Comment by tavavex

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".