The classic example here is what happens when someone is being stalked by an abusive ex-partner who works in law enforcement and has access to those databases.
This ICE stuff is that scaled up to a multi-billion dollar federal agency with, apparently, no accountability for following the law at all.
Google/Alphabet knows quite a lot about your sentiments, what information you've seen, your relationships, who can get to you, who you can get to, your hopes and fears, your economic situation, your health conditions, assorted kompromat, your movements, etc.
Schmidt is actually from OG Internet circles where many people were aware of privacy issues, and who were vigilant against incursions.
But perhaps he had a different philosophical position. Or perhaps it was his job to downplay the risks. Or perhaps he was going to have enough money and power that he wasn't personally threatened by private info that would threaten the less-wealthy.
We might learn this year, how well Google/Alphabet protects this treasure trove of surveillance state data, when that matters most.
[0] https://about.fb.com/news/h/comments-on-research-and-ad-targ...
Stop pretending like Schmidt was or is "one of the good guys." They all knew from day one what the score was.
> But perhaps he had a different philosophical position. Or perhaps it was his job to downplay the risks
I feel that as the consumer surveillance industry took off, everyone from those OG Internet circles was presented with a choice - stick with the individualist hacker spirit, or turncoat and build systems of corporate control. The people who chose power ended up incredibly rich, while the people who chose freedom got to watch the world burn while saying I told you so.
(There were also a lot of fence sitters in the middle who chose power but assuaged their own egos with slogans like "Don't be evil" and whatnot)
The thing about "Don't Be Evil" at the time, is that (my impression was) everyone thought they knew what that meant, because it was a popular sentiment.
The OG Internet people I'm talking about aren't only the Levy-style hackers, with strong individualist bents, but there was also a lot of collectivism.
And the individualists and collectivists mostly cooperated, or at least coexisted.
And all were pretty universally united in their skepticism of MBAs (halfwits who only care about near-term money and personal incentives), Wall Street bros (evil, coming off of '80s greed-is-good pillaging), and politicians (in the old "their lips are moving" way, not like the modern threats).
Of course it wasn't just the OG people choosing. That period of choice coincided with an influx of people who previously would've gone to Wall Street, as well as a ton of non-ruthless people who would just adapt to what culture they were shown. The money then determined the culture.
Just invoking Richard Stallman will prove it because the smear campaign on him was so thorough.
Linus seems to be the only one that made it out.
Eric had also once said in a CNBC interview "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place."
How about Musk? He felt he had a right to hoover up data about people from every government agency, but throws a massive temper-tantrum when people publish where his private jet is flying using publicly available data.
How about Mark Zuckerberg? So private he buys up all the properties around him and has his private goon squad stopping people on public property who live in the neighborhood, haranguing them just for walking past or near the property.
These people are all supremely hypocritical when it comes to privacy.
What is stopping this lowlife from going after his ex-wife, or one of those cops by using databases that they have access to? We know from journalists going through the process that there's no curation or training involved to join ICE specifically.
But this goes beyond them. We know that cops can be corrupt to, we know politicians can be corrupt to, what is stopping any of these people from using private data to not only go after their spouses, but also business rivals, and people who slight them?
Same as with all other crime, we hope it's the law that stops him. We hope that more policemen want to be good men than bad.
The illusion of safety is based on the honor system. Society doesn't work without that.
It only works for people the state expects significant amounts of money from (taxes don’t count)
Don’t expect a government to help you unless you’re one of its larger donors
Apparently any time they do anything horrifying, they will just declare that victim as a "terrorist" or something, and their sycophantic supporters will happily agree.
What I find amusing is that when the Snowden leaks happened and I would discuss it, when I said something like "let's pretend for a moment that we can't trust every single person in the government" I would usually get an agreeable laugh.
But using these same arguments with ICE + Palantir, these same people will say something like "ICE IS ONLY DEPORTING THE CRIMINALS YOU JUST WANT OPEN BORDERS!!!". People's hypocrisy knows no bounds.
Another opinion that I’m sure will get me downvoted is that this is the primary reason I support gun ownership by private citizens. I think having a chance at stopping mass government slaughter like in Iran and Syria is overall better than the downside.
Bottom line is that human nature has not changed. Some of us westerners take comfortable lives for granted because we’ve been lucky.
That won't stop the mass government slaughter, if anything it will accelerate it.
Which I bet our luck has run out. This year and the next 5 or 10 years from now, its going to be really bad.
I don't even trust local state governments at this point.. It all seems like a big ploy on the people to keep the grift going.
I suppose that there could be an extremely elaborate LLM to control humanoid robots to try and fool me, but I do not believe that's the case.
You don't know today on which side of legality you will be in 10 years, even if your intentions are harmless.
The people on the front lines - including the ICE thugs - are entirely disposable. They people using them have zero interest in their welfare or how this works out for them in the long term. (Spoilers - not well.)
Of course they don't understand this. But this is absolutely standard for authoritarian fascism - groom and grudge farm the petty criminals and deviants, recruit them as regime enforcers with promises of money and freedom from consequences, set them loose, profit.
with the kind of images that are out in the open for everybody with their own eyes to see, if that does not move you in your heart of hearts, where no government or anyone else can touch you, there is something rotten in that person.
