BREAKING: Trump Admin Changes ER Abortion Policy
Also, welcome to the Surveillance State, brought to you by Palantir
ABORTION
Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services announced yesterday that they will no longer enforce a Biden Administration interpretation of federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide abortion care when it is a necessary stabilizing treatment.
Last year, the state of Idaho argued at the Supreme Court (where the case was dismissed), that because of their anti-abortion statute, ER’s are only required to provide abortion care when a woman will absolutely die if no other course is taken. That merely ‘might die’ or even ‘will be severely harmed’ is insufficient.
Women in anti-abortion states must go bleed out in parking lots until they are deserving of care. Women have died because of this policy. One hospital system in Idaho has been regularly transferring pregnant women in medical crises out of the state via helicopter to receive appropriate care.
SURVEILLANCE STATE
Right after the inauguration I wrote about how to protect your data given the potential ways the Trump administration could mine and use it. We are now learning that Trump & co are planning what looks to be a worst case scenario.
The Administration is quietly building what looks a lot like a master database of Americans' personal information, and they’ve tapped Palantir, the data-mining tech company founded by Peter Thiel and run by Alex Karp, to do it.
Since Trump’s return to office, Palantir’s federal contracts have exploded according to the New York Times.
The company has received more than $113 million in federal government spending since Mr. Trump took office, according to public records, including additional funds from existing contracts as well as new contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and the Pentagon. (This does not include a $795 million contract that the Department of Defense awarded the company last week, which has not been spent.)
Palantir’s specialty is organizing, analyzing and presenting data. Their software, Foundry, is already being used to merge data across agencies. When I say “data” that can seem very obscure. But this is very personal and very specific. This data can include tax records, medical claims, immigration forms and bank accounts all put together in a single place.
Privacy advocates, former Palantir employees, and digital rights groups have started raising red flags about how this is about consolidating power and punishing dissent.
A former Palantir engineer told the Times, “Data that is collected for one reason should not be repurposed for other uses. Combining all that data, even with the noblest of intentions, significantly increases the risk of misuse.”
They’re building a real time, data driven portrait of every single American that could then eventually be combined with information from other tech platforms to do things like track what you say and do on social media, where you are at any given moment, how you shop and how you vote.
Data analysis done by Palantir is already being used by ICE to track migrant movements in real time, and given the actions of this Administration I expect its use on this front to become even more dystopian. Palantir is currently working with DHS, HHS, DOD and the IRS. What happens if they decide they want to track people who are critics of the administration, journalists or political opponents?
We do not want the government to create a massive private corporation-run, AI-driven database to track Americans.
And at a time when the Congress, the people who are charged with passing bills to protect us, admit they didn’t even read saying that no AI restrictions can be passed. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene recently confessed “Full transparency, I did not know about this section on pages 278-279 of the OBBB that strips states of the right to make laws or regulate AI for 10 years.”
Trump ran on confronting the so-called “deep state,” but what he’s building is far more dangerous. This isa privatized, parallel surveillance structure with no public accountability and near-total access to our lives.
That’s as deep state, Black Mirror, as it gets and we all need to try to understand better what is happening.
By outsourcing the government’s eyes and ears to a corporation like Palantir, he’s not dismantling centralized power, he’s supercharging it. Elon may be out of the Oval office with his tail between his legs trying to raise Tesla stock, but the development of a private tech empire aligned with an authoritarian political agenda is continuing unabated and it is one of the things I am most terrified of.
One of the major concerns with Palantir having access to all this data is the risk of a data breach. Here’s things you can do now to protect yourself:
Take your personal identifying information off the Internet. I used DeleteMe (affiliate link with 20% off) .
Revoke third-party app permissions: Go through your Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Apple accounts and remove access from apps you no longer use or don’t recognize. Apps often siphon off data in the background, even if you haven’t opened them in years.