The title does not do the content justice. Since Snowden it's been known to the entire world, even outside of HN, that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
What has changed is that now they're actually using this to a degree that even China generally does not do. If a German had written a comment in support of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook at some point in time, they're extremely unlikely to get denied entry to China over this, despite them almost certainly having even stronger capabilities and databases to easily find this out.
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
> that the US government has had this capability for decades now, with mass dragnet surveillance of all internet traffic.
This is an important point.
The Bush admin established systems to surveil ~everyone in the US (not suspected of a crime) in bulk. Bulk surveillance is the well known, core component of systems intended to harm people (in bulk).
This got a pass from Bush supporters (inc me at first). It got little-to-no strong pushback elsewhere.
The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone (excepting a period after the Edward Snowden revelations).
Not holding a reasonable PotUS accountable - this gifts power to the unreasonable ones that follow.
mandmandam · 2h ago
> The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone.
Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms. He also unequivocally condemned torture, promised to revise/sunset the Patriot Act, copperfasten Roe v Wade 'Day 1', etc...
But virtually all the Democrats I knew didn't give a single shit when he 180'd on all of that in his first few months. Still blows my mind a bit to this day; a marvel of mass brainwashing.
Now we're at the point where Democrats can arm and enable a literal holocaust inflicted on some of the world's poorest and most beautiful people, then get on a high horse when someone suggests voting for a non-genocidal party.
The ratchet effect is beyond extreme; and quite obvious for observant people with an outside perspective. Yet somehow Americans still seem to have hope that voting Dem hard enough will fix things. I wish I knew what it would take to inflict a sense of morality on the country.
Spooky23 · 4h ago
Snowden showed that the tools were available to intelligence agencies operating under questionable rules. Now the coordination of those agencies is led by a Russian agent, and poorly trained keystone cops have access, courtesy of Palantir.
Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
> Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
The access was given to Palantir. Your statement is dismissive in a way that suggests this dangerous situation no longer exists.
Are you asserting that Palantir no longer has access to this data?
sorcerer-mar · 7h ago
Palantir's role or non-role aside, the idea that we're even looking into whether people wrote about a student protest is absurd. The "combating antisemitism" cover story for all of this is incredibly cynical.
thenthenthen · 6h ago
They were looking in my spam folder and giving me a hard time for what they ‘found’ there, absolutely bonkers
hungmung · 5h ago
Was this in customs? Are you an American? Just curious.
WarOnPrivacy · 3h ago
Based on a previous post of his, I believe he was traveling here from China.
While that may help explain the unproductive, unconstitutional behavior he experienced (now normalized at our borders), it does not excuse it.
maeil · 5h ago
Cynical? No my friend, it's what authoritarian dictatorships such as Russia and the US have been doing for years, it's their default! [1]
All it takes is a quick observation that the literal swastika swinging Nazis are all on Trump’s side to see the truth.
jamesgill · 6h ago
Palantir.
Valar Ventures.
Mithril Capital.
Lembas LLC.
It’s remarkable to me how someone like Thiel could be such a fan of Lord of the Rings, with its central themes of the corrupting influence of unchecked power and good triumphing over evil and evil’s will to control and dominate—then decide to become Gollum.
brookst · 6h ago
Mr. Thiel identifies as Sauron, thank you very much.
mcs5280 · 5h ago
1000 points have been deducted from your Palantir AI Social Credit Score™
GTP · 5h ago
Let's constitute the fellowship of the ring :D
jajko · 4h ago
Hmm why not rather opportunistic Saruman? Serve whoever brings money, fuck the plebs and some naive higher principles
dylan604 · 6h ago
In all of these types of stories, "evil" rules for long enough that makes it appealing for those with the same views. Sometimes, it's generations before "good" overcomes. Plus, each one of the "evil" leaders feel like they are special and different. It's easy to understand why. You just need to be able to see it yourself.
Workaccount2 · 5h ago
There are no evil people, media (books, TV, movies) have plainly evil people so the story is easily digestible and appealing to the masses. But it is completely incorrect framing of how the world actually is.
In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place, and they are fighting "ignorant" people who are dragging society down by not conforming to their golden vision. And then "evil" becomes largely a function of who you ask. It's the opposition that labels them evil, not society on the whole.
There are very few leaders ever who are straight up storybook style evil. Almost all of them were/are deranged people who convinced enough people of their ostensibly good vision to begin executing it.
No one came to power because they wanted to turn society into burning rumble while they ate babies during daily random execution time. It's all nuance and complication.
galleywest200 · 5h ago
> There are no evil people [....] In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place
I would have to disagree here...lots of historical examples of criminal gangs, privateers, etc seeking to simply do harm.
jerglingu · 4h ago
Who? I can only think of Nero who sought only to "simply do harm." This is such a reductive way to cast people
FirmwareBurner · 6h ago
Because it's only evil when your opposition/competition is doing it. You're always the hero in your own story and for you the actions are justified because you're doing it "for good". The road to hell is paved with good intentions. Hitler was also a fan of works of art with themes of peace and harmony.
The world, at the highest levels of competition and leadership, doesn't run on morals, it runs on unscrupulous force, conquest and domination. See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who tried to maintain peace on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
ben_w · 5h ago
> See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who ran on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
Fortunately not so; some time around 50-100kya, humans rapidly became a whole lot nicer to each other.