Governments and authority figures can show you a lot of things but the amount of people who not just accept it, but gleefully celebrate the most vulnerable people in society beaten by government thugs, there is no excuse. People can show you false images, false numbers but they can't make you feel proud for the strong abusing the weak. It's particularly appalling if you see the amount of them who call themselves Christians.
These people think Charlie Kirk was on the frontlines of personal freedom, but look the other way when a man gets tackled and shot in broad daylight for trying to help a woman who's just been maced.
It's horrible, and inexcusable, but still crucial to understand through a framework that accounts for the effects of multi-generational propaganda peddled by the ultra-rich who have been shaping our thoughts and behaviors through advertisement and capital for hundreds of years.
That people ingest environmental hazards and carciogens would be viewed as a failure of da masses to abstractly consider the pitfalls of understanding the problems inherent to the logistics of foodstuffs in the context of big corporations.
The funny (sad) thing is all the hot takes about the UK or Europe being a "police state" because porn is being blocked for kids, or persistent abuse on social media actually has repercussion (as it does in the real world already).
Meanwhile ICE are murdering US citizens in the streets. Turns out American "free speech" doesn't prevent an authoritarian regime taking hold.
To clarify, i do believe in free speech. But until you are bundled into a black car for holding up poster with a political statement (like in Russia or China), you have free speech. Attempting to stop abuse on social media is not the same. The closest we have to preventing free speech in the UK is the Israel/Gaza "issue".
I do like "engineering solutions" (ex: not storing too much data), but I start to think it is important to make more effort on more broad social, legal and political aspects.
That's its ostensible, purported, show purpose.
The real purpose is to break end to end encryption to increase government surveillance and power. "But think of the children" or "be afraid of the terrorists" are just the excuses those in power rotate through to to achieve their true desired ends.
I am lucky to get to vote for people that don't believe in a religious ethno-state.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/desi...
Imagine if they used your past post history against you.
Yes, arrests for social media activity occur in the UK under laws like the Communications Act 2003 and Malicious Communications Act 1988, targeting offenses such as sending offensive/menacing messages, false communications, hate speech, or child grooming, with thousands arrested annually, though charges and convictions vary, and new laws like the Online Safety Act 2023 add further regulatory scope.
Here’s one, you can easily find more.
The UK arrests 12,000 people per year for social media posts ( https://freedomhouse.org/country/united-kingdom/freedom-net/... ), for a broad range of vague reasons including causing offense. That's far more than much larger totalitarian nations like Russia and China.
The US arrests folks for direct online threats of violence - a much higher bar.
[1] https://apnews.com/article/charlie-kirk-meme-tennessee-arres...
But in general in the US "offending" others is not a legal basis for arrest, as much as some in power would like it to be.
No they do not. Quote, from your own link:
> According to an April 2025 freedom of information report filed by The Times, over 12,000 people were arrested, including for social media posts, in 2023 under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988.
Emphasis mine. "Including". Not exclusively, not only, including.
Now what does the law being cited actually say[1]?
> It is an offence under these sections to send messages of a “grossly offensive” or “indecent, obscene or menacing” character or persistently use a public electronic communications network to cause “annoyance, inconvenience or needless anxiety”.
With additional clarification[2]:
> A spokeswoman for Leicestershire police said crimes under Section 127 and Section 1 include “any form of communication” such as phone calls, letters, emails and hoax calls to emergency services.
> “They may also be serious domestic abuse-related crimes. Our staff must assess all of the information to determine if the threshold to record a crime has been met.
So you're deliberately spreading misinformation here, as was the original article by the Times and as is everyone else who keeps quoting this figure. Because by means of lying by omission they want to imply one very specific thing: "you will be arrested for criticizing the government on social media". But the actual crime statistic is about a much more common, much broader category of crime - namely: harassment. That 12,000 a year figure includes targeted harassment by almost any carriage medium, as well as crimes like "prank" calling emergency services. It means it includes death threats, stalking, domestic abuse and just about every other type of non-physical abuse or intimidation.
Of course you could've also figured out this is bullshit with a very simple litmus test: 12,000 people a year wouldn't be hard to find if the UK was mass-jailing people on public social media. But it's not what's happening.
The text of the law as well, for anyone interested: https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2003/21/section/127
[1] https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/wales-englan...
[2] https://archive.md/bdEqK#selection-3009.0-3009.194:~:text=A%....
https://www.congress.gov/119/meeting/house/118565/documents/...
https://www.forbes.com/sites/steveforbes/2025/09/09/people-a...
https://winslowlawyers.com/uk-man-arrested-for-malicious-com...
>ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation and much more.
In this case you will very likely be given an option to leave or change (not possible for ethniticity).
Wanting to be able to break the law in the future is not a just motivation.
Laws cannot an action a crime after it was committed. However,
- Civil rules can and do impact things retroactively
- Laws may not make something illegal retroactively, but the interpretation of a law can suddenly change; which works out the same thing.
