[petterroea]

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 because someone realized "hey, I bet we can sell this data"

We are really seeing the fears of data collection from the 2000s and 2010s come to fruition as privatized surveillance now. Cambridge analytica should have been the warning shot but it wasn't enough.

[danesparza]

And then governments use this data, but can wash their hands of it saying "we didn't collect it"

[JumpCrisscross]

> then governments use this data, but can wash their hands of it saying "we didn't collect it"

These are CMMS and HHS data. The government literally collected it. On government forms.

This thread is Exhibit A for how the tech-privacy community so often trips itself up. We have abuse of government data at hand. It’s clear. It’s sharp. Nobody denies the government has the data, how they got the data or how they’re using it.

So instead we go into parallel construction and advertising dragnets and a bunch of stuff that isn’t clear cut, isn’t relevant, but is someone’s bogeybear that has to be scratched.

[kurthr]

Yes, retroactively manufactured cause for a warrant to find only the information you want.

Also, don't forget that profit maximization means selling to the highest bidder, which might not be US govt. Certainly, there is means, motive, and opportunity for individuals with access to sell this info to geopolitical adversaries, and it is BY FAR the easiest way for adversaries to acquire it.

It has happened before and it will happen again.

[capitol_]

It means selling to all bidders, since it's information and not a tangible asset.

[carefulfungi]

They've stopped obtaining warrants. ICE claims they can enter homes forcefully without a judge-signed warrant. Judges have released at least one victim seized this way.

[gortok]

Can you provide a news link to this? As I understand it, courts have historically followed the precedent that “you can’t suppress the body”, meaning even if the method of an arrest is illegal, you don’t have to let the person go if their arrest is otherwise valid.

[JohnFen]

https://apnews.com/article/ice-arrests-warrants-minneapolis-...

[gortok]

I wasn’t clear. I’m referring to a news link indicating that judges have released folks due to valid arrest warrants but invalid means of arresting folks.

[carefulfungi]

This statement is true. If you are downvoting because it is incorrect, I'd appreciate an explicit correction. Other posters provided links in this thread.

* https://www.wired.com/story/us-judge-rules-ice-raids-require...

* https://www.minnpost.com/metro/2026/01/judge-orders-release-...

> A federal judge in Minnesota on Thursday ordered the release of a Liberian man four days after heavily armed immigration agents broke into his home using a battering ram and arrested him.

> U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan said in his ruling that the agents violated Garrison Gibson’s Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.

[blurbleblurble]

The ironic thing is that palantir has been operationalizating data gathered by the NSA and reselling as "ai targeting" to another country's military. But yes usually the loophole goes the other way.

Maybe what we're really seeing now though is the feedback loop, the information laundering industrial complex that is the surveillance economy.

[fc417fc802]

Source? My understanding was that palantir didn't take ownership of data themselves but rather came in and set up a new system for the org to use.

[HlessClaudesman]

"Allow us to use your data to improve our service." ...by selling your data to improve our service's profitability.

[api]

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.

[randomNumber7]

Mostly agree, but I think people didn't put up resistance (at least partly) because a certain amount of wealth is needed to life freely.

If you worry about paying rent or buying food you likely don't care if some abstract entity knows to what kind of videos you jerk off.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I was predicting all this

You predicted HHS and CMMS having the address patients give them on HHS and CMMS forms? Like, sure. Good job. I predict the IRS has my address.

> This is a devil's bargain

Medicare (and the IRS) having your home address is a devil’s bargain?

[api]

I'm referring to mobile phones, software that constantly spies on you, location tracking, and mass data fusion without any regard for legal limitations or privacy.

Each individual data point seems normal or innocuous, but when you tie them all together and then leverage the tech panopticon you have an insane amount of detail on every person. There are no meaningful legal safeguards on how this data is used, especially when it's laundered through private contractors not subject to much oversight.

When you couple this with increasingly unlimited powers granted to law enforcement agencies, you get a situation where a system could decide you're a threat and some just comes and beats the shit out of you, takes your property, or shoots you, and you have little recourse.

The people cheering for this seem to think it'll never be used against them.

[JumpCrisscross]

> I'm referring to mobile phones, software that constantly spies on you, location tracking, and mass data fusion without any regard for legal limitations or privacy

None of that is relevant to the article. It’s about HHS data being queried to give ICE probable addresses. What you’re doing is indistinguishable from whataboutism.

I don’t think that’s your intent. But we have an actual abuse of public data at hand here. Going on a tangent about dragnet surveillance is off topic and misleading.

[api]

I don't think the two topics are separable. This is a specific case of the general trend.

