de-identified PHI for purposes other than research,” the contract states. De-identification generally involves the stripping of certain revealing information, such as names, Social Security numbers, and birthdays. Such provisions are common in contracts involving health data.
Activists who oppose Palantir’s involvement in New York point to a large body of research that indicates re-identifying personal data, including in medial contexts, is often trivial.
“Any contract that shares any of New Yorkers’ highly personal data from NYC Health & Hospital’s with Palantir, a key player in the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort, is reckless and puts countless lives at risk,” said Beth Haroules of the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Every New Yorker, without exception, has a right to quality healthcare and city services. New Yorkers must be able to seek healthcare without fear that their intimate medical information, or immigration status, will be delivered to the federal government on a silver platter.”
Palantir has long provided similar services to the U.K. National Health Service, a business relationship that today has an increasing number of detractors. Palantir “has absolutely no place in the NHS, looking after patients’ personal data,” Green Party leader Zack Polanski recently stated in a letter to the U.K. health secretary.
“Palantir is targeting the exact patients that NYCHH is looking to serve.”
Some New York-based groups feel similarly out of distrust for what the firm could do with troves of sensitive personal data.
“Palantir is targeting the exact patients that NYCHH is looking to serve,” said Jonathan Westin of the Brooklyn-based organization Climate Organizing Hub. “They should immediately sever their contract with Palantir and stand with the millions of immigrant New Yorkers that are being targeted by ICE in this moment.”
“The chaos Palantir is inflicting through its technology is not just limited to the kidnapping of our immigrant neighbors and the murder of heroes like our fellow nurse, Alex Pretti,” said Hannah Drummond, an Asheville, North Carolina-based nurse and organizer with National Nurses United, a nursing union. “As a nurse and patient advocate, I don’t want anything having to do with Palantir in my hospital — and neither should any elected leader who claims to represent nurses.”
Palantir’s vocally right-wing CEO Alex Karp has been a frequent critic of New York City’s newly inaugurated democratic socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Health and Hospitals operates as a public benefit corporation, but the mayor can exert considerable influence over the network, for instance through the appointment of its board of directors. Its president, Dr. Mitchell Katz, was renominated by Mamdani, then the mayor-elect, late last year.
The mayor’s office did not respond in time for publication when asked about its stance on the contract.