- The thing you're doing could suddenly become illegal with on way for you to avoid doing it (such as people being here legally and suddenly the laws for what is legally changes). This isn't retroactive, but it might as well be.
It is _entirely_ possible for someone to act in a way that is acceptable today but is illegal, or incurs huge civil penalties, tomorrow.
I would not be surprised if SCOTUS disagrees at some point.
I mean, I've read stupid takes on this website but this really takes the cake
despots don't care about the law
>despots don't care about the law
This is such a low probability scenario that I don't think it's worth the average person to worry about.
how is it a low probability scenario?
it's happened before, in living memory (there are still people alive that survived the holocaust)
and you're seeing the early stages of despotic rule literally today in Minnesota
>the early stages of despotic rule literally today in Minnesota
This type of thinking is what is leading to the destruction of order there.
In my mind everyone would be better off if current incarnation of ICE was disbanded so these clashes didn't have to happen in the first place. You've completely switched cause and effect - ICE behavior is the CAUSE of protests, not the effect!
the argument isn't that states can't create ex-post facto laws (even though they can, see: any country with parliamentary sovereignty)
it's that what the law says doesn't matter when the executive no is longer bound by the rule of law
see: the United States under the Trump regime
the fact that some previous legislature has passed a law saying that "using the gay/jewish/disabled/... database for bad things is illegal" is of no consequence when the state already has the database and has no interest in upholding the rule of law
>"using the gay/jewish/disabled/... database for bad things is illegal"
If it is legal than I want to be able to use such a database as it makes law enforcement more efficient. It gets rid of inefficiency in the government. Wanting such inefficiency is wanting to allow for unlawful behavior. It's the whole using privacy as an excuse to hide from the government.
Here is someone out for a walk, ICE demanding ID, that she answer questions. She says she's a US citizen ... they keep asking her questions and one of the ICE people seem to be using a phone to scan her face:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Minneapolis/comments/1qbawlr/minneap...
What she says, the truth, none of it would matter if his phone said to bring her in. And after the fact? The folks supporting ICE have made it clear they've no problem with lying in the face of the obvious.
Which has literally happened already for anyone who thinks “there’s controls in place for that sort of thing”. That’s with (generally) good faith actors in power. What do you think can and will happen when people who think democracy and the constitution are unnecessary end up in control…
Some retorts for people swayed by that argument:
"Can we put a camera in your bathroom?"
"Let's send your mom all your text messages."
"Ain't nothin' in my pockets, but I'd rather you didn't check."
"Shall we live-stream your next doctor's appointment?"
"May I watch you enter your PIN at the ATM?"
"How about you post your credit card number on reddit?"
"Care to read your high-school diary on open mic night?"
People are unafraid of the government knowing certain things because they believe it will not have any real repercussions for them. The NSA knowing your search history is no big deal (as long as you're not looking for anything illegal), but your church knowing your search history would absolutely be a big deal.
Until someone at or above the TSA decides they don't like you. And then they use your search history to blackmail you. Because lots of people search for things that wouldn't be comfortable being public. Or search for things that could easily be taken out of context. Especially when that out of context makes it seem like they might be planning something illegal
Heck, there's lots of times where people mention a term / name for something on the internet; and, even though that thing is benign, the _name/term_ for it is not. It's common for people to note that they're not going to search for that term to learn more about it, because it will look bad or the results will include things they don't want to see.
It's good to know in advance who they are.
A very famous quote: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."
Many people - particularly white people, but let's not ignore that a bunch of Black and Latino folks are/have been Trump supporters - believe that they are part of the in-group. And inevitably, they find out that the government doesn't care, as evidenced by ICE and their infamous quota of 3000 arrests a day... which has hit a ton of these people, memefied as "leopards ate my face".
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/29/trump-ice-ar...
Do any of these actually prompt someone to reconsider their position? They strike me as more of argument through being annoying than a good-faith attempt to connect with the other side.
“Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say.”Huh? You can’t imagine boring people as a “good faith social individual”?
'Saying' is an example of 'doing', and the moderation to speech happens after the fact, including (yes) in USA. Consider the case of a person yelling fire or 'he's got a gun!' when there is none, or a death threat.
If you're talking directly to one person and trying to convince them, without an audience, there are likely different tactics that might work, but even then, some of the same approach might help, just couched more politely. "You don't actually mean that; do you want a camera in your bedroom with a direct feed to the police? What do you actually mean, here? What are you trying to solve?"
Option A: "Yes!", which tells you you're probably talking to someone who cares more about not admitting they're wrong than thinking about what they're saying.
Option B: "Well, no, but...", and now you're having a discussion.
Generally speaking, people who say things like "if you have nothing to hide" either (charitably) haven't thought about it very much and are vaguely wanting to be "strict on crime" without thought for the consequences because they can't imagine it affecting them, or (uncharitably) have attitudes about what they consider "shameful" and they really mean "you shouldn't do things that I think you should feel shame about".
There's a big difference between these scenarios.
That's privacy in a crowd and even if they couldn't describe it, people do recognize it.
What you are proposing in every single one of these, is violating that in an overt and disruptive way - i.e.
