I'm not asking about how the Stasi did it in Germany, I'm asking how Palantir, a private company, is going to turn me into a "slave of the state" in the USA. If it's so obvious, then it should take a very short time to outline the concrete, detailed steps (that are relevant to the USA in 2025) down the path, and how one will inevitably lead to the other.

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thefaux 18 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I'll answer with a question for you: what legitimate concerns might some people have about a private company working closely with the government, including law enforcement, having access to private IRS data? For me, the answer to your question is embedded in mine.

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ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I'm asking how Palantir, a private company, is going to turn me into a "slave of the state" in the USA.

This question has already been answered for you.

The government uses Palantir to perform the state's surveillance. (And in a way that does an end-run around the Fourth Amendment; https://yalelawandpolicy.org/end-running-warrants-purchasing....)

As the Stasi used private citizens to do so. It's just an automated informant.

And this is hardly theoretical. https://gizmodo.com/palantir-ceo-says-making-war-crimes-cons...

> Palantir CEO and Trump ally Alex Karp is no stranger to controversial (troll-ish even) comments. His latest one just dropped: Karp believes that the U.S. boat strikes in the Caribbean (which many experts believe to be war crimes) are a moneymaking opportunity for his company.

> In August, ICE announced that Palantir would build a $30 million surveillance platform called ImmigrationOS to aid the agency’s mass deportation efforts, around the same time that an Amnesty International report claimed that Palantir’s AI was being used by the Department of Homeland Security to target non-citizens that speak out in favor of Palestinian rights (Karp is also a staunch supporter of Israel and inked an ongoing strategic partnership with the IDF.)

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ryandrake 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Step 1, step 2, step 3, step 4? And a believable line drawn between those steps?

Since nobody's actually replying with a concrete and believable list of steps from "Palantir has data" to "I am a slave of the state" I have to conclude that the steps don't exist, and that slavery is being used as a rhetorical device.

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ceejayoz 17 hours ago | parent [-]

Step 1: Palantir sells their data and analysis products to the government.

Step 2: Government uses that data, and the fact that virtually everyone has at least one "something to hide", to go after people who don't support it.

This doesn't really require a conspiracy theory board full of red string to figure out. And again, this isn't theoretical harm!

> …an Amnesty International report claimed that Palantir’s AI was being used by the Department of Homeland Security to target non-citizens that speak out in favor of Palestinian rights…

	▲	mindslight 16 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your description is missing a parallel process of how we arrive(d) at that condition of the nominal government asserting direct control. Corporate surveillance creates a bunch of coercive soft controls throughout society (ie Retail Equation, "credit bureaus", websites rejecting secure browsers, facial recognition for admission to events, etc). There isn't enough political will for the Constitutional government to positively act to prevent this (eg a good start would be a US GDPR), so the corporate surveillance industry is allowed to continue setting up parallel governance structures right out in the open. As the corpos increasingly capture the government, this parallel governance structure gradually becomes less escapable - ie ReCAPTCHA, ID.me, official communications published on xitter/faceboot, DOGE exfiltration, Clearview, etc. In a sense the surging neofascist movement is closer to their endgame than to the start. If we want to push back, merely exorcising Palantir (et al) from the nominal government is not sufficient. We need to view the corporate surveillance industry as a parallel government in competition with the Constitutionally-limited nominally-individual-representing one, and actively stamp it out. Otherwise it just lays low for a bit and springs back up when it can.

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tavavex 14 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

This seems like a simple conclusion, to the point where I'm surprised that no one replying to you had really put it in a more direct way. "slave of the state" is pretty provocative language, but let me map out one way in which this could happen, that seems to already be unfolding.

1. The country, realizing the potential power that extra data processing (in the form of software like Palantir's) offers, start purchasing equipment and massively ramping up government data collection. More cameras, more facial scans, more data collected in points of entry and government institutions, more records digitized and backed up, more unrelated businesses contracted to provide all sorts of data, more data about communications, transactions, interactions - more of everything. It doesn't matter what it is, if it's any sort of data about people, it's probably useful.

2. Government agencies contract Palantir and integrate their software into their existing data pipeline. Palantir far surpasses whatever rudimentary processing was done before - it allows for automated analysis of gigantic swaths of data, and can make conclusions and inferences that would be otherwise invisible to the human eye. That is their specialty.

3. Using all the new information about how all those bits and pieces of data are connected, government agencies slowly start integrating that new information into the way they work, while refining and perfecting the usable data they can deduce from it in the process. Just imagine being able to estimate nearly any individual's movement history based on many data points from different sources. Or having an ability to predict any associations between disfavored individuals and the creation of undesirable groups and organizations. Or being able to flag down new persons of interest before they've done anything interesting, just based on seemingly innocuous patterns of behavior.

4. With something like this in place, most people would likely feel pretty confined - at least the people who will be aware of it. There's no personified Stasi secret cop listening in behind every corner, but you're aware that every time you do almost anything, you leave a fingerprint on an enormous network of data, one where you should probably avoid seeming remarkable and unusual in any way that might be interesting to your government. You know you're being watched, not just by people who will forget about you two seconds after seeing your face, but by tools that will file away anything you do forever, just in case. Even if the number of people prosecuted isn't too high (which seems unlikely), the chilling effect will be massive, and this would be a big step towards metaphorical "slavery".