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Is government surveillance scarier then tech company surveillance? (feddit.online)
submitted 3 days ago by animemann80@feddit.online to c/privacy@lemmy.ca
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There's a difference between:

  • The Federal Government spying on people & detaining dissidents
  • Palantir conducting espionage & harvesting data from everybody

The first one is more by the government in which they have legislative power to enforce rules on the population (which is something Palantir does not possess) also giving power to both LE and the judiciary on detaining people. Usually, it's a politician who creates these laws for their own gain. It's already been done using AV under the excuse of "think of the children" when the truth is closer to deanonymizing the internet.

The second is done by a private company, like Palantir: they do not carry legal power on detaining people as they are not the police nor the justice system. The only thing they can do is harvest data from people and monitor them, but even if they witnessed something "illegal" they still can't arrest or imprison people themselves (while both the government or NSA has that leverage as five eyes are already doing that).

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[-] slazer2au@lemmy.world 12 points 3 days ago

They are the same due to the company providing the information to the governments to take action.

[-] VitoRobles@lemmy.today 6 points 3 days ago

Tech companies doing surveillance? Their goal is to make money.

Government doing surveillance? Their goal is to arrest/lock people up and stay in power.

Tech companies cannot get data from the government. Government CAN demand data from the tech company.

[-] Wolf314159@startrek.website 3 points 2 days ago

Tech company surveillance and data collection is government surveillance and data collection.

[-] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

It's the same.

[-] spinne@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

Tech company surveillance because they'll sell the information to anybody who asks and pays for it, including government. This is how government circumvents right to privacy and illegal search and seizure. They don't need a warrant if they have something the tech companies want.

[-] snoons@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

Which is likely the government.

[-] artifex@piefed.social 3 points 3 days ago

It’s not like you can opt out of one or the other. Objectively it’s be better if broad scale data collection by private companies was illegal since then you’d have some confidence that only the govt was spying on you, and their budget for it would be smaller than Facebook and palantir’s.

[-] WasabiWabbit@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago

They’re all in bed with one another so all the same.

this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2026
8 points (100.0% liked)

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