> "Let's send your mom all your text messages."
Do I have anything in particular to hide in my text messages, of truly disastrous proportions? No. But would it feel intrusive for a known person who I have to interact with to get to scrutinize and comment on all those interactions? Yes. In much the same way that if someone on the table over starts commenting on my conversation in a coffee-shop, I'd suddenly not much want to have one there.
Which is very, very different from any notion of some amorphous entity somewhere having my data, or even it being looked at by a specific person I don't know, won't interact with, and will never be aware personally exists. Far less so if the only viewers are algorithms aggregating statistics.
To quote the standard observability conference line "what gets measured gets managed".
When you use a computer to tell you who to target, it makes it easy for your brain to never consider that person as a human being at all. They are a target. An object.
Their stated capabilities are lies, marketing, and a smokescreen for their true purpose.
This is Lavender v2, and I’m sure others could name additional predecessors. Systems rife with errors but the validity isn’t the point; the system is.
Palantir clients: Europol, Danish POL-INTEL, NHS UK, UK Ministry of Defence, German Police (states), NATO, Ukraine, ASML, Siemens, Airbus, Credit Suisse, UBS, BP, Merck, ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantir_Technologies#Customer...
Plus, the EU is 27 countries, out of which 5 are listed on their wiki page, with various institutions.
Don't confuse "GDP not as big as ours" with "totally non-functional."
Yes, things are different in totalitarian states.
For any piece of data that exists, the government effectively has access to it through court orders or backdoors. Either way, it can and will be used against you.
Data collection is not the source of the problem because people give their data willingly
Do you think data collection is a problem in China, or do you think the government and rule of law is the problem?
Companies collecting data is not the true problem. Even when data collection is illegal, a corrupt government that doesn't respect the rule of law doesn't need data collection.
"well how about if the government does illegal or evil stuff?"
its very similar to arguments about the second ammendment. But laws and rules shouldnt be structured around expecting a future moment where the government isnt serving the people. At that moment the rules already dont matter
To me, this is a problem that can only be solved at the government/regulatory level.
The evidence I have that causes me to believe them to be overstated, is how even Facebook has frequently shown me ads that inherently make errors about my gender, nationality, the country I live in, and the languages I speak, and those are things they should've been able to figure out with my name, GeoIP, and the occasional message I write.
They are not overstated, and they are far worse.
It’ll be a lot less amusing when Palantir thinks you’re interested in bombing government buildings.
There’s a world of difference between a government using legally collected data for multiple purposes and an individual abusing their position purely for personal reasons.
> legally collected data
In both cases, the information is legally collected (or at least, that's the only data we're concerned about in this conversation).
- government using
- individual abusing
^ Both of those are someone in the government using the information. In both cases, someone in the government can use the information in a way that causes an individual great harm; and isn't in the "understood" way the information would be used when it was "pitched" to the public. And in both cases, the person doing it will do what they want an almost certainly face no repercussions if what they're doing is morally, or even legally, wrong.
The government is collecting data (or paying someone else to collect that data, so it's not covered by the rules) and can then use it to cause individuals great harm. That's it, the entire description. The fact that _sometimes_ it's one cop using it to stalk someone or not is irrelevant.
& effectively if there is no checks on this is there actually a difference? There only difference is that the threat is to an entire cohort rather than an individual.
The whole social battle is a constant attempt to align our laws and values as a society. It's why we create new laws. It's why we overturn old laws. You can't just abdicate your morals and let the law decide for you. That's not a system of democracy, that's a system of tyranny.
The privacy focused crowd often mentions "turnkey tyranny" as a major motivation. A tyrant who comes to power and changes the laws. A tyrant who comes to power and uses the existing tooling beyond what that tooling was ever intended for.
The law isn't what makes something right or wrong. I can't tell you what is, you'll have to use your brain and heart to figure that one out.
There is also a world of difference between a government using data to carry out its various roles in service of the nation and a government using data to terrorize communities for the sadistic whims of its leadership.
Think I'm being hyperbolic? In Trump's first term fewer than 1M were deported. In Obama's eight years as president, 3.1M people were deported without the "techniques" we are witnessing.
Or if you're currently married to an abusive partner and want to leave: how can you make a clean break with all the tracking nowadays? (And given how 'uncivilized' these guys act in public (masked, semi-anonymous), I'd had to see what they do behind closed doors.)
This is why I personally prefer more devolved spending – at the federal level it is far too much centralized power.
Problem today is ICE has no accountability of misuse data/violence, not they have means to data/violence.
I agree with this in theory, but its a fantasy to think they have this restriction at this point. ICE seems to be taking all comers, the lowest of the low, the vilest of the vile, giving them "47 days of training," and sending them off armed into the populace. I have seen no evidence they believe they have any restriction on anything. It's basically DOGE but with guns instead of keyboards.
since you can’t turn ICE around overnight, I don’t think Americans should authorize ICE more data and power NOW.
We get things like philandering individuals running on family values platforms, anti-gay individuals being caught performing gay sex acts in restaurant bathrooms, crowing about deficits and the national debt during Democrat administrations while cutting taxes and increasing spending during Republican administrations, blocking Supreme Court nominations because it's "too close to an election" while pushing through another Supreme Court nomination mere weeks before a subsequent election, etc.