FirmwareBurner · 5h ago
Kya? No idea what you mean.
jmye · 5h ago
Contextually clear that this is a stand in for “thousand years ago.”
FirmwareBurner · 5h ago
Ah ok thanks, then that's false.
dismalaf · 6h ago
Thiel and Karp have both said in various places that western civilization is worth saving and that it's better that we develop this power than enemies of the West, and I'm not going to lie, I'm inclined to agree with them.
Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khamenei are better stewards of the world than the West?
The West's introspective nature is good and all, but sometimes we unwittingly forget that there is actual evil in the world, and it's much worse than saying mean things on Twitter, or putting facts above feelings.
Students in Iran literally die protesting the regime, meanwhile students here who live a life of luxury and don't know what actual oppression is "protest"/simp for the Iranians (or one of their various proxies)...
conception · 5h ago
And it is forgotten that people will do evil under the auspices of “western ideals” and power unchecked leads to an erosion of those ideals.
Reminder - Iran offered support after 9/11 but instead we rebuffed them and called them part of the axis of evil just because. Right at a time when they were really modernizing again but our jingoistic attitudes entrenched the autocrats further.
They agreed to a nuclear deal that we tore up just because.
We overthrew their government.
We have presidential candidates singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran” for fun.
The reason we have a bad relationship with Iran and a large reason why they have bad leaders is because the US has made it so.
dismalaf · 5h ago
So why does Iran have bad relations with most of their neighbours? Why does Iran support terrorism against countries that aren't the US?
Did the US make Iran oppress women and minorities? Everytime Iran executes people who oppose the regime, is it because the US made them do it?
sriram_malhar · 4h ago
I don't know the answer to your question, but it struck me that we can ask exactly the same question about the US today.
So why does US have bad relations with most of their neighbours? Why does US support terrorism against countries? Did Iran make US oppress women and minorities?
fakedang · 4h ago
To be fair, nearly all superpowers and regional powers in the world currently have poor relations with their neighbors lol.
USA? Check (the new entrant).
China? Check.
Russia? Check.
India? Check.
Japan? Check (too few neighbors though)
Iran? Check.
Israel? Check.
EU? Check.
Saudi Arabia? An exception.
Brazil? Another exception.
UK? Check. (lol)
fakedang · 4h ago
Because Iran is Shia and the rest of its neighbours are ruled by Sunnis. Some even have majority Shia populations that can be restive under a Sunni autocrat.
Even then, Iran still has strong ties with all of those neighbors. They trade actively, US sanctions be damned, and would pounce at the opportunity to invest in Iran if given the opportunity (Iran's industries are basically all owned by the Ayatollah and IRGC currently).
Angostura · 5h ago
This is a very strange argument. I don’t have a problem in principle with a country developing a security apparatus. It’s how they use it, is the issue. The current US regime doesn’t feel like a particularly custodian of Western, liberal democracy
JCattheATM · 4h ago
> The current US regime doesn’t feel like a particularly custodian of Western, liberal democracy
With it's middle finger to due process and courts, it clearly isn't. It's a particularly un-American administration.
timacles · 5h ago
Theil is spearheading a campaign of untold suffering to minorities and poor people. Not sure what “ this power “ you think it is, but it’s just an AI driven racial/political profiling network for selfish political purposes.
ryandv · 1h ago
Absurd. It's literally impossible, by definition, for gay white males to enact racist policy or otherwise act in ways harmful to minorities. "Gay" and "racist" are mutually exclusive terms, again by definition.
dismalaf · 5h ago
> Theil is spearheading a campaign of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
This is no more informative than saying "Trump is literally Hitler/Jesus (depending on your POV)".
WarOnPrivacy · 5h ago
>> Theil is spearheading a campaign of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
> Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
Intelligence is needed to bring harm to adversaries. Determine the intel, determine the adversary.
In this case, Theil massively funded an election
and then his data corp got the unprecedented access
to US Gov's most sensitive datasets (ss, dhs, irs, etc).
This includes compiling new databases that target migrants,
built from data across multiple DHS agencies.
dismalaf · 5h ago
So where's the "untold suffering to minorities and poor people"?
Database of migrants, you do know that it's normal for governments to keep track of who's in their country, right? It's why passports have your name, picture, DOB, etc... on them...
WarOnPrivacy · 4h ago
By omitting the qualifying part of the grandparent's statement, which is this...
>> Theil is spearheading a campaign
>> of untold suffering to minorities and poor people.
the quoted part in this...
> So where's the "untold suffering to minorities and poor people"?
...unhelpfully misstates the GP's assertion.
That assertion is that Theil is leadership within a campaign.
The assertion is the campaign is intended to harm the vulnerable.
Funding an election to gain access to the data needed to build new datasets that specifically target a vulnerable segment of the population - this is evidence of who the campaign is targeting.
gosub100 · 5h ago
Thiel himself is part of a "protected class". If I was a standard consumer/ believer of leftist news publications wouldn't it be the time to defend him and say the reason he's being attacked is because he's a homosexual? If not, why should I believe it any other time they toss that accusation around?
djur · 5h ago
Maybe you should consider this evidence that gay people aren't a "protected class" in the first place.
mindslight · 4h ago
"Leftist", "Rightist", and much "news" in general rots your brain by promulgating broken paradigms. This applies regardless of whether you think of yourself as supporting or opposing any given narrative.
