Comment by ceejayoz
1 day ago
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…
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.