The fuel running the Republican political machine is bad faith.
"Trump’s net approval rating on immigration has declined by about 4 points since the day before Good’s death until today. Meanwhile, his overall approval rating has declined by 2 points and is near its second-term lows" [1].
I'd encourage anyone watching to actually pay attention to "how many people care more about party than principle." I suspect it's fewer than MAGA high command thinks.
[1] https://www.natesilver.net/p/trump-is-losing-normies-on-immi...
I spent too much of the 90s listening to Rush Limbaugh and consuming other conservative media and the exact same contradictions were prominently on display then. They absolutely excoriated law enforcement for things like the Waco siege. The phrase “jack-booted thugs” got used. But when LAPD beat the shit out of Rodney King on video, suddenly police could do no wrong.
I am not American and genuinely curious on this.
That said, I'm ex-Catholic, so I don't feel super qualified to make a statement on the specific popularity of predestination among American evangelicals at the moment.
That said, in a less theological and more metaphorical sense, it does seem that many of them do believe in some sort of "good people" and "bad people", where the "bad people" are not particularly redeemable. It feels a little unfalsifiable though.
But the same observation applies to lots of other attitudes, too—like “might makes right” and “nature is red in tooth and claw” or whatever else the dark princelings evince these days. I feel like “logic matters” mainly pertains to a liberal-enlightenment political context that might be in the past now…
Does reality always find a way to assert itself in the face of illogic? Sure! But if Our Side is righteous and infallible, the bad outcomes surely must be the fault of Those Scapegoats’ malfeasance—ipso facto we should punish them harder…
https://time.com/7311354/donald-trump-heaven-hell-afterlife-...
Remember, Republicans represent half the country, not some isolated sect living in small town Appalachia.
This statement isn't necessarily wrong because about half of elected government officials are Republican, but I want to point out that less than 60% of eligible Americans voted in 2024, so we're talking about <30% of Americans who vote Republican.
Calvinists or Evangelicals?
I don't think that holds water either way.
They won't be searching for counter evidence. It won't even cross their minds to do so.
You're on record saying one thing one time that was vanilla at the time but is now ultra spicy (possibly even because the definition of words can change and context is likely lost) then you'll be a result in their search and you'll go on their list.
(This is based on my anecdotal experience of having my house raided and the police didn't even know to expect there to be children in the house; children who were both over ten years old and going to school and therefore easily searchable in their systems; we hadn't moved house since 15 years prior, so there was no question of mixing up an identity. The police requested a warrant, and a fucking judge even signed it, based on a single data point: an IP address given to them by a third party internet monitoring company.)
Keep your shit locked down, law enforcement are just as bad at their jobs as any other Joe Clockwatcher. In fact they're often worse because their incentive structure leans heavily towards successful prosecution.
Sorry for the rant.
It should be mentioned that "illegal" is a definitive word. There are definitely people not willing to follow the law, including political entities which are dependent on it. The moniker of privacy in this respect is a shield for illegality, because there is no reason that Medicaid data regarding SSNs should be shielded from the federal government.
To take this to its logical conclusion, Americans must concede that EU/UK systems of identity and social services are inherently immoral.
https://exhibits.lib.berkeley.edu/spotlight/census/feature/j...
https://www.npr.org/2018/12/26/636107892/some-japanese-ameri...
Are you against business registration?
All of these are subject to the similar issues with the stalker ex abusing a position of power?
You seem to be asking a question. The answer is no.
The IRS does not need to know my sexual orientation or circumcision status. Medicaid, on the other hand, may. (Though I'd contest even that.)
This is why there shouldn’t be any organization that has that much power.
Full stop.
What you described is the whole raison dêtre of Anarchism; irrespective of whether you think there’s an alternative or not*
“No gods No Masters” isn’t just a slogan it’s a demand
*my personal view is that there is no possible stable human organization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchist_symbolism#No_gods,_n...
If you can, let me know
The "they look like us" fallacy is so deep in this.
Which is now literally happening and people are still acting like their privacy is going to somehow prevent it.
They have money for this grift of epic scale but complain about some tiny alleged Somalian fraud to distract the gullible MAGA base. And of course there is somehow not enough money for things people actually need like healthcare.
It's clear the government cannot be trusted to use information in a reasonable way; so we should not allow them to get that information.
This is systematically not true as citizens can not be legally deported.
>They arrest and deport people that show up to court to become US citizens.
If someone is not a citizen and are here illegally they should be removed, no matter their intentions. If you are willing to break the law to stay here, I personally don't want them back in the country.
And yet.
>If someone is not a citizen and are here illegally they should be removed, no matter their intentions. If you are willing to break the law to stay here, I personally don't want them back in the country.
Without even getting into the subject of kids who are brought here.. I just have to say, why? Immigrants are net contributors in the US. Many of these people who are here "illegally" are in a bureaucratic maze and are attempting to follow the rules. Some aren't, sure, but we live in a society where we don't draconianly punish people for a certain level of breaking the rules in cases where there is no real harm done. And I say deportation, particularly to 3rd country like the USA is doing now sometimes, qualifies as very draconian.