You're twisting your thinking in knots acting like the authority claimed by some news, then contradicting itself, creates authority to the contrary. Really you're just helping spread brain rot.
grafmax · 5h ago
Thiel has explicitly advocated for the abolition of democracy and is funding contemporary efforts to do so. What privileges our students enjoy only exist because he hasn’t succeeded yet. You pose a false choice between authoritarian regimes. Claiming that Iranian protesters have it worse so we shouldn’t protect the free speech rights of our students is similarly disingenuous. It divides people using guilt around relative privilege rather than directing our efforts to solidarity in fighting the ruling class, of which Thiel is a part.
No comments yet
maeil · 5h ago
So far, the signs are that Trump is likely a worse steward than Xi. He just hasn't had the ability to properly fulfill his wishes.
jajko · 4h ago
Its funny how trump is actually helping China long term to become top superpower. He either can't see long term consequences of his emotional tantrums or simply doesn't care in the name of ego polishing games.
No comments yet
archagon · 1h ago
I categorically do not wish to live in a West perverted by Thiel and Karp’s grotesque ideology.
lentil_soup · 5h ago
That's a bit of a strawman argument, no? The options are not only become a tyrant or let Putin rule the world. There's many and more clever options. I think we can demand much better from the people in power.
Also, that rhetoric of The West vs the world is a bit lazy. Things are more complex, even recent events prove The West is not a unified block where everyone thinks the same way.
jmye · 5h ago
What power, specifically? Overwhelming surveillance of citizens? Whining that people attending universities in the US protested things?
Why on earth would anyone think Khomeini (who, of course, has been dead for 24 years) would ever have any say over the West?
You’re deeply afraid of a very strange bogeyman. It seems odd to pretend that Peter Thiel also fears dead men in politically/economically/socially irrelevant countries.
Biganon · 4h ago
...Khamenei is not Khomeini
jmye · 1h ago
Parent had Khomeini when I replied.
Khameini, of course, also has absolutely nothing to do with anything and is a nonsensical bogeyman. He just happens to still be alive.
maest · 5h ago
> Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khomeini are better stewards of the world than the West?
I'm sure they're saying the same things about the West.
Of course they say the same things about the West. Especially North Korea, which is the epitome of human achievement.
Saying it doesn't make it true though.
AndrewKemendo · 5h ago
Help me make sense of this as an old timer because I’m lost
Everything described in the thread has been going on since the Patriot Act was signed in 2001.
As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton and see all links to other IMEI/SI collected worldwide.
By 2013 I could query those in Palantir on a Secret or SCI level depending on who held the data which would also aggregate and provide to me OSINT, LE reports or other data associated with those id
What’s new here?
Is it just that more people know about it now?
All the stuff I described above was public information as to both “capabilities” and used as casus belli for warrants (US) or kinetic actions (OCONUS).
JeremyNT · 5h ago
They've had these authoritarian toys for a while, but they've been careful to use them more subtly in the past.
This administration is, as with everything else, discarding the "norms" based restraint that previously applied to their use.
Telemakhos · 4h ago
> As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton
Did you mean PRISM? When I think of Proton, I think of a genuine effort to assist people in maintaining security.
Nothing has changed except the standard for denial of entry has been broadened here. There's a long history of denying entry to people for what their views are, this isn't new at all. You can just do a search and find examples of white supremacists, and imams and Islamic scholars, as well as probably other groups being denied entry to not only the US but it happens in Europe too and it goes back across administrations. So in other words, it's not just under the current administration where your political views could get you denied entry to the US.
GTP · 5h ago
From my point of view, wheter this is new or not is secondary. What happened is very bad and it is important to talk about it.
thrance · 5h ago
What's new is they've started using all of that more aggressively to detain people who objectively, without the shadow of a doubt, have done nothing wrong but somehow displease the party.
blueboo · 5h ago
Retrieval and association is orders of magnitude better
“Lost in the noise” no more
refulgentis · 5h ago
Generally, in my lifetime (at 37 years old now), wide political awareness starting around 2004, Patriot Act / mass government data conversation was more about "This can be abused!", the most concrete story I had ever even close to the topic was by my junior year english teacher (17 years old) relaying that someone told her someone googled "how do terrorists make a bomb" and the FBI paid them a visit. Here, I'm a bit stunned to see we're investing in screening and detaining visitors if they seem to hold an opinion that doesn't imply any sort of violent threat.
Spooky23 · 4h ago
Unlikely, but the person may have looked into it further. Agriculture stores that sell stuff like ammonium nitrate are all participants in counter terror programs.
lawn · 4h ago
The real danger isn't the capability or even them collecting the information.
The danger is when the fascists take charge and start abusing it.
And the new thing here is just that.
emsign · 5h ago
What's new here is that Peter Thiel is a libertarian who wants to destroy democracies because he's a christian lunatic who believes in armageddon and the anti-christ and sees democracies and multi-national organizations like the UN and the EU as tsaid anti-christ. This is not a joke, even though I wish it was because it sounds so ridiculous. Palantir is not our friend. And they probably WILL read my comment.
mistrial9 · 4h ago
> he's a lunatic
ftfy
JKCalhoun · 6h ago
A thought experiment I have been having asks if we should instead open it up to the public.
