[bebop]

This is a very accurate take. There is a ton of collection that the government is explicitly not allowed to do. However, the ability to purchase this data is much less regulated. So the work around is, get contractors to do the data collection and then purchase that data.

[glaslong]

The government gets to ignore the will of its people and companies get to be middlemen leeches, it's perfect really.

[colechristensen]

There needs to be a landmark supreme court case that decides that "Search and Seizure" protections include paying corporations for the sought after items.

[b00ty4breakfast]

As long as Alito and Thomas are still alive, this will never happen. I have no doubt that both of them have been the recipients of Peter Thiel's "generosity".

[dragonwriter]

> As long as Alito and Thomas are still alive, this will never happen.

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.

[ch4s3]

It’s not just Alito and Thomas who have been hostile to the 4th amendment, disrespect for the 4th amendment has been a bipartisan affair for 50 years.

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.

[b00ty4breakfast]

because this isn't simply a matter of the constitution, it involves a massive corporation and both of these men have been caught receiving gifts from wealthy "friends" then openly refusing to cooperate when this information came to light.

We are assuming they are the only 2 doing (and as far as I know, none of the other judges have been implicated) but that's like finding two drunk guys passed out on a bench on a college campus and assuming that binge drinking isn't rampant in college.

[ch4s3]

You’re claim is totally unrelated to what I’m saying.

[leftbrainstrain]

I thought Carpenter vs United States was that case, but apparently it wasn't. Terry stops by local officers based on tips from regional Fusion Centers via WhatsApp sounds less unusual every day. Parallel construction has become a long-established technique.

[vharuck]

I would hope this case wouldn't be hard to make. If the government isn't allowed to censor people through third parties (e.g., threaten onerous investigations of a platform unless a specific person is kicked off), the government shouldn't be allowed to conduct unreasonable searches through a third party. Would we be okay if the FBI contracted with private detective firms to conduct warrantless searches?

[thfuran]

I don't want to see any more landmark cases from the current supreme court.

[rayiner]

But what would be the legal basis for such a decision?

[trymas]

Noob question: how private orgs can do surveillance that government can’t?

Could I - as an individual - do such surveillance[1]? Won’t three letter agency knock on my door? Is there a difference between digital surveillance and physical surveillance?

[1] obviously at smaller scale, but imagine same level of creepiness.

[red-iron-pine]

create an LLC and start doing online marketing ("online marketing").

you're a marketing company. you're gathering data for data mining that you will sell to other brokers. lots of small or niche marketing firms out there.

could you do it as one (1) person? might be hard. but you and a few coworkers / employees is perfectly reasonable.

chances are you won't sell directly to the government but to an aggregator, but it's not crazy to think that a small org could potentially sell to the gub'mnt if the data is juicy enough. would have to be very niche stuff though, like maps of labor / union folks, or data tracking Islamic prayer app use, etc.

keep in mind that being a government vendor means you have to jump through certain hoops, and those can be onerous, but again, not theoretically impossible.

[awakeasleep]

Not as an individual but as a business basically yes

[FireBeyond]

At times, depending on the state, the government can even put out RFCs specifically to ask for corporations to bid on providing data that the government can't collect itself.

[spwa4]

Purchase? You're misunderstanding how government consultancy works (this is what EU states use consultancy firms for, and that's what Palantir really is)

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)

[throwaw12]

> Palantir gives the health data to government

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

[dheera]

The problem with today's society is you walk into a hospital bleeding and they make you sign an ultimatum.

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.

[sneak]

Fun fact: it’s illegal to open new hospitals without the permission of the government.

There are multiple layers of corruption at work here. (They also cap the number of doctors, and clinics, etc).

[woodruffw]

> it’s illegal to open new hospitals without the permission of the government.

This doesn't seem surprising on its face given that a hospital is, not unreasonably, a heavily regulated entity.

[sneak]

“on its face” is doing the heavy lifting here. Banking is highly regulated but you don’t need government permission to open new branches. The food supply chain is heavily regulated but you don’t need government permission to start new restaurants.

The supply of medical care, from operating rooms to doctors themselves, is heavily controlled by the state. There are billions, perhaps trillions of dollars that would flow into reducing the cost and increasing the availability of high quality medical care in the US if this were not so.

The demand is through the roof and will continue to rise. But the right to supply is only handed out to cronies.

[mistrial9]

in Western history, culturally, Church was a founding force for the existance of hospitals, full-stop. Repeat with more money and more fallable humans and yes some of what you say is accurate. But, if you start naming the behavior as if it is synonymous with the original founders of Hospitals, you a) create an intellectual dishonesty on your part, b) attract wing-nuts and sociopaths who are looking for a place to join in the chanting, c) obscure important details while the casual readers focus on the glaring finger pointing.

If you want to actually contribute to this very difficult topic, please refrain from welding disparate labels together in the introductory materials.

[spwa4]

Oh I fully realize that the original hospitals were ... let's say better than the gutter by about 10%, and no more than that. Both for the patients and everyone else in the street or even city.

And I do realize the only reason the Vatican management is better is because the Vatican is ALSO corrupt ... but with different masters. The improvement is coming from the conflict between these groups. I do get the impression the Vatican is actually the more moral of the two parties, meaning compared to the government, but not by a huge margin.

[wizzwizz4]

The way I read it, GP is saying that the Vatican's influence reduces such unethical distribution of medical information. Your response reads like a rebuttal, but I'm not sure what you're trying to say, nor rebut.

[mistrial9]

>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

> 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.