"Hey I know that guy is a criminal" does not give people the right to search their property without a warrant. Too bad if that makes law enforcement more difficult.
"Everyone who does a thing I don't like is a criminal" is obviously and intentionally fallacious bullshit.
Pretty sure this is a feature not a bug. Most people aren’t here for political topics.
You never see the "no politics please thk u" crowd when it is about protests in Iran, Chinese oppression in Hong Kong, Russian aggression on Europe or hell, when people were literally running a political campaign the EU to stop killing games. You only see people flagging political submissions when it is a particular kind of politics - just like you only see corrupt officials jailed when they are a certain kind of officials.
Connect the dots, make your own conclusions.
Or rather, most people aren’t here to have their preconceived notions challenged by reality.
Politics is a nebulous term for topics that affect a large number of the population. Tech intersects with politics all the time and deserves good faith discussion.
The government doing bad things is a political topic.
How the government is using technology to do bad things is both a political and technology topic.
Technology, technology leaders, and technology companies are literally driving politics, buying elections, driving the whole US economy.
Saying what “political” topics are IS political - and it’s decidedly a right wing position. Only those with the powers protecting them get to avoid politics.
[1] When representatives spend something like 4+ hours a day fundraising, people have good reason to say "this is f-ed up." https://gai.georgetown.edu/an-inside-look-at-congressional-f...
This forum is for hacker news. Some people believe tech news related to politics qualifies, some don't.
Your perspective is equally arbitrary. You have no reasoning, no justification. So stop pretending you do.
I think that forums like this one should discuss politics as affected by computer code seeing as HN is one of the main (for lack of a better word) computer programmers' forums based/located in/with a focus on SV, it's not some random computer forum which specializes in some random computer programming issue.
Hacker News is not lambda-the-ultimate.org, seeing them as similar is part of that hiding behind the bush, people commenting on here actually work at companies like Palantir, Alphabet, Meta and the like, companies whose recent involvement in politics affects us all, at a worldwide level. Also see this recent FT article [1] in connection with how the leaders of those companies have gotten a lot reacher since Trump ascended to power for a second time.
> Tech titans lined up for Trump’s second inauguration. Now they’re even richer
> Silicon Valley bosses who lined up behind the US president for his inauguration have fared well under his administration
[1] https://archive.ph/https://www.ft.com/content/674b700e-765d-...
"First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out— Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me."
What if I'm concerned that leaving such topics up would attract more of the kind of people that prefer discussing these topics over tech topics?
Hiding doesn't fix the problem.
There is no way you just wrote this wtffff
> Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.
To the latter point, hundreds of comments in, and nobody has even brought up the intellectual curiosity angle of this (what limits are in place to the Federal government using data from Federal programs for law enforcement purposes? and does it matter if the program is administered by individual states?).
Instead it's just political rage bait, including citing the Rev Niemöller poem as if we're talking about Nazis.
(It used to be part of Internet culture that the moment you compared something mundane to the Nazis, you automatically lost the argument and were mocked mercilessly. We should bring that back.)
Reading them was like living in an alternate reality where nothing more notable happens than a release of new version X of a framework Y. Large portions of the tech community had exactly the same attitude that could be seen here and now - refusal to consider the societal implications of their daily work, adherence to technical solutions over the real world ones ("I'll just work remotely and use a VPN, who cares") and just simple willful ignorance.
It was around that time that I started to frequent English speaking discussions, which were much more vibrant and open. It saddens me to see the same kind of process repeat itself here.
People are starting to get angry and if enough people are angry, this will lead to either government change or repression.
If it's repression, you're not ready for what's coming.
Then again, we have ICE shooting American citizens in the streets, so I guess the law is whatever they decide it is, not least because our legislative branch is uninterested in laws.
https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1191...
Edit: cael450 has already offered a specific example of this threat vector: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46758387
Presumably, it's because a lot of them are getting Medicaid despite not being eligible to. Isn't the point of every audit, investigation, etc. to find things that aren't being done correctly?
> The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources.
So, they have a tool that sucks up data from a bunch of different sources, including Medicaid. But there's no actual nexus between Medicaid and illegal immigrants in this reporting.
Edit: In the link to their earlier filings, EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/eff-court-protect-our-...
And it is next to impossible for average people to get adequate care for their kids with autism without Medicaid and early intervention can make the difference between someone who can live relatively independently with supports and someone who will spend their adult life chemically restrained in an institution. So they are in between a rock and a hard place.
I found this article[1] by the Brennan Center. It alleges this is an attempted federal takeover of elections but it doesn't suggest or allude to voter suppression. I'm not convinced by the article that having access to voter rolls can be considered a federal takeover of election administration (but I'm not in the know and would need things explained more verbosely).
If you have more information about the attempted centralization of election administration and its impacts on voter suppression I would be interested to know more.
1. https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/trum...
