from Hacker News

Finding Things the Government Might Know About You

by anticorporate on 4/25/25, 9:18 PM with 15 comments

  • by potato3732842 on 4/26/25, 12:23 AM

    Part of me really finds it hard to take this seriously because the NYT is exactly the kind of publication where authors would not too long ago gloat how it's so cool that the government is invasively monitoring people when it was being used for whatever they consider good (and the readership would largely agree) and I cynically assume that the shift in opinion is a reflection of immediate political reality and not one of principals.

    Part of me likes seeing these articles in the NY times because I'm a naive idiot and think there's a shred of a chance it signals a shift of opinion among those people and that perhaps there is a future in which all the excitement about data driven policy and action of the 2010s and early 2020s is looked at in the rearview mirror the way we look at the eugenics movement.

  • by rpgwaiter on 4/26/25, 2:14 AM

    “People on the left think this is good because it makes giving social services easier”

    Source? I’d like to meet a single person that feels this way. People on the left in my experience would much rather just give money directly to people, UBI-style. Adding stipulations and verification and administration costs so much money that could just be cash in people’s pockets.

    Like, the whole idea of food stamps is that “these poor people are too stupid or deviant to spend money on the ‘correct’ products and services. Daddy government knows best and will restrict the benefits to processed cold food at approved chain supermarkets and gas stations”

  • by csdvrx on 4/25/25, 10:37 PM

    In the last discussion about such issues, someone linked https://www.abc.net.au/listen/programs/rearvision/the-dark-s... which is worth a read for past abuses:

    > Military authorities in California requested census data to identify the Japanese-American population. Then in 1942, president Franklin Roosevelt issued an executive order to authorise their removal.

  • by OsrsNeedsf2P on 4/25/25, 10:01 PM

  • by JKCalhoun on 4/25/25, 10:22 PM

    Somehow "314" was dropped from the title.