[JumpCrisscross]

> don't think the two topics are separable. This is a specific case of the general trend

They are and should be separable. DHS hoovering up government data is orthogonal to private data collection. They could become related. But they aren’t, and muddling a hypothetical problem with a clear, present and actual one is a good way to normalize the latter.

[pavlov]

The EU has mostly done a good job of reining in private data collection. But unfortunately even tech-savvy people often don't see the big picture and just complain about cookie banners and other instances of malicious compliance by the companies who now can't collect and sell your data without significant financial risk.

[rob74]

...plus Trump is now threatening the EU with tarrifs unless they water down their data protection rules.

[pavlov]

These days having the American president threaten you with random tariffs is the clearest indicator you’re doing something right.

[mothballed]

The article says the data was 'surveilled' by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and HHS in the performance of Medicare/Medicaid claims, with that surveillance fed to Palentir.

Palentir has certainly assisted, but the origin of the data collection here was public and then unleashed by the state to private entity.

[lcnPylGDnU4H9OF]

> Palentir has certainly assisted, but the origin of the data collection here was public

Yes, it's surely public information and therefore ought to be subject to the same controls as any other personal health information. It seems moot that it was given to a private company; the issue just shifts to being that the private company (apparently) does not comply with data protection laws, e.g. HIPAA.

[pc86]

PHI collected by private entities that receive no state or federal funding whatsoever is still PHI and has the same PHI protections as data collected by the government directly. "Public information" doesn't play any role here.

[Telemakhos]

> The article says the data was 'surveilled' by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services and HHS in the performance of Medicare/Medicaid claims

Does this imply that undocumented aliens subject to deportation have been making claims on Medicare/Medicaid monies?

[JumpCrisscross]

> Does this imply that undocumented aliens subject to deportation have been making claims on Medicare/Medicaid monies?

No. HHS is broader than CMMS.

Like, if these data were being used to audit the CMMS roles for illegal immigrants, that would be something. That’s not what DHS is doing because I suspect they don’t want to have to produce a report that says this was a made-up bit of electioneering.

[naravara]

The acting as if there is a clearly demarcated distinction between the “public” and “private” sectors seems mostly like a 20th or 19th century atavism. The only substantive difference today seems to be that the former actor is more restrained by political input (in functioning democracies at least) and the latter is less so. But in terms of who has authority over how people live their lives and the level of totalizing control over communication and commerce it’s more like overlapping and competing fiefdoms than the “state = coercive power” and “private sector = market power” dichotomy people often try to imply.

[buellerbueller]

Snowden should have been the warning shot.

[elric]

> We are really seeing the fears of data collection from the 2000s and 2010s come to fruition as privatized surveillance now. Cambridge analytica should have been the warning shot but it wasn't enough.

I remember protesting against data retention laws in the early 2000s. People thought we were nuts for using historical examples about the Nazis abusing all kinds of records to hunt down Jews. History was never going to repeat itself that way.

Until it did.

[ahzhzvH]

> Nazis abusing all kinds of records to hunt down Jews. History was never going to repeat itself that way

Kinda ironic but I think you’ve got the current situation a little backwards. Karp (who is Jewish) has boasted about Palantir being used to hunt down the “far right”: https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/28/palantir_boss_fii_spe...

I think it’s very important to focus on how data collection of this nature is bad, not that “because Nazis did it” it’s bad. The latter is exactly what Karp wants, and he can turn around and say he’s actually preventing Nazis. Similar to how the Holocaust narrative is used to justify the Palestinian genocide.

[muwtyhg]

It's not bad because the Nazis did it. It's bad because it can be abused, and we can point to a historical example in the Nazis. If the Nazis had not done it, it would not be used as an example, but it would still be a negative possible outcome

[rob74]

Ok, so Palantir was used to prevent terror attacks in Europe, which would have presumably led to (even more) popularity of the far right. Palantir is also being used by the current far-right US administration (who, unlike the Nazis, like Jews and are even in part Jewish, but hate immigrants, Muslims, LGBTQ people, liberals etc. etc.) to hunt down immigrants based on their medical data. I fail to see how these two are connected, except for the same tool being used in both cases? This is actually one of the fears that data protection advocates had all along: first, these tools will be used to catch terrorists, then mostly harmless illegal immigrants, and then anyone else the regime doesn't like.

[buellerbueller]

>Palantir was used to prevent terror attacks in Europe

...according to an unsubstantiated claim by the CEO of Palantir while on a PR tour.

[ImPostingOnHN]

> I think it’s very important to focus on how data collection of this nature is bad, not that “because Nazis did it” it’s bad.

It's bad for both reasons. Palantir is the IBM of our time, using scaled data engineering to handle the tracking and incarceration of ethnic minorities, who are quickly shipped off for worse persecution, including torture, at government-run camps, all without any due process.

