The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to combine access to the sensitive and personal information of Americans into a single searchable system with the help of shady companies should terrify us – and should inspire us to fight back.

While couched in the benign language of eliminating government “data silos,” this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked “Total Information Awareness” plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress.

Under this order, ICE is trying to get access to the IRS and Medicaid records of millions of people, and is demanding data from local police. The administration is also making grabs for food stamp data from California and demanding voter registration data from at least nine states.

Much of the plan seems to rely on the data management firm Palantir, formerly based in Palo Alto. It’s telling that the Trump administration would entrust such a sensitive task to a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights.

Bad ideas for spending your taxpayer money never go away – they just hide for a few years and hope no one remembers. But we do. In the early 2000s, when the stated rationale was finding terrorists, the government proposed creating a single all-knowing interface into multiple databases and systems containing information about millions of people. Yet that plan was rightly abandoned after less than three years and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars, because of both privacy concerns and practical problems.

It certainly seems the Trump administration’s intention is to try once again to create a single, all-knowing way to access and use the personal information about everyone in America. Today, of course, the stated focus is on finding violent illegal immigrants and the plan initially only involves data about you held by the government, but the dystopian risks are the same.

Over fifty years ago, after the scandals surrounding Nixon’s “enemies list,” Watergate, and COINTELPRO, in which a President bent on staying in power misused government information to target his political enemies, Congress enacted laws to protect our data privacy. Those laws ensure that data about you collected for one purpose by the government can’t be misused for other purposes or disclosed to other government officials with an actual need. Also, they require the government to carefully secure the data it collects. While not perfect, these laws have served the twin goals of protecting our privacy and data security for many years.

Now the Trump regime is basically ignoring them, and this Congress is doing nothing to stand up for the laws it passed to protect us.

But many of us are pushing back. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where I’m executive director, we have sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and co-authored another amicus brief challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data. We’re not done and we’re not alone.

The Trump administration’s ongoing efforts to combine access to the sensitive and personal information of Americans into a single searchable system with the help of shady companies should terrify us – and should inspire us to fight back.

While couched in the benign language of eliminating government “data silos,” this plan runs roughshod over your privacy and security. It’s a throwback to the rightly mocked “Total Information Awareness” plans of the early 2000s that were, at least publicly, stopped after massive outcry from the public and from key members of Congress.

Under this order, ICE is trying to get access to the IRS and Medicaid records of millions of people, and is demanding data from local police. The administration is also making grabs for food stamp data from California and demanding voter registration data from at least nine states.

Much of the plan seems to rely on the data management firm Palantir, formerly based in Palo Alto. It’s telling that the Trump administration would entrust such a sensitive task to a company that has a shaky-at-best record on privacy and human rights.

Bad ideas for spending your taxpayer money never go away – they just hide for a few years and hope no one remembers. But we do. In the early 2000s, when the stated rationale was finding terrorists, the government proposed creating a single all-knowing interface into multiple databases and systems containing information about millions of people. Yet that plan was rightly abandoned after less than three years and millions of wasted taxpayer dollars, because of both privacy concerns and practical problems.

It certainly seems the Trump administration’s intention is to try once again to create a single, all-knowing way to access and use the personal information about everyone in America. Today, of course, the stated focus is on finding violent illegal immigrants and the plan initially only involves data about you held by the government, but the dystopian risks are the same.

Over fifty years ago, after the scandals surrounding Nixon’s “enemies list,” Watergate, and COINTELPRO, in which a President bent on staying in power misused government information to target his political enemies, Congress enacted laws to protect our data privacy. Those laws ensure that data about you collected for one purpose by the government can’t be misused for other purposes or disclosed to other government officials with an actual need. Also, they require the government to carefully secure the data it collects. While not perfect, these laws have served the twin goals of protecting our privacy and data security for many years.

Now the Trump regime is basically ignoring them, and this Congress is doing nothing to stand up for the laws it passed to protect us.

But many of us are pushing back. At the Electronic Frontier Foundation, where I’m executive director, we have sued over DOGE agents grabbing personal data from the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, filed an amicus brief in a suit challenging ICE’s grab for taxpayer data, and co-authored another amicus brief challenging ICE’s grab for Medicaid data. We’re not done and we’re not alone.

The party that used to flip their shit at the very idea of a federal database.

i can't wait until the pictures of my asshole are finally immortalized in a dark web database leak torrent of the entire government

The USA is turning into both shitholes, CCP run China and Vlad's Russia.

Holy fuck. All of that will be stolen in 3 seconds and the minute it launches Russia will be granted special access. It was nice knowing ya'll. Not really but. Yeah.

They'll contract musk to do it and call it X Internal Communications or XIC for short, and no one will be able to do trade or business without it.

I thought it was already immortalized via onlyfans.

i can't wait until the pictures of my asshole are finally immortalized in a dark web database leak torrent of the entire government

This combined with AI facial recognition, the US will be following China's example.

The only difference is that their database will be hacked by other countries.

And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads: And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name.

Revelation 13:16-17

You’d think the crowd that avoided barcodes at grocery stores and had meltdowns over “microchips” supposedly in the COVID vaccine would be foaming over this administration.

I mean also the fact that they're targeting youth specifically. I worry they will try to remove kids from homes and claim that parents who allow kids to transition are harmful to their own children.

I'm just beyond not thinking worst case scenario at this point.

I was being sarcastic.

They will for sure use things like phobias/weaknesses to psychologically influence you to get you out of their way.

The USA is turning into both shitholes, CCP run China and Vlad's Russia.

Start telling people that trump is building a national database of gun owners.

That was the whole point of DOGE. Access to the main servers of every government department, not "efficiency". If this data is combined with data from social media, it's possible to make quite detailed profiles of people.
Let's not forget Peter Thiel and the Mercers have been doing this since Brexit.
Also scary that Palantir got a big contract for the NATO.

It depends on the situation. Better information sharing is important for protecting vulnerable people and children. However, we absolutely shouldn't have every agency accessing sensitive information like medical records just cos they want to.

I'm really more concerned about what the US will do with it than what Russia might do with it.

There is no situation where collecting vast amounts of information benefits the general public. It only serves to increase the power of the government.

When you're tried in court for a crime, whether or not you actually committed the crime is not the only question that will be raised. There will be mountains of evidence about your "character" and basically "is this this type of person who could commit this crime?" The more information they collect, the more they can use against you as evidence of criminal intent.

In this way, they can basically make anyone they want into a criminal, and in a vindictive administration like we have right now (and most certainly will have again), that will most certainly be abused.

This combined with AI facial recognition, the US will be following China's example.

The only difference is that their database will be hacked by other countries.