Do You Trust The Administration To Protect Your Privacy When They’re Collecting Data On You?
[guest post by Dana]
Eh, can’t let those pesky civil liberties get in the way of government spying on its citizens (and maybe harassing them too) personal data collecting:
The White House has contracted Palantir, a Colorado-based analytics company co-founded by Trump supporter Peter Thiel, to assist in compiling a database of personal information on American citizens, according to unnamed government officials and Palantir employees who spoke with The New York Times. The purported deal follows project talks Palantir had with the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Department of Education.
. . .
Palantir secured more than $113 million in federal contracts since Trump took office, including a recent $795 million agreement with the Department of Defense, according to The New Republic. Its data analytics platform, Foundry, has already been deployed at the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Health and Human Services, potentially enabling cross-agency information sharing.
According to one critic, the plan will combine data never before consolidated. That would include: “Tax filings, Student debt, Social Security, Bank accounts, Medical claims, and Immigration status.”
The report goes on to point out how some MAGA pundits are more than a little upset about this “betrayal” by Trump: Was he always like this? Why, yes, he’s always been like this. Why didn’t we see it before? Because you were blinded by your sycophancy and veneration of Trump. Some loyalists feel that the Palantir plan is a bridge too far. Apparently though, Trump’s corrupt acts and lawbreaking aren’t a problem.
The ACLU weighed in:
“Shady, centralized dossiers on citizens are foundational for attacking civil rights and civil liberties—but paper files have long been replaced by a mishmash of electronic forms, biometrics, and data bought off data brokers,” Cody Venzke, senior policy counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Newsweek on Monday. “AI platforms like those built by Palantir are the key to pulling together the many data points the government has on each of us—your political donations, governmental benefits, movements, and perhaps firearm records, could someday be a single click away for dozens of governmental agencies.”
—Dana
Hello.
Dana (7cd60c) — 6/4/2025 @ 7:51 pmWhat does trust have to do with it?
asset (1fd340) — 6/4/2025 @ 8:13 pmYah… totally not a fan of this.
whembly (1edd17) — 6/4/2025 @ 8:24 pmAnyone who supports our president, Mr. Donald J. Trump, has nothing to fear.
We just need to keep an eye on anyone who doesn’t.
Dave (b1d5bc) — 6/4/2025 @ 8:57 pmGenerally speaking, I don’t trust the government with any info they collect on me, but I especially don’t trust the Trump administration.
Nic (120c94) — 6/4/2025 @ 9:31 pmThe end goals align for both elongated muskrat and co plus the political commissars that the MAGABUND has installed.
The tech bros want all the data in the universe to train their AIs, they feel that is the solution to the current limits of the capabilities of AI are…not AI…at all. The definition of AI has just been so widened that anything that is remotely machine learning is “AI”. Kind of like “cloud” used to have a specific meaning, and everyone had to market their solution as a cloud solution, regardless of what that meant, now it means nothing. If they think more data is better, then who has the data that they haven’t had access too? If it was published on the internet, OpenAI, Grok, Google, etc, has spidered it, regardless of what the TOS was for the original host, the federal government.
For the commissars, the amount of data that you can combine (regardless of the illegality of combining some of the data) across various agencies will give them what they think of as a modern total information awareness tool . That was supposed to have a privacy component, and a data obfuscation policy before it went over to the NSA, most of the original project goals and research findings were preserved, but the privacy protection mechanics were abandoned.
I know to a metaphysical certitude that any data that could be mined, is being mined today, the biggest problem with getting to a TIA system isn’t the willingness to build the mass surveillance solution, it’s the legacy data architecture for many agencies, they are so antique that many are black boxes and it’s kinda hard when most of the knowledgeable designers are dead. You can make a bundle today if you are still a good Cobol person, heck, it was updated with new capabilities in COBOL 2023, never found a single customer that wants to modernize…to COBOL, when you have literally any other option? But, if these guys can throw enough money at it, you could synthesize all private gov data, plus financial data, plus social media, plus…then you not only know what the person is/has done, but you can predict with high certainty what the person will do. If you can solve the compute limitation, plus the energy, storage, etc, then that’s a pretty powerful thing.
These bozos would blow through any norms or laws that would get in their way, but in the medium term, next 10 years probably, even the gov would have modernized to an 2010 version of an ESB. The other problem with these idjuts is that experience has taught human people things like its better to plan first, then do a thing, but obviously that is “elite” thinking. Move fast and break things works great for a startup, for 50 year old apps that run things like the DOD, that isn’t (shouldn’t) a great idea. Replacing a thing that exists, means the current thing is already doing the thing, to mix metaphors, you have to change the tire on a moving car. For tech bros, don’t include them with the actual technical brothers, they’ve never had to actually manage a real business, especially the day to day. They give geeks of all stripes a bad name.
Colonel Klink (ret) (9dbb75) — 6/5/2025 @ 12:17 amI never trust the government to have access to my personal data, but if I have to choose, I infinitely prefer the Republicans generally and Trump specifically over any democratic regime.
David Longfellow (685c93) — 6/5/2025 @ 4:47 amAs Maxine Waters famously said, President Obama has put together a database that “…will have information about everything on every individual in ways that it’s never been done before.”
https://blog.independent.org/2013/06/11/president-Obamas-database-information-on-everyone/
All this totally exists already and if you think it didn’t you’re way behind the times.
Ingot (ebe4a5) — 6/5/2025 @ 6:47 amAt least this way the Republicans might get to use it too.
The IRS says hello.
They have it already.
NJRob (eb56c3) — 6/5/2025 @ 7:13 amLet’s all pretend the government doesn’t already have this and more LOL
lloyd (f6d841) — 6/5/2025 @ 7:31 amIn a world that contains Facebook, the expectation of privacy seems odd. While I don’t trust Trump at all, I also don’t trust the rest of those vipers in D.C.
Kevin M (e6af63) — 6/5/2025 @ 7:52 amThe issue isn’t that the gov has it. Many of the agencies need to have their silo of info, and there are currently laws in place that prohibit the TIA implementation.
As always, as long as dear leader says he wants it, planning and legality are only mildly important to the Bund.
Colonel Klink (ret) (9dbb75) — 6/5/2025 @ 11:56 amI never trust the government to have access to my personal data, but if I have to choose, I infinitely prefer the Republicans generally and Trump specifically over any democratic regime.
You don’t get that choice. Once they have it, so do the next guys.
Kevin M (a9545f) — 6/5/2025 @ 1:54 pmDidn’t Edwin Snowden address this?
Joe (584b3d) — 6/5/2025 @ 2:22 pmThis is all being done in the cause of immigration enforcement.
Any government powerful enough to enforce an immigration law is powerful enough to deprive people of their liberties.
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 6/5/2025 @ 3:20 pmIt’s not about immigration, it’s about everything.
Colonel Klink (ret) (9dbb75) — 6/5/2025 @ 4:02 pmWhat other law does the Administration want to use this information to enforce?
Income taxes? Qualifications for government benefits?
Sammy Finkelman (e4ef09) — 6/5/2025 @ 4:25 pm