For some reason I have been fixated on license plate readers (probably not a bad parallel to Palantir?). Plenty of people on HN justifiably decry license plate readers due to their violation of our privacy (to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds).
But if license plate readers are already a reality (we know they are), why should only private actors have that data? This would make sense if we completely trusted those private actors, of course.
The opposite could be a public, open-source license plate reader that caught on (people using dash cams + open software) — the data sent to a collective, public database. (Perhaps the software strips out personal license plates — only logging tags of official or government vehicles?).
My first reaction is the degree to which that could be abused by ... stalkers? Truly a bad thing. But then I ask myself to what degree the private license plate readers are perhaps "being abused" (or will be more and more) and we don't even know about it.
As I say, a thought experiment that I find myself seeing merits both for and against.
1shooner · 6h ago
I once had a firepit conversation with the Floc coordinator of a small US city's PD. A big part of the value he saw in Floc was being able to query the data within some window (maybe 30 days?) then no longer being responsible for it. If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data. Not only would that be an administrative cost, but it would also show the public how invasive the mass surveillance is. He clearly was not concerned about civil rights, he just wanted the convictions.
He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.
trogdor · 47m ago
> If the government had the data, then they'd need to respond to FOIAs for the data.
Respond to, yes. Disclose, not necessarily. I believe ALPR data are exempt from disclosure in some - perhaps many, and maybe even most - states.
jlokier · 5h ago
> why should only private actors have that data?
I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?
I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.
So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."
I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".
Kapura · 5h ago
It is a crime to stalk people. When we catch people doing it, we should stop them.
I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.
When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.
When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.
When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.
They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.
JKCalhoun · 5h ago
Agree, I would prefer this were not even a thing.
GTP · 5h ago
> to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds
I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.
JKCalhoun · 5h ago
That's a good point. I am only going on the "expectation of privacy" clause — but perhaps that's only applied to (audible) conversations.
mindslight · 6h ago
Open what up? This event isn't about finding some needle in a hackstack, but about power structures using unaccountable "AI" to create chilling effects on the freedom of speech. The public having a go-to list of journalists who committed wrongspeak about Israel wouldn't particularly change much, beyond facilitating the extension of this authoritarian dynamic into the corporate world in a uniform way.
darkmarmot · 6h ago
see the novel kiln people and the transparent society essays by David Brin
gosub100 · 5h ago
Biggest abuse would be home burglars. Pick a juicy target, wait till all vehicles are away and strike.
gruez · 6h ago
What's with the title? It says "Journalists ..." (plural) when so far as I can tell it's the story of one journalist. While I'm sure there's at least one other journalist wary of traveling to the US, that's not the story at hand, and HN guidelines prohibit editorializing of titles.
typesarecool · 6h ago
I am not actually sure they are a journalist, but more a blogger? Happy to be proven wrong
kreetx · 6h ago
Reading the blog, he seems more like an activist.
jakelazaroff · 6h ago
"Blogger" and "activist" both being euphemisms for "journalist who says things I don't like".
kreetx · 6h ago
I think with blogger the GP meant that he is not a professional journalist; an activist is somebody who is politically engaged, as clearly this person is. Does it appear to you that he is an actual journalist?
jakelazaroff · 4h ago
He makes money from journalism, does he not? Journalists are by definition politically engaged, so defining "activist" as a separate category like that makes no sense.
kreetx · 4h ago
I've no idea how he makes his money, and no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side, and also is acting upon it by protesting.
jakelazaroff · 3h ago
> no, journalists are not "by definition" politically engaged.
Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
> Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side
That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
> and also is acting upon it by protesting.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
kreetx · 3h ago
I don't think few if any journalist I've read have taken part in protests.
Also, most journalists just investigate and present stories by assembling what they found. And then they go and investigate another topic. But this person has just one topic.
I'd say people who consistently protest and consistently write about the topic are activists, yes. Do you need an even stronger definition?
SauciestGNU · 2h ago
Having beliefs and advocating for them does not preclude one from doing journalism, and I would argue that undoubtedly any written account of occurrences on the ground during protests are journalism, regardless of the slant.
You really don't want to get into categorizing speech as protected or not based on content.
gruez · 2h ago
I agree the government shouldn't be in the business of gatekeeping what being a "journalist" means, but I think we can all agree there's there's clearly a category difference between a BBC reporter objectively covering the protests, and someone involved with the protests giving a one-sided account.
gruez · 2h ago
>Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
"politically engaged" in this case refers to participating in the protests itself, or even taking a particular side. It's the opposite of being "objective", back when that was an ideal to strive for. Nowadays "objectivity" is being dropped in favor of "moral clarity".
>That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
No. Writing about resturants in New York is a "beat". Writing pieces consistently favoring one side is being an activist.
>Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
Yes? Are you going to gatekeep "actvist" to people who are card carrying DSA members or something?
add-sub-mul-div · 6h ago
Every thread getting littered with these hall monitor complaints about titles is worse than clickbait could ever be.
jakelazaroff · 6h ago
If anything, I think the title severely understates what happened here. It's not journalists "wary" of traveling to the US, it's a journalist literally getting deported for writing about a protest movement.
anthony_d · 6h ago
I just started looking but I can’t find any supporting evidence for this story. The part where someone says “we both know why you’re here” just sounded like a cheesy movie line. The journalist mentioned that while being detained he met a woman who was on day 4 of detention… what exactly are the logistics of how they were handling detention?
