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by JumpCrisscross 147 days ago
> 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.
1 comments
jacquesm 146 days ago
The should be separable, but they are not. Data collected privately absorbed by the government is a serious problem, even anonymized data can be de-anonymized if you can put more than one database next to each other. This allows for far more insights than any single database could give you and this is a real danger.

Keep in mind that DOGE made off with a huge stash of data, which combined with other data, such as voter registration data, twitter messages (public and private) and other such datastores could become an extremely efficient tool in messing with elections. The whole system is predicated on that being hard and so we trust the outcome of elections but with todays tools in the hands of the large US companies currently in cahoots with the Trump administration this is childs play.

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JumpCrisscross 146 days ago
> Data collected privately absorbed by the government is a serious problem

The data we’re talking about here are home addresses. HHS (or the IRS) having home addresses isn’t what most Americans would or should consider problematic.

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jacquesm 146 days ago
This isn't about 'Americans' but about the negative set of HHS records compared to the records taken from for instance the IRS. Putting the one next to the other yields the names of individuals that were otherwise not standing out. ICE/Palantir/DHS should not have access to health records. The main reason for that is that people who are in the country may still require healthcare even if they have no other ties the US government. Of course, for some this is the desired outcome, they hope that those people will no longer avail themselves of healthcare at all with all of the predictable outcomes.
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JumpCrisscross 146 days ago
> ICE/Palantir/DHS should not have access to health records

Totally agree. Where I disagree is in saying the government shouldn’t have these records. Like, no. The government knowing where I live is not only fine but also sort of necessary. Just because it has some data doesn’t mean it can abuse it.

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jacquesm 146 days ago
The government is not one entity and it is perfectly possible for one sub-entity to have certain data and for another not to be able to have that same data, in fact from being prohibited to have access (let alone use) that same data. Palantir is used as a way to gain access to data that should otherwise not be accessible and the fact that it isn't the health data itself is immaterial: it was collected in the process of providing healthcare and as such should be protected. That's the legal base, not to enforce immigration law. Unfortunately the USA does not have the equivalent of a GDPR (and even if it did it would have probably been killed by now).
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JumpCrisscross 146 days ago
> government is not one entity and it is perfectly possible for one sub-entity to have certain data and for another not to be able to have that same data

Sure. Again, we agree. What I’m pushing back on is the notion that it was inappropriate for any branch of the government to have these data, or that any of this has anything to do with private dragnets.

They’re addresses. This isn’t a possession problem, it’s one of access.

> the USA does not have the equivalent of a GDPR

You could have super GDPR that bans all private dragnets and HHS would still have home addresses. This is a Privacy Act and HIPAA problem.

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