> he can turn around and say he’s actually preventing Nazis

Anyone can say anything absurd, counterfactual, and unconvincing, regardless of circumstances. For us to consider it true, we'd need some evidence that it is at least more true than the opposite.

> Say thank you," Karp added.

Thanks for the link. Wow, I didn't realize that he was such an insufferable, sociopathic, abusive douchebag as a person. Like a wife-beater who insists his victim thank him for it.

[buellerbueller]

You are correct, but the way you word your comment makes it seem like you are an apologist for Karp. I can't tell if that's why you are being downvoted, or the HN Fascist brigade.

These kinds of mass surveillance data ops should be illegal, regardless of who is doing it.

[JumpCrisscross]

> People thought we were nuts for using historical examples about the Nazis abusing all kinds of records to hunt down Jews

What data-retention issues do you have with HHS having patients’ home addresses?

[sbarre]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

[JumpCrisscross]

Sure. I’m calling out data-retention discussions as entirely orthogonal to HHS data being used for immigration enforcement.

There isn’t a data-retention issue with HHS having home records, there is an abuse issue with DHS giving it to Palantir to VLOOKUP addresses out of.

[elric]

It certainly wasn't intended as a straw man argument. I was speaking to the broader issue that any data that's gathered anywhere can be used against people. Even if it seems like there are good reasons to store it.

I think you may have missed that I was replying specifically to this part of a parent comment and agreeting with it:

> We are really seeing the fears of data collection from the 2000s and 2010s come to fruition

[imchillyb]

Cambridge Analytica was the blueprint, unfortunately, and not a deterrent. Much like movies ands television shows attempted to warn viewers of the dangers of robotic and automated militaries.

The EU said ‘hold my mead,’ and built the literal Skynet from the terminator movies. Has the same damn job too, coordinate, communicate, control.

Humanity doesn’t learn from its past because it is too focused on its future. Unfortunately for us, war… war never changes.

[londons_explore]

> 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.

[i80and]

I really haven't found this to be true at all; corporations are just as dysfunctional or worse.

It's more that there's fewer legal protections, so private surveillance is a great way for governments to launder the illegal things they want to do.

[phatfish]

The dysfunction on the corporate side just gets swept under the rug, only in extreme cases does it get brought to the attention of the public.

Governments have to operate in a more open manner (at least those with a reasonable amount of democratic accountability do). So the dysfunction is made public more often, and likely used over decades for political point-scoring.

It's similar to open source development. Everyone moans that open source projects are full of infighting slowing down development compared to closed projects.

Then, as soon as someone comes along and gets shit done like with systemd or the Linux kernel it's the opposite complaint. The doer is now a wannabe dictator ordering everyone about.

[windexh8er]

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.

[mc32]

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.

[CPLX]

The government restructures endlessly what are you talking about.

DHS was founded in 2002, TSA was founded in 2001. CFPB in 2010, Space Force in 2019.

Even agencies that have been around “forever” aren’t that old. The EPA was founded in 1970, and OSHA was founded in 1971.

[mc32]

What I'm talking about is orgs like the CDC, FCC, DMV, IRS, etc. They grow more than they re-org and cut the workforce, moreover, they seldom redefine positions to take on more responsibility at the staff level. Obviously they don't have the same outsourcing threat due to some limitations --which is good, but it's also true that public companies can outsource more readily. Goverment workers rarely get fired for under-performance outside of budget-induced cuts.

[rwmj]

I've worked at both disfunctional & functional large companies, a very disfunctional start up, and a very well run public sector research organization. The deciding factor in each case was the quality of management.

[QuadmasterXLII]

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 from both sides.

[sgarland]

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.

[TFYS]

> A well behaved market is much more efficient than a government

I wouldn't be so sure about this. A lot of what markets do is unnecessary overhead needed to make markets work. Maintaining enough competition means having to pay the costs of having multiple organizations doing the same thing. Each must have their own strategy, HR, marketing, etc. A lot of work is unnecessarily repeated. A lot of behavior that is forced by competition, like advertising / patent and copyright systems / hiding research instead of sharing it is very wasteful. Profits going to the owners is also an overhead cost that might not be needed in other types of economic arrangements. All these costs need to be paid at every level of the production chain.

We should also consider the goals of each type of organization. The goal of a business operating in a market is to maximize profit for the owners of the business. It's efficient at that. The goals of a government can be much more varied. They can't really be easily compared.

[baq]

Corporations are not disallowed to have a single master database. Government databases are at least in some cases firewalled off each other by law.

[arscan]

Structurally it’s about incentives not competency.