It all just sounded so implausible. It reads like someone trying to spin a story to convince others of what they already wanted to believe, or maybe that kid in grade school who tells stories he read or saw, but swaps himself for the main character.
Why should I believe this person more than any random internet crank?
refulgentis · 5h ago
I'm sorry to write at length, I just feel so deeply in this moment. I've never seen such a stark denial of reality that has been reported widely recently, that also relies on a sweeping idea that we can't trust anyone ever, i.e. we cannot discern the difference between a random internet crank and a not-crank, and given that, there's no reason to ever explore anything we haven't accepted ourselves.
I don't think I'll be able to bridge the gap by lecturing or pointing things out or huffing about journalism. But I have no choice but to try something, because I care for you and for us.
I guess what I'd say is, to keep from lecturing, it's very normal to be in detention for multiple days once you've tripped the first wire. There's been many stories like this shared, you can see some of the effects [here](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=05c894fd792d1e12&rlz=1...), no tricks, no bias, just a search for "cbp detention" in Google news.
Some headlines: ‘Like a jail cell’: Family of six detained at Washington state border facility for more than three weeks, German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego-area immigrant detention facility, Green card holder from New Hampshire 'interrogated' at Logan Airport, detained, ‘Felt like a kidnapping’: Wrong turn leads to 5-day detention ordeal
gruez · 6h ago
"Every" thread? I can't say that matches with my experience, or is even remotely close. Most posts I see are properly titled and as a result don't have anyone complaining about it. Can you link to some recent examples? Or is a little stretching of the truth justified in comments as well?
kstrauser · 7h ago
I just had some otherwise nice-sounding recruiter pings from Palantir-adjacent companies. I couldn’t do it. I found another role that’s everything I wanted and I can look at myself in the mirror.
layer8 · 4h ago
On the other hand, you could aim for becoming a mole or whistleblower.
kstrauser · 4h ago
That’s a thing, to be sure, but there’s also the very strong possibility of becoming institutionalized and rationalizing the stuff you’re working on in the mean time.
monkeyelite · 4h ago
You mean you are worried about personally causing harm in that job? Or you are worried about saving face?
kstrauser · 4h ago
The former. I don’t want to work on things that make the world worse in ways I care about.
monkeyelite · 1h ago
So how did you make that determination of harm? Are you making the world worse being an accountant at palantir? What if you are making systems safer and more secure?
quacked · 7h ago
I think that the time may come in the near future where "proper" white collar Americans will have an obligation to flagrantly violate new laws and be arrested on purpose in order to create a critical mass of people who both have experienced the excesses of the regime and also are motivated enough to do something about it. This would have to be paired with colossally well-funded lawsuits, as during the Civil Rights movement.
Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay. That leaves the various armed forces around the country staffed with individuals who feel very little opposition to rote authoritarianism, corruption, and rule-by-force. There are relatively few individuals working in day-to-day policing or intelligence work that spend a lot of time thinking about the duty of agents of the state to follow its laws.
try_the_bass · 4h ago
> Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay.
I've been thinking a lot about this same thing. I've seen a marked rise in the number of complaints about how "everyone in law enforcement is MAGA" and the like, and can't help but think: "this is what you wanted, right?"
There have been a lot of people trying really hard to make law enforcement (and adjacent roles) entirely unpalatable, and it appears they've been largely successful! I think what they failed to take into account is that they were only making those roles unpalatable tothose who already think like them in other ways, and forgot that there are a lot of people out there with fundamentally different beliefs who are not dissuaded by ACAB-adjacent arguments. Or, worse yet, are actively attracted to the way the role is being portrayed!
So in the end, it seems like they achieved their goals, but perhaps overlooked how those goals might have some unintended consequences.
I never really understood the argument, either. If you think policing is rife with prejudice and abuse of power, why are you trying to demonize the whole job? Why wouldn't you be signing up for it, instead? After all, if you think it's being done wrong, the best way to right that wrong is by doing it yourself and setting a better example.
I think the fact that people prefer to publicly demonize an entire thing, instead of doing the hard work of making it right, is one of the most insidious features of modern social media.
cess11 · 6h ago
If you're going to revolt against the state you gain nothing from first spending years getting employment in it. On the contrary, along the way you become more vulnerable to the state.
And yes, it's immoral to become a cop, just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties. There might be some mitigating factor like efficiently using it for infiltration and subversion because you didn't understand the morality of it until you were already employed, or being threatened into such a position.
gruez · 5h ago
>And yes, it's immoral to become a cop
Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
>just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties
Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral.
quacked · 5h ago
> Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
There are some people who not only believe this but can make very compelling cases that this is the case. It's a dead-end rhetorical argument; yes, it is actually possible for literally every precinct in the US to violate people's civil rights.
The difference is that some people, like (I suspect) the person you're responding to, seem to think that the position itself--armed law enforcement officer--is archetypically immoral and should not exist as a function or profession in a civilization. This is naive to to the point of absurdity and underwrites most of the idiocy that's widely abound in anti-policing movements. In one breath they claim that "police" are as a class immoral, and in the next they proclaim that their political opponents must be "brought to justice" by armed people following a set of written laws. It's absurd!
like_any_other · 6h ago
The US is just following the European example of "responsibly" moderating speech [1], instead of blindly sticking to the 1st amendment, as they were so often called to [2].
