Awaiting the totally reasonable HN commenters who will defend this practice.

Edit: YESSSS -4 points; those are rookie numbers! Help me pump them up, HN technofascists! Prove my point for me!

> Putting one of those participant’s phone numbers into WhatsApp reveals a profile picture of a law enforcement patch. A pawn with wings sits in the center, surrounded by lightning bolts. The patch reads, “Laredo Sector Tech Ops PITT,” indicating there is also a Predictive Intelligence Targeting Team in the Laredo Sector.

https://www.aviatorgear.com/p-52057-laredo-sector-tech-ops-p...

Minority Report anyone?

I remember back in ye olde dark ages when "big data" was the hot buzzword people of a certain bent couldn't get enough of this kind of stuff. Everyone was jacking off nonstop to the idea that we could just hoover up everyone's data ad then "efficiently" or "proactively" dispatch enforcement resources. People talked all sorts of big talk about stuff like cross referencing people's Home Depot spend with permit requirements, identifying small businesses that don't have healthy enough financials to be fully compliant, cross referencing invoices and delivery receipts to identify overloaded trucks, and generally finding all sorts of ways to fine the crap out of people for the pettiest of petty deviance.

Everyone's head was too far up their asses to look at the magic crystal ball called "history" and realize that these systems would be used to go after <checks notes> weed dealers and brown people.

Be careful what you wish for I guess.

This comes straight out of Shoshana Zuboff's Surveillance Capitalism book. If you haven't: read it.

And that's why need to keep using cash and non-KYC'd crypto.

palantir?