11 ms·

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 m

by bebop 7mo ago

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.

trymas 7mo ago
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.
- awakeasleep 7mo ago
  Not as an individual but as a business basically yes
- red-iron-pine 7mo ago
  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.
FireBeyond 7mo ago
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.
colechristensen 7mo ago
There needs to be a landmark supreme court case that decides that "Search and Seizure" protections include paying corporations for the sought after items.
- rayiner 7mo ago
  But what would be the legal basis for such a decision?
- b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago
  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".
  - ch4s3 7mo ago
    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 7mo ago
      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 7mo ago
        You’re claim is totally unrelated to what I’m saying.
  - 7mo ago
spwa4 7mo ago
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 7mo ago
  > 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 7mo ago
    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.
glaslong 7mo ago
The government gets to ignore the will of its people and companies get to be middlemen leeches, it's perfect really.
- themafia 7mo ago
  [flagged]
  - copperx 7mo ago
    Over 50k USD dollars!

by bebop 7mo ago

trymas 7mo ago

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.

awakeasleep 7mo ago
Not as an individual but as a business basically yes
red-iron-pine 7mo ago
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.

FireBeyond 7mo ago

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.

colechristensen 7mo ago

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

rayiner 7mo ago
But what would be the legal basis for such a decision?
b00ty4breakfast 7mo ago
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".
- ch4s3 7mo ago
  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 7mo ago
    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 7mo ago
      You’re claim is totally unrelated to what I’m saying.
- 7mo ago

spwa4 7mo ago

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 7mo ago
> 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 7mo ago
  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.

glaslong 7mo ago

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

themafia 7mo ago
[flagged]
- copperx 7mo ago
  Over 50k USD dollars!