Yes, I would expect the government to blindly stick to the founding document of the country. I would also expect the government to go through the amendment process to change that document if it was found wanting given changes in society over time.
blacksmith_tb · 6h ago
Does that say Camus had his phone seized? He was denied being allowed to come and speak, not to visit as a journalist, which also strikes me a fairly different case (whatever you think of his positions, or whether they should be debated or silenced). It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
like_any_other · 6h ago
> Does that say Camus had his phone seized?
I'm confused where this question is coming from. Do cases have to be exactly the same to draw parallels?
> It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
Germany is a bad example, as they're deporting and planning to even revoke citizenship based on speech:
Complicated thing: had a certain Austrian who complained about the German government silencing him instead been deported and forbidden to return after his prison sentence, the world might have been a very different place.
What has changed is that now they're actually using this to a degree that even China generally does not do. If a German had written a comment in support of the Hong Kong protests on Facebook at some point in time, they're extremely unlikely to get denied entry to China over this, despite them almost certainly having even stronger capabilities and databases to easily find this out.
This is an important point.
The Bush admin established systems to surveil ~everyone in the US (not suspected of a crime) in bulk. Bulk surveillance is the well known, core component of systems intended to harm people (in bulk).
This got a pass from Bush supporters (inc me at first). It got little-to-no strong pushback elsewhere.
The Obama admin massively expanded Bush era surveillance systems. This got a pass from nearly everyone (excepting a period after the Edward Snowden revelations).
Not holding a reasonable PotUS accountable - this gifts power to the unreasonable ones that follow.
Obama's first campaign ran on him opposing warrantless wiretapping and blanket immunity for telecoms. He also unequivocally condemned torture, promised to revise/sunset the Patriot Act, copperfasten Roe v Wade 'Day 1', etc...
But virtually all the Democrats I knew didn't give a single shit when he 180'd on all of that in his first few months. Still blows my mind a bit to this day; a marvel of mass brainwashing.
Now we're at the point where Democrats can arm and enable a literal holocaust inflicted on some of the world's poorest and most beautiful people, then get on a high horse when someone suggests voting for a non-genocidal party.
The ratchet effect is beyond extreme; and quite obvious for observant people with an outside perspective. Yet somehow Americans still seem to have hope that voting Dem hard enough will fix things. I wish I knew what it would take to inflict a sense of morality on the country.
Also note that the IRS and Social Security data is protected and access is a serious crime. So the responsible Feds are long fired or resigned.
The access was given to Palantir. Your statement is dismissive in a way that suggests this dangerous situation no longer exists.
Are you asserting that Palantir no longer has access to this data?
While that may help explain the unproductive, unconstitutional behavior he experienced (now normalized at our borders), it does not excuse it.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disinformation_in_the_Russian_...
Valar Ventures.
Mithril Capital.
Lembas LLC.
It’s remarkable to me how someone like Thiel could be such a fan of Lord of the Rings, with its central themes of the corrupting influence of unchecked power and good triumphing over evil and evil’s will to control and dominate—then decide to become Gollum.
In reality "evil" people almost always want to genuinely make the world a better place, and they are fighting "ignorant" people who are dragging society down by not conforming to their golden vision. And then "evil" becomes largely a function of who you ask. It's the opposition that labels them evil, not society on the whole.
There are very few leaders ever who are straight up storybook style evil. Almost all of them were/are deranged people who convinced enough people of their ostensibly good vision to begin executing it.
No one came to power because they wanted to turn society into burning rumble while they ate babies during daily random execution time. It's all nuance and complication.
I would have to disagree here...lots of historical examples of criminal gangs, privateers, etc seeking to simply do harm.
The world, at the highest levels of competition and leadership, doesn't run on morals, it runs on unscrupulous force, conquest and domination. See: the human history for the past infinity years. Those who tried to maintain peace on morals instead of force, got eliminated form the gene pool. People should remember this more often.
Fortunately not so; some time around 50-100kya, humans rapidly became a whole lot nicer to each other.
Do you really think Putin, Xi and Khamenei are better stewards of the world than the West?
The West's introspective nature is good and all, but sometimes we unwittingly forget that there is actual evil in the world, and it's much worse than saying mean things on Twitter, or putting facts above feelings.
Students in Iran literally die protesting the regime, meanwhile students here who live a life of luxury and don't know what actual oppression is "protest"/simp for the Iranians (or one of their various proxies)...
Reminder - Iran offered support after 9/11 but instead we rebuffed them and called them part of the axis of evil just because. Right at a time when they were really modernizing again but our jingoistic attitudes entrenched the autocrats further.
They agreed to a nuclear deal that we tore up just because.
We overthrew their government.
We have presidential candidates singing “bomb bomb bomb Iran” for fun.
The reason we have a bad relationship with Iran and a large reason why they have bad leaders is because the US has made it so.
Did the US make Iran oppress women and minorities? Everytime Iran executes people who oppose the regime, is it because the US made them do it?
USA? Check (the new entrant). China? Check. Russia? Check. India? Check. Japan? Check (too few neighbors though) Iran? Check. Israel? Check. EU? Check. Saudi Arabia? An exception. Brazil? Another exception. UK? Check. (lol)
Even then, Iran still has strong ties with all of those neighbors. They trade actively, US sanctions be damned, and would pounce at the opportunity to invest in Iran if given the opportunity (Iran's industries are basically all owned by the Ayatollah and IRGC currently).