Regarding voter data though, if it becomes known that registering to vote as a minority will get you extra scrutiny from ICE, and perhaps a visit to your home, that would probably cause some citizens avoid voting altogether, especially if they are associated with people who are not her legally.
Either way, the federal government really has no right to that data or legitimate use for it, so hopefully they don't manage to get their hands on it.
Less sensationally, they'll just crank up ID requirements and wait times to suppress your vote.
[0] https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/10/ices-forced-face...
It is quite trivial to infer if someone is likely to have emigrated to the US due to obvious gaps in records or in their relatives' ones.
This is what Palantir does, essentially. Simple inference and information fusion from different sources.
Also naturalized and birthright citizens are far more likely than others to associate or live with others of less legal status.
Naturalized and birthright citizens quality for benefits and they and their families are at risk.
If they are allowed to detain and deport without any due process as they have asserted anyone not white is at risk.
The DHS official social media presence shared a picture of an island paradise with the caption America after 100 million deportations.
This is the number of non-whites not the number of immigrants in even the most ridiculous estimates.
The FBI has been showing up at the door of some people who dare to organize protests against ICE.
Stingrays have been deployed to protests, ICE is collecting photos of protestors for their database, and has been querying YCombinator funded Flock to pull automated license plate camera data from around the country. Trump, Vance, Noem and Miller are calling anyone who protests them domestic terrorists.
It's pretty clear this isn't just about immigration, that this is about pooling data for a surveillance state that can quash the constitutional rights of anyone who dares to oppose the current regime. We've seen this story before.
Given what kind of garbage from human gene pool gets and thrives in high politics its more surprising the show lasted as long as it did.
Now the question shouldn't be 'how much outraged we should be' since we get this situation for a year at this point, but rather what to do next, how we can shape future to avoid this. If there will be the time for such correction, which is a huge IF.
So from this perspective it's a matter of a corrupted interpreter, meaning merely adding more legal restrictions won't work. Rather final ultimate authority needs to be distributed amongst the states. The unrest in Minnesota would be solved in a week if the governor could simply use the National Guard to restore law and order without worrying that the out of control federal executive would just take control of them and then have even more foot soldiers to escalate the situation with.
Just the abuses of the commerce clause alone should show our government is full of corrupt power mongers.
And it goes down the list too. States taking power from counties, counties taking power from cities, judges, cops, and prosecutors claiming authority over more and more issues despite a lack of sound legal precedence or public approval.
We tried that with the Articles of Confederation. Then half the country tried it again 70 years later. It didn’t work out either time.
Trump’s not even close to the worse President we’ve had. He’s just the craziest since television became widespread. FDR who is widely considered one of our best Presidents put nearly 100k US citizens of Japanese descent in interment camps.
Andrew Jackson committed literal genocide.
They are putting people in interment camps right now, people are dying in them. You can find stories on a daily basis about discovered deaths in camps in texas being determined to be homicides, and those are just the ones we know about.
> Andrew Jackson committed literal genocide.
Give Trump time. Also the deaths as a result of just the destruction of USAID, millions of children will and are dying; it's comparable and beyond to the worst things any president has done in the history of the country
I'm certainly not a slavery apologist, but the Civil War was a terrible precedent that we are now paying the price for. Like always, power always gets agglomerated because the hero (Lincoln) desires to to good. But once it's been agglomerated, it tends to attract evil.
One of the clear underlying pillars of support for Trumpism is China/Russia trying to break up the United States so that it is less able to project power over the world. In this sense, supporting the paradigm of a weakened federal government is helping fulfill that goal. But it would be one way to stop the hemorrhaging and at least get us some breathing room in the short term. The current opposition party has trouble even mustering the will to avoid voting to fund the out of control executive, so whatever reforms we push for have to be simple and leverage existing centers of power. We can't let the national Democrats simply do another stint of business-as-usual phoning it in as the less-bad option, or we'll be right back here just like we are now from last time.
RBG refused to retire and died while Trump was president. That gave them one seat. Obama could have
McConnel refused to let Obama replace Scalia after he died. I'm not sure that had to happen the way it went down.
1) Take the medicaid data.
2) Join that with rental/income data.
3) Look for neighborhoods with cheap rents/low income and low medicaid rates.
Dragnet those neighborhoods.
I'm sure they'll run on not using it but when systems like this exist they tend to find applications
HELP I AM SOOOO F**NG ANGRY. Sorry I just don't have anywhere to safely put this rage.
"he was an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), where he designed the company logo"
(For more context: https://www.tbf.org/blog/2018/march/understanding-the-census...)
An example every tech worker should understand is H1-B, where as an added bonus your employer can make you illegal.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/pam-bondi-ice-minnesota-shooting-ti...
They’re not even hiding the fact this has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with compiling lists of people to target later.
Honestly it seems crazy even state governments know party affiliation. I know it's so they know who can vote in primaries etc, but it seems like you should just be able to register to vote with your party directly.
I'd say Palantir should be ashamed for facilitating this, but their entire business model is built around helping the government build an ever more invasive police state.
If you work on this kind of tech, please, quit your job.
Naturally they all are registered with the govt, and thus easy to pick up, jail, or murder.
