[nozzlegear]

Beyond just the concept of thought crime, one of the themes in Orwell's 1984 was that the government could arbitrarily decide that a thing you've done could be punished at any time. You didn't need to break a law to be punished by Big Brother, you just had to be a thorn in its side. In our world, the government/Palantir/ICE collecting the identities of people who criticize them is the kind of infrastructure that makes that arbitrary punishment from 1984 possible.

[convolvatron]

its important to point out that its not about being a thorn in the government's side. you just have to not submit fully. in fact, even if everyone did submit completely, a fair number of people would still need to be rounded up and tortured just to keep the fear alive.