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Comment by AndrewKemendo | Hacker News Reader

Help me make sense of this as an old timer because I’m lost

Everything described in the thread has been going on since the Patriot Act was signed in 2001.

As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton and see all links to other IMEI/SI collected worldwide.

By 2013 I could query those in Palantir on a Secret or SCI level depending on who held the data which would also aggregate and provide to me OSINT, LE reports or other data associated with those id

What’s new here?

Is it just that more people know about it now?

All the stuff I described above was public information as to both “capabilities” and used as casus belli for warrants (US) or kinetic actions (OCONUS).

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They've had these authoritarian toys for a while, but they've been careful to use them more subtly in the past.

This administration is, as with everything else, discarding the "norms" based restraint that previously applied to their use.

Fully disagree. This was entirely what snowden was trying to make public and he was a broken record on precisely what I described above.

Everything I wrote can be validated that it was available for the world to see by 2013.

What's new is they've started using all of that more aggressively to detain people who objectively, without the shadow of a doubt, have done nothing wrong but somehow displease the party.

From my point of view, wheter this is new or not is secondary. What happened is very bad and it is important to talk about it.

Generally, in my lifetime (at 37 years old now), wide political awareness starting around 2004, Patriot Act / mass government data conversation was more about "This can be abused!", the most concrete story I had ever even close to the topic was by my junior year english teacher (17 years old) relaying that someone told her someone googled "how do terrorists make a bomb" and the FBI paid them a visit. Here, I'm a bit stunned to see we're investing in screening and detaining visitors if they seem to hold an opinion that doesn't imply any sort of violent threat.

Unlikely, but the person may have looked into it further. Agriculture stores that sell stuff like ammonium nitrate are all participants in counter terror programs.

Nothing has changed except the standard for denial of entry has been broadened here. There's a long history of denying entry to people for what their views are, this isn't new at all. You can just do a search and find examples of white supremacists, and imams and Islamic scholars, as well as probably other groups being denied entry to not only the US but it happens in Europe too and it goes back across administrations. So in other words, it's not just under the current administration where your political views could get you denied entry to the US.

What change this time is starting to happen more to white people instead of brown and black people.

Precisely this and its measurable, based on explicit statements from voters who wanted more selective enforcement, when that was never even theoretically given as an option.

> As early as 2010, I was able to look up ANY IMEI/IMSI combo in Proton

Did you mean PRISM? When I think of Proton, I think of a genuine effort to assist people in maintaining security.

No, this:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/CRISSCROSS/PROTON

Retrieval and association is orders of magnitude better

“Lost in the noise” no more

What's new here is that Peter Thiel is a libertarian who wants to destroy democracies because he's a christian lunatic who believes in armageddon and the anti-christ and sees democracies and multi-national organizations like the UN and the EU as tsaid anti-christ. This is not a joke, even though I wish it was because it sounds so ridiculous. Palantir is not our friend. And they probably WILL read my comment.

> he's a lunatic

ftfy

The real danger isn't the capability or even them collecting the information.

The danger is when the fascists take charge and start abusing it.

And the new thing here is just that.

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