With it's middle finger to due process and courts, it clearly isn't. It's a particularly un-American administration.
Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
This is no more informative than saying "Trump is literally Hitler/Jesus (depending on your POV)".
> Can you at least give an example for your assertion?
Intelligence is needed to bring harm to adversaries. Determine the intel, determine the adversary.
Database of migrants, you do know that it's normal for governments to keep track of who's in their country, right? It's why passports have your name, picture, DOB, etc... on them...
That assertion is that Theil is leadership within a campaign.
The assertion is the campaign is intended to harm the vulnerable.
Funding an election to gain access to the data needed to build new datasets that specifically target a vulnerable segment of the population - this is evidence of who the campaign is targeting.
You're twisting your thinking in knots acting like the authority claimed by some news, then contradicting itself, creates authority to the contrary. Really you're just helping spread brain rot.
No comments yet
No comments yet
Also, that rhetoric of The West vs the world is a bit lazy. Things are more complex, even recent events prove The West is not a unified block where everyone thinks the same way.
Why on earth would anyone think Khomeini (who, of course, has been dead for 24 years) would ever have any say over the West?
You’re deeply afraid of a very strange bogeyman. It seems odd to pretend that Peter Thiel also fears dead men in politically/economically/socially irrelevant countries.
Khameini, of course, also has absolutely nothing to do with anything and is a nonsensical bogeyman. He just happens to still be alive.
I'm sure they're saying the same things about the West.
https://i.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/002/355/607/670
Saying it doesn't make it true though.
Everything described in the thread has been going on since the Patriot Act was signed in 2001.
As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton and see all links to other IMEI/SI collected worldwide.
By 2013 I could query those in Palantir on a Secret or SCI level depending on who held the data which would also aggregate and provide to me OSINT, LE reports or other data associated with those id
What’s new here?
Is it just that more people know about it now?
All the stuff I described above was public information as to both “capabilities” and used as casus belli for warrants (US) or kinetic actions (OCONUS).
This administration is, as with everything else, discarding the "norms" based restraint that previously applied to their use.
Did you mean PRISM? When I think of Proton, I think of a genuine effort to assist people in maintaining security.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISSCROSS/PROTON
“Lost in the noise” no more
The danger is when the fascists take charge and start abusing it.
And the new thing here is just that.
ftfy
For some reason I have been fixated on license plate readers (probably not a bad parallel to Palantir?). Plenty of people on HN justifiably decry license plate readers due to their violation of our privacy (to be sure there's an argument to made though since you are technically "in public" when driving — your privacy protections might be on shaky legal grounds).
But if license plate readers are already a reality (we know they are), why should only private actors have that data? This would make sense if we completely trusted those private actors, of course.
The opposite could be a public, open-source license plate reader that caught on (people using dash cams + open software) — the data sent to a collective, public database. (Perhaps the software strips out personal license plates — only logging tags of official or government vehicles?).
My first reaction is the degree to which that could be abused by ... stalkers? Truly a bad thing. But then I ask myself to what degree the private license plate readers are perhaps "being abused" (or will be more and more) and we don't even know about it.
As I say, a thought experiment that I find myself seeing merits both for and against.
He was also proud of paying more for some kind of exclusive license to the data, that Floc wasn't going to sell his surveillance data to other entities. I never really believed that.
Respond to, yes. Disclose, not necessarily. I believe ALPR data are exempt from disclosure in some - perhaps many, and maybe even most - states.
I'm not sure if you consider governments and police to be private actors?
I spoke with a sophisticated ANPR city-wide tracking vendor recently at a conference. From their video showing the system following vehicles in real-time, with detailed movement tracking, speed measurement, lane position, estimating model, age, demographic etc. when they couldn't see the registration plate, from all sorts of vantage points, it looked to me like they would know where basically everyone who drives is at all times as they moved around.
So, as a privacy advocate, I asked them about tracking and knowing where every driver is all the time, and they assured me: "It's ok. We send all this data immediatel;y to the police. The police are responsible for keeping the data safe. They only use it when they decide it's appropriate."
I was there interested in privacy and traffic monitoring, but there was almost nobody to speak with who seemed to think about privacy, except in a checkbox sort of way, e.g. "when you're in public there's no legal right to privacy" and "our systems are fully compliant with data protection".
I was taught many, many times growing up in the U.S. that people had a right to privacy, to free speech, to being considered innocent until proven guilty.
When governmental organizations police the speech of individuals for things that are critical of the regime, we lose our right to free speech.
When they download the contents of your phone when you travel, you lose the right to privacy.
When people are denied a writ of habeas corpus, when they are trafficked to countries that are not from and have never been to, we are considered guilty unless we have people "on the outside" who are capable of fighting for our return.
They aren't even trying to make an argument for this, outside of the cult of personality of the current regime, the belief that He can do no wrong. If you "both-sides" this you allow the trends to continue.
I'm curious to hear this argument. When I'm walking around a city, I'm in public as well. But I don't have to tell everybody who I am, and I would find facial recognition cameras spread around the city as a privacy violation.
Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side, and also is acting upon it by protesting.
