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Caesar's wife must be above suspicion, but Trump's transition team and ultimately cabinet, seems rife with conflicts of ignorance. The Intercept reports that:
Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel, will likely assist the Trump Administration in its efforts to track and collect intelligence on immigrants, according to a review of public records by The Intercept. Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency's Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.
I guess this is what happens when you elect a businessman to political office: they run it like a business.
Working closely with a President-elect who has pledged to dramatically expand ICE, Thiel's varied connections to the immigration agency place him in a position to potentially benefit financially from a deportation campaign that carries highly personal stakes for millions of Americans.
They always say: you have nothing to worry about, if you have nothing to hide.
Palantir, which is backed by the CIA's venture capital arm, did not respond to a request for comment regarding its ICE contracts and concerns over potential conflicts of interest. Peter Thiel spokesperson Jeremiah Hall declined to comment on a list of emailed queries, including a question asking whether Thiel has yet signed the Trump transition ethics agreement.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @10:49PM
The big problem is when they reveal such intentions its already too late (probably). So we have to take credible threats seriously lest we get to the "too late" part. No one thought the government was massively spying on all citizens, no one thought we tortured people until Gitmo became highly public. Etc. etc., we are already well on the path to dictatorship, police state, dystopian nightmare type shit. Will we cross the line? I hope not, but I'm not going to sit here pretending its not even possible.
I get that the ",,, are soon to become a felony ..." sounds like there should be proof to the claim, but aside from that it really isn't too exaggerated. We already developed "free speech zones" and require protesters to get permits, etc. That goes against the whole point of a protest. BLM is blocking freeways not because they're idiots, but because that is the only way to get modern society to pay attention. We're all so connected to devices / media, and a massive amount of that media is controlled so that large protests don't gain traction with other parts of the country.
Yes we have lots to worry about, and I'm pretty sure there are already laws that can get you arrested for protesting in a public space if you don't vacate when asked. But hey, even if they don't have those laws it doesn't really matter, they can get some agent provocateurs to provide the reasons...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 13 2016, @11:29PM
So we have to take credible threats seriously lest we get to the "too late" part.
I fully agree, but the exaggeration of credible threats actually undermines their credibility and seems to further polarize people's views. When facts and accuracy do not matter, then all that is left is opinion and misinformation being pushed by people with an agenda.
The "too late" part is one of the most concerning because there is no need to exaggerate the facts of Gitmo or NSA domestic survailence programs, but there is some type of political "alarm fatigue" or enough pro-government propaganda that makes people not give a shit about these issues.