Agencies are reportedly pooling immigration data, Social Security numbers, and more into a central database. FPF is suing to learn how deep it goes.

cross-posted from: https://sh.itjust.works/post/57002935

The Trump administration is on its way to creating every authoritarian’s dream: a centralized database containing intimate details about every resident of this country, fully searchable by artificial intelligence. This powerful tool would empower the government to conduct previously unimagined levels of surveillance and harassment against its own people.

Freedom of the Press Foundation is suing the administration for documents behind the database. We know that this isn’t just something that the Trump administration would exploit; once built, it’s unlikely any administration could resist the urge to weaponize our personal information.

This nightmare privacy scenario began one year ago, when President Donald Trump issued an executive order that expanded data sharing across the federal government. The administration touted the order, “Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos,” as a way to target fraud within a supposedly bloated government.

The order was no such thing.

    • Xylian@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      4 hours ago

      My fucking thought. Many states in Germany are fucking stupid and are contracting Palantir for police work. And for some illegal reasons they have access to the digital medical records of all citizen who did not opt-out.

    • Semperverus@lemmy.worldEnglish
      3·
      8 hours ago

      Have you been to the DMV, or Department of Human Services?

      They do not talk to eachother. At all. Your personal documents you carry on you are the database entry.

      • palordrolap@fedia.io
        3·
        7 hours ago

        That just means that the lowly, customer-facing peons that work for government offices don’t have access to any such master database.

        Most people work for companies that hold information inaccessible to them. Other government databases would definitely be on that list.

  • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
    12·
    17 hours ago

    that database is PALINTIR linked most likely, and likely targeting leftists, progressive democratic dissidents mostly.

  • Eager Eagle@lemmy.worldEnglish
    44·
    21 hours ago

    I wish it was just trump. Remember Snowden in 2013? I can only imagine the level of surveillance they have nowadays.

    • IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.comEnglish
      10·
      19 hours ago

      Marketing too… You look at the history of psychology and marketing and how it was bad with cable tv and magazines and politics as well in that era. But now we have our entire lives tracked and psychological manipulation working on us basically constantly.

      The human story isn’t a genuine one anymore, the path of humanity is created artificially. Our own lives probably aren’t the natural lives we were meant to have. We are losing genuine humanity.

      …and this is what we are supposed to be willing to die to defend.

  • GodlessCommie@lemmy.worldEnglish
    13·
    21 hours ago

    As if we haven’t been under constant surveillance and our privacy data mined for corporations for decades.

    • IAmYouButYouDontKnowYet@reddthat.comEnglish
      10·
      20 hours ago

      Regular Americans don’t understand.

      And people always talk about privacy issues being about law and legality. But the darker issue is the info being used for manipulation.

      Dystopia has been here, but everyone is ignorant. That’s sounds mean but it’s true. Like if you detox from all the privilege and the entertainment people use to escape reality, then you start to see how far we have gone into the dark dystopic side of humanity. It’s already to the point it’s too late.