[buellerbueller]

The private sector is good at being a wealth extraction machine, that's all. The other things it does are merely incidental to that. As Cory Doctorow has pointed out, the private sector is now in its enshittification phase. I'd point out that this is likely because the marginal wealth extraction of improving things is lower than the marginal wealth extraction of enshittfying things: making mature products better is harder than making mature products worse. Capitalism rewards no morality; it rewards wealth extraction.

The government, however, has historically been constrained by a constitution that had been updated and interpreted according to the popular sentiment of the day.

[rudhdb773b]

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

[torben-friis]

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.

[rudhdb773b]

> Why would non state actors be any less scary?

Non-state actors can't easily use violence to throw me in jail.

[Larrikin]

TikTok is blocking upload of ICE videos and Facebook is blocking posts with information about the ICE agents. Amazon just paid millions of dollars to put out a movie nobody wants about Donalds wife. Every major tech company paid millions of dollars for Donalds library at the beginning of all this for "the library"

The surveillance non state actors are already doing anything this administration wants.

[pc86]

This isn't a counterpoint. The philosophical reason the state doing something is worse than a private company doing the exact same thing is that the state can imprison, bankrupt, and execute you. TikTok can't.

The argument isn't that it's good these companies are doing this - it's not. The argument is that it would be even worse if the state was doing it directly. There are more avenues to stop, nullify, and avoid this when it's a private enterprise than when it's the state.

[Larrikin]

You're arguing a point that may have been relevant in Donald's first term. All of the companies mentioned are positioning themselves to be state sanctioned in a way that makes them effectively parts of the government. If we don't get a "third" term then your argument becomes relevant again and I agree.

[mmcwilliams]

You're under the belief that private actors can't influence state actors to use violence on their behalf, completely isolating them from responsibility? If a private business calls the police on a suspected trespasser and the police shoot that person, is the business held liable? Ever? Seems like they have the better end of the bargain than the state.

[cucumber3732842]

>and the police shoot that person, is the business held liable? Ever? Seems like they have the better end of the bargain than the state.

Are you insane? When if ever are the agents of the state held responsible. If anything the civil suit against the business is more likely to go somewhere.

The fact that the state may "pay out" does not mean it has any serious incentive not to shoot the person dead so long as such payouts don't become too regular.

I owe Comcast $200, according to them. I've "owed" it for years. Can you imagine if I owed any government agency the same sum for the same time. I'd be arrested and thrown in jail for non-payment and/or some sort of quasi-contempt charge if I refused.

[mmcwilliams]

I deal regularly with landlords that owe government agencies hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for years or even decades. None of them are in jail or even at risk of it.

[torben-friis]

>Non-state actors can't easily use violence to throw me in jail.

Let me rephrase: why wouldn’t state actors be scary?

The state might have a monopoly on legal physical violence, but I think it is naive to think private interests can’t harm you just as much, with or without state connections. See my previous examples.

[sgarland]

They seem to be able to induce whistleblowers to off themselves at a shocking rate, though.

[andruby]

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

[pc86]

I wasn't aware Blackwater operates jails.

[pc86]

There is a reason that many of the rights enumerated in the Constitution, at some level, restrict the government (originally just the federal government, not even the states) and not private enterprises.

The go-to example is recording. Watch any "First Amendment auditor" video on YouTube (prepare yourself, most of them are a struggle to watch). I can walk into any government building, and as long as I'm in a publicly accessible area, I can record almost whatever and whoever I want. This includes otherwise private property that the government is leasing. I essentially cannot be kicked out unless I cause a disturbance as long as the location is open for public business. This is true for DMVs, county administrative buildings, police offices, jails, any government service with a public area and public hours.

On the flip side, if Target wants to ban recording in their stores, not only can they do so with zero risk of litigation, but if you get trespassed you can be fined or go to jail for a violation. The penalties get even harsher for the same trespassing crime if it's a private residence and not a business.

I'm sure we can come up with counterexamples, and maybe surveillance is the best one, but philosophically it's pretty easy to see why it's worse for the government to do a Bad Thing than for any individual or private enterprise to do the exact same Bad Thing.

Edit: I'd love to hear a justification as to why this is being downvoted because nothing in the content warrants that.

[torben-friis]

>but philosophically it's pretty easy to see why it's worse for the government to do a Bad Thing than for any individual or private enterprise to do the exact same Bad Thing.

This was not the claim though, the claim is that it’s not scary to be surveilled until that information reaches state actors.

States acting against citizens can be worse in a moral/political sense, but a victim is not more or less harmed depending on the aggressor.

(I didn’t downvote, if it matters, I just saw the message).