This is the type of danger where last year amateur radio was legal, and now it gets you jailed. Thats the danger of this sort of data.
We also have a lot of inconsistent enforcement because some employers love having workers who can be mistreated under the threat of calling ICE. If we really wanted to lower immigration, we’d require companies to verify status for everyone they hire. You can see how this works in Texas where they’ve had a ton of bills requiring that get killed by Republican leadership on behalf of major donors:
https://www.texastribune.org/2025/06/05/texas-e-verify-requi...
The immigration laws are saying that we should stop illegal immigration, but respect the legal immigration. And because of that, it means that each case should be carefully treated to discover if the person is illegal or not.
But a majority of people supporting the crack-down on immigration are more than happy to see 10 innocents being deported if it means 1 illegal being deported, and they will wave around the illegal being deported to explain that before the crack-down, the law was not respected, forgetting that the current situation is breaking the law way more than the previous one (before: 1 illegal not deported, 1 error. after: 10 innocents being deported, 10 errors).
In other words: if you care about the law, you cannot "pick and choose" and say "the laws are not respected because 1 illegal is not deported" but also "10 innocents are being deported, this breaks the law, but this does not count".
The information I can find suggests only a handful of cases, maybe a dozen, out of 600,000 or so.
I'm not saying what is happening right now is 10 vs 1, and I did not in my comment. These numbers were illustrative, to explain that if you want to "apply the law", you should care about how many illegals are not deported AND how many innocents are deported.
This is the demonstration that people supporting the crackdown don't do it because they want to see the laws being applied, they just want "the laws that benefit them" to be applied. So we should stop pretending these people are acting because of their love for justice or for the laws.
edit: another way of explaining what I want to say: if you care about "applying the law", then you know that the correct measure will be a balance between the false positive and false negative. The large majority of the discourse of people supporting the crackdown is denying that. They are saying that "every single illegal must be deported". This discourse is explicitly saying that not deporting 1 single illegal is still not fine, and does not mention anywhere the balance with false positive. It shows that they don't care about "applying the law".
(And about "an handful of cases", that would be extremely unrealistic. Maybe you are talking about the number of cases that are surfaced, which is only a small proportion of the real numbers of case, as it is for all false positive)
I also don't think most people want illegal aliens to be deported for "justice". They (rightfully or wrongly) think they're taking their jobs, contributing to crime, facilitating drug trade, costing taxpayers money, etc.
Federal district judges in mpls are releasing dozens of illegally detained individuals per day. You may not be hearing about it, but it is absolutely happening. Your not hearing about is part of the problem.
[1] https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ca8.113...
That's my point and the reason of my first comment, which answered to a comment saying
> Immigration laws, like any other laws, need to be enforced, right?
I was reacting to that by saying that we should not pretend that the motivation here is "applying the law". It is not the case and it never was. (and also that "applying the law" does imply a balance between false positive and false negative, but that suddenly, trying to avoid the false negative is strangely not applying the law)
> If there were any evidence of widespread deportations of people who shouldn't be ...
Somehow, I doubt it. You are yourself saying "they think (rightfully or wrongly)". They are not interested in evidence, they don't really care to check if what they think has any evidence supporting it, it is just convenient for them.
If there are evidence of widespread false positive, they will just hold tight to the idea that "they were traitors anyway". It is more convenient for them. (and in fact, there currently is a lot of evidence of a high number of false positive, but they deny it exactly like that)
The proof of that is that there are already plenty of red flags everywhere showing that officials are incompetent. The officials say that there are plenty of bad illegal dangerous persons, and yet, the only people they manage to shoot just appear to be non-illegal with no history of extremism. Then, when it happens, they starts fabricating excuses that turn out are total lies. And then ... it happens again. Even if you buy into the idea that there are indeed plenty of bad illegal dangerous persons, you have to admit that they are awful at fixing it.
It is not technically a "widespread false positive", but it is already something that a neutral reasonable person will be incapable to deny that there is a problem. And yet, right now, these people who, according to you will totally "start to speak up", don't hesitate to bury their head in the sand and insist that it is all normal.
It is totally unrealistic to pretend that suddenly, when there is widespread evidence of false positive, they will not continue to find excuse and pretend that these evidences are fake news and lies propagated by traitors.
They are eligible for Emergency Medicaid, which covers emergency medical needs like labor and delivery or life-threatening conditions; hospitals that accept federal dollars for medicare/medicaid are required under federal law (EMTALA) to provide stabilizing emergency care regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.
Social services left at the State level would be subject to a smaller pool of votes for approval and are more likely to be funded by actual tax revenue instead of debt.
That is: sustainably.
Furthermore, the lack of One True Database is a safety feature in the face of the inevitable bad actors.
In naval architecture, this is called compartmentalization.
There are good arguments against this, sure, but the current disaster before you would seem a refutation.
My fear is that many of these states are locked in a bubble of lies, a culture that longs for an imaginary and idealized past that never existed. That they'll continue raising generations of people who think they need to be an independent, 'rudged' individualist when that's never been possible anywhere. And once they fail they'll settle for punching down on people different than them.
That'll learn 'em.