Tech startups selling to police | Hacker News Reader

Tech startups selling to police

economist.com

77 pointsedward70 comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20231105213806/https://www.econo...

I find it bemusing that this is presented as somehow suprising and clashing with formerly held SV ideals. As if a lot of these companies don't already have mass user survellance as their primary business model.

>But even from this remove it was possible to glean certain patterns, and one that recurred as regularly as an urban legend was the one about how someone would move into a commune populated by sandal-wearing, peace-sign flashing flower children, and eventually discover that, underneath this facade, the guys who ran it were actually control freaks; and that, as living in a commune, where much lip service was paid to ideals of peace, love and harmony, had deprived them of normal, socially approved outlets for their control-freakdom, it tended to come out in other, invariably more sinister, ways. Applying this to the case of Apple Computer will be left as an exercise for the reader, and not a very difficult exercise.

-Neal Stephenson, 1999, "In the Beginning was the Command Line"

The more things change, the more they stay the same, eh?

It was on this HN forum that I was first introduced to the remarkable essay on the Californian Ideology[0].

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Californian_Ideology

>Above all, they are passionate advocates of what appears to be an impeccably libertarian form of politics - they want information technologies to be used to create a new 'Jeffersonian democracy' where all individuals will be able to express themselves freely within cyberspace. However, by championing this seemingly admirable ideal, these techno-boosters are at the same time reproducing some of the most atavistic features of American society, especially those derived from the bitter legacy of slavery.

I suppose the loose definition of remarkable could indeed technically apply to the assertion that "capitalists" jumped on board the http and tcp/ip bandwagon to reassert plantation slavery.

Regardless, you've missed the wider context of the anecdote. Stephenson is referring to the stereotypical experiences on hippie communes during the boomer scene era, well before Barbrook and Cameron's concerns about some sort of subversion or other. They even explicitly specify that some pre-90s era of the bay area ideology obviously knew better, so they're in direct disagreement with Stephenson here. We have to pick one or the other. Frankly, I think I know which I prefer between "There's more continuity between the hippies and the yuppies than you typically expect in the valley" and "investors are supercharging democratized communication because it will make you racist and capitalist, which are equally bad".

For the rest of the context, you can read the essay here, which I think is a legal copy; Stephenson himself did also distribute it as a pdf: http://project.cyberpunk.ru/lib/in_the_beginning_was_the_com...

Thanks so much for that full essay! Absolutely fascinating.

I'm not a Californian, nor even an American, but understanding the culture behind the last 40 years of digital technology... and why, after staring out so hopeful it's gone so wrong, is important stuff.

Right, basically the entire post-2000-crash version of silicon valley has been built on selling user data to advertisers or selling ways to use that data to advertisers.

You're not wrong, but I'd argue there's some gulf between using personal data to show people banner ads for overpriced sneakers and using personal data to help law enforcement throw people in jail. You could certainly do the former but draw the line at the latter.

With the former it's less about the outcome—seeing obnoxious Nike ads on the internet—and more about the principle of not wanting your data to be collected, even if nothing nefarious ever comes of it. With the latter you're seeing that worst case scenario come to life.

Are you saying Google and Meta don’t provide your personal information to law enforcement? Last I checked they do that whenever they’re asked to and to great levels of success (especially the list of all phones that were found within the area of a crime).

They definitely do, but there's a difference between being subpoenaed (i.e., forced to comply) and deliberately choosing to work with LE because it's profitable to you.

A cop can force me to show him my emails or text messages, but that doesn't mean I want to or that I'm making money any off of it. On the other hand, if I offer to let them read my emails for the low price of $10...

And literally anyone can be subpoenaed in the same fashion—FB and Google aren't unique in that regard. LE could subpoena the guy who runs your local deli and force him to hand over a list of every customer who came in on a certain day.

If argue that there isnt that much of a gulf. It's a bit further down a slippery slope.

I'd also argue that ideals in Silicon Valley are, cultrually, fully subordinated to money anyway so... it's probably a moot point how much of a gulf there is.

Hard agree re. money and ideals. I guess what I'd counter is that someone with a pinch of integrity (so not the current incarnation of SV lol) could absolutely build a business from questionable data practices without going whole hog into narc-dom. Like how a casino can be predatory in its own right without also funneling money into the mob.

SV ideals? Besides the fake techo-optimism peddled to provide techies an excuse to join the party, there is but one "ideal".

Looking back I'm seeing it as an effective recruiting technique for college grads.

The values of SV have changed. I imagine that The Economist are thinking of figures like Steve Jobs who once typified the Valley. Jobs was once a highly regarded influential figure who described computers as "like a bicycle for the mind". Later, such thinkers gave way to a new generation of people like Mark Zuckerberg, for whom users are "dumb fucks".

For those absorbed in the other hair-splitting/derailing thread, the word "piling" generally means to rush in foolishly with zealous enthusiasm (or worse, to do so without control), so the Economist headline contains a note of subtle judgement.

Silicon Valley and the VC's who fund it will take anybodies money if they could.

I say this on the biggest VC platform.

Yup. Marc Andreessen is out there heavily begging Saudi princes for some cash.

Saudi princes are some of the largest buyers of PII. I even worked* for a company that would sell data to the US government, and then sell the Saudis the data on what data the US government was using. I have no idea what they are doing with all of it, but they certainly keep a lot of companies profitable.

* I left shortly after the company pivoted into being a PII broker.

Surely they also sold the US government the data on what the Saudis were buying, too? To do otherwise would just be leaving money on the table! /s(ish)

> I even worked* for a company that would sell data to the US government, and then sell [...] the data on what data the US government was using.

That sounds odd, at best.

If the company were considering doing this sketchy-sounding thing, seems like they should've checked with their gov't customer points of contact, or gone straight to the State Dept.

Maybe they did do this, and were operating under permission/instructions, or maybe they didn't.

(Why it's believable that a US tech company would sell out its US gov't customers: many facets of "tech" industry have had such irresponsible, sociopathic practices, since before many current decision-makers entered the workforce, that I think there's no longer much intuitive sense about what's OK and what's not.)

Not just that, but Andersen and Thiel (especially Thiel) aren’t just amoral greedy men, but rather explicitly pro-authoritarians.

Silicon Valley has a fascism problem.

> Silicon Valley has a fascism problem.

I can imagine that if you see authoritarianism through the lens of the "constrained versus unconstrained" views of human nature a la Sowell, then it makes sense that Silicon Valley, ever so optimistic about the perfectibility of mankind, would tend towards that direction.

>Silicon Valley, ever so optimistic about the perfectibility of mankind

Is this sarcasm?

Coz from what I can see Silicon Valley is primarily concerned with (in order of importance) 1. $$$, 2. $$$$