Which part of journalism doesn't involve "political engagement"? Selecting which stories are covered, and how prominently? Choosing whom to interview and deciding what questions to ask? Which details are important enough to include, and which to omit? There is no cogent definition of "journalism" by which it is not an intrinsically political activity.
> Secondly, df you read his blog, he pretty clearly is an activist, as he focuses on a single topic, has chosen a side
That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
> and also is acting upon it by protesting.
Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
Also, most journalists just investigate and present stories by assembling what they found. And then they go and investigate another topic. But this person has just one topic.
I'd say people who consistently protest and consistently write about the topic are activists, yes. Do you need an even stronger definition?
You really don't want to get into categorizing speech as protected or not based on content.
"politically engaged" in this case refers to participating in the protests itself, or even taking a particular side. It's the opposite of being "objective", back when that was an ideal to strive for. Nowadays "objectivity" is being dropped in favor of "moral clarity".
>That is common among journalists; it is called a "beat".
No. Writing about resturants in New York is a "beat". Writing pieces consistently favoring one side is being an activist.
>Hundreds of millions of people all over the world protest. 2–4 million did so in the U.S. alone yesterday. Are they all "activists"?
Yes? Are you going to gatekeep "actvist" to people who are card carrying DSA members or something?
It all just sounded so implausible. It reads like someone trying to spin a story to convince others of what they already wanted to believe, or maybe that kid in grade school who tells stories he read or saw, but swaps himself for the main character.
Why should I believe this person more than any random internet crank?
I don't think I'll be able to bridge the gap by lecturing or pointing things out or huffing about journalism. But I have no choice but to try something, because I care for you and for us.
I guess what I'd say is, to keep from lecturing, it's very normal to be in detention for multiple days once you've tripped the first wire. There's been many stories like this shared, you can see some of the effects [here](https://www.google.com/search?sca_esv=05c894fd792d1e12&rlz=1...), no tricks, no bias, just a search for "cbp detention" in Google news.
Some headlines: ‘Like a jail cell’: Family of six detained at Washington state border facility for more than three weeks, German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego-area immigrant detention facility, Green card holder from New Hampshire 'interrogated' at Logan Airport, detained, ‘Felt like a kidnapping’: Wrong turn leads to 5-day detention ordeal
Closely related to this, I have been continually frustrated with the insistence of the left wing that it borders on immoral to take a job as a soldier, police officer, prison guard, or bailiff, and that there's no reason to raise any of their pay. That leaves the various armed forces around the country staffed with individuals who feel very little opposition to rote authoritarianism, corruption, and rule-by-force. There are relatively few individuals working in day-to-day policing or intelligence work that spend a lot of time thinking about the duty of agents of the state to follow its laws.
I've been thinking a lot about this same thing. I've seen a marked rise in the number of complaints about how "everyone in law enforcement is MAGA" and the like, and can't help but think: "this is what you wanted, right?"
There have been a lot of people trying really hard to make law enforcement (and adjacent roles) entirely unpalatable, and it appears they've been largely successful! I think what they failed to take into account is that they were only making those roles unpalatable tothose who already think like them in other ways, and forgot that there are a lot of people out there with fundamentally different beliefs who are not dissuaded by ACAB-adjacent arguments. Or, worse yet, are actively attracted to the way the role is being portrayed!
So in the end, it seems like they achieved their goals, but perhaps overlooked how those goals might have some unintended consequences.
I never really understood the argument, either. If you think policing is rife with prejudice and abuse of power, why are you trying to demonize the whole job? Why wouldn't you be signing up for it, instead? After all, if you think it's being done wrong, the best way to right that wrong is by doing it yourself and setting a better example.
I think the fact that people prefer to publicly demonize an entire thing, instead of doing the hard work of making it right, is one of the most insidious features of modern social media.
And yes, it's immoral to become a cop, just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties. There might be some mitigating factor like efficiently using it for infiltration and subversion because you didn't understand the morality of it until you were already employed, or being threatened into such a position.
Absolute wild take. Do you think every police department in the US oppresses minorities and infringes on civil rights or something?
>just as it was immoral to become a european camp guard in the forties
Even for the Allies? Given the prior sentence, I can't tell whether you're trying to allude to Nazi concentration camp guards, or actually think all camp guards are immoral.
There are some people who not only believe this but can make very compelling cases that this is the case. It's a dead-end rhetorical argument; yes, it is actually possible for literally every precinct in the US to violate people's civil rights.
The difference is that some people, like (I suspect) the person you're responding to, seem to think that the position itself--armed law enforcement officer--is archetypically immoral and should not exist as a function or profession in a civilization. This is naive to to the point of absurdity and underwrites most of the idiocy that's widely abound in anti-policing movements. In one breath they claim that "police" are as a class immoral, and in the next they proclaim that their political opponents must be "brought to justice" by armed people following a set of written laws. It's absurd!
[1] https://www.gbnews.com/news/renaud-camus-banned-migration-vi...
[2] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/08/what-eu...
I'm confused where this question is coming from. Do cases have to be exactly the same to draw parallels?
> It seems unlikely to me that a journalist who'd written flattering things about the AFD would be treated so badly trying to visit Germany?
Germany is a bad example, as they're deporting and planning to even revoke citizenship based on speech:
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/4/14/germany-orders-depo...
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/31/germany-gaza-protesters-...
https://www.dw.com/en/germany-could-withdraw-citizenship-due...