Peter Thiel's ICE tracking system raises privacy concerns for the public

[allegorical oracle]

A $30 million no-bid contract with GOP megadonor Peter Thiel's Palantir Technologies will help Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents build a sophisticated system to prioritize people for deportation, including accused gang members and people who have overstayed their tourist visas. The contract with the Denver-based company calls for rolling out a prototype this fall.

The ImmigrationOS project reflects the approach DOGE has brought to the federal bureaucracy under Trump, as Musk's deputies seek technology-focused solutions to make government more efficient. Palantir already runs the ICE system used for Homeland Security investigations, and the new ImmigrationOS will merge data from multiple databases from the government and private sources.

snip

Civil liberties groups warn systems like ImmigrationOS pose significant risks to the general public, in part because it's unclear how the system would be limited only to people living illegally in the United States. Such a system, they warn, could easily be expanded to target any American.

Trump has suggested that he wants to remove not just immigrants but U.S. citizens if they're deemed dangerous, and said he's ordered Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/05/02/ice-deportation-tracking-palantir-thiel/83375538007/

[bluesbassman]

1. Up next: SHOW ME YOUR PAPERS!

[magicarpet]

2. ..... or,.... jump out of this helicopter from 300 feet up,....

..... sorry parachutes not allowed.

It is called the disappearing of political instigators - under the rules of General Pinochet. Poof,... never to be seen or heard from again.

[JustAnotherGen]

3. He's another South African

Trying to put his apartheid boot on the neck of America - right?

[SARose]

4. Peter Thiel Just Pledged $1.2B in Palantir Stock--Here's What He's Not Saying

Khac Phu Nguyen
Thu, May 1, 2025

Peter Thiel is taking chips off the table just not in the way you'd expect. The Palantir (NASDAQ PLTR) co-founder has pledged over $1.2 billion worth of shares, or roughly 10% of his stake, as collateral for personal debt. It's the first time this appears in Palantir's proxy filings and it comes after a blockbuster 2024, when Thiel sold about one-third of his PLTR holdings for $1.5 billion pre-tax. He's not alone. A wave of insider selling has followed Palantir's near-60% rally since Trump's inauguration, with even President Stephen Cohen offloading over $337 million worth of shares in Q1.

Snip

Palantir may be outperforming the S&P 500 (SPY), but the sell signals are starting to pile up. When founders and insiders race for the exits after a rally, it's rarely by accident. The company still has momentum, sure. But if you're buying here, just know: the people who built it are already cashing in. Emphasis mine.

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Interesting…

[SARose]

5. What We Must Understand About the Dark Enlightenment Movement

MAR 24, 2025 6:00 AM CT

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Marinetti’s stronghold over Mussolini has striking parallels to America today—particularly with the rise of the “Dark Enlightenment” movement and its most vocal steward: software engineer and blogger Curtis Yarvin.

Largely ignored by academic philosophers, the “Dark Enlightenment” movement and Yarvin have curried favor and influence with tech executives in recent years. A software engineer by training, Yarvin has become a kind of official philosopher for tech leaders like PayPal cofounder Peter Thiel and Mosaic founder Marc Andreessen. Not unlike the Futurists, Yarvin advocates for replacing democracy with a kind of techno-feudal state—for the government to be run like a corporation, with the president as its “CEO.” This new system is elitist—“humans fit into dominance-submission structures” Yarvin wrote in 2008; and it’s authoritarian—“If Americans want to change their government, they’re going to have to get over their dictator phobia,” he said in 2012. There are shades of Yarvin’s philosophy in Thiel’s 2009 essay for the Cato Institute, where he wrote “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible.” And Thiel, through his venture capital firm, Founders Fund, was an early investor in the blogger’s startup company Urbit. As for Yarvin’s controversial opinions and whether or not Thiel holds them, Yarvin has said that his patron is “fully enlightened,” as he had been “coaching Thiel.” What’s more, in a recent interview with the Hoover Institution, Andreessen quoted Yarvin and called him a “friend.”

What’s even more alarming is that Yarvin’s outsize influence on tech executives has now made its way to Washington. The signs are everywhere: Yarvin was a feted guest at Trump’s so-called “Coronation Ball” in January 2025. Vice President J.D. Vance, a protegee of Thiel’s, spoke admiringly of the blogger’s influence on his thinking when interviewed on a podcast in July 2024. And while Andreessen’s role in the Trump White House is unofficial, The Washington Post reported in January 2025 that the executive “has been quietly and successfully recruiting candidates for positions across Trump’s Washington.” Meanwhile, Elon Musk, though not outwardly tipping his hat to Yarvin, seemingly has a similar philosophy: In 2020, Musk told the Wall Street Journal that the “government is simply the largest corporation.” Five years later, Musk has been using his position as an unofficial advisor to the second Trump administration and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to operationalize what Yarvin has called “a hard reboot” of the government.

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More

Even more interesting…

[allegorical oracle]

7. That fascinating -- thank you. For others, I'm adding the link to the Time essay you're

referencing:

https://time.com/7269166/dark-enlightenment-history-essay/

[SARose]

8. Thanks

The link is there under More.

[allegorical oracle]

6. Seems the present system isn't exactly fail-safe, either, as innocents are being summarily

disappeared. Could be why DOGE has been trying to collect names from federal agencies. Hope the courts hold.