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.
There is no single database for all of this information (but thanks to Palantir there will be for all of this and more), so that is definitely new.
The tip of the authoritarian easy button iceberg:
•The Central Intelligence Agency has been granted increased access to domestic law enforcement databases, further blurring the line between foreign intelligence and domestic policing.
•The so-called Department of Government Efficiency got direct access to Treasury Department payment systems, including Social Security numbers, names, and birthdays, according to a whistleblower.
•Immigration and Customs Enforcement got access to Medicaid recipients’ data and banking information.
•The Transportation Security Administration is now sharing biometric passenger info with immigration enforcement, turning every airport check-in into a potential trap.
It depends on how you want to define “database” as to whether or not this already existed. Traditional database like a SQL database… Probably. But… Look into the Utah Data Center.
Gotta thank Oracle too. Ellison/Oracle has been pushing multiple countries to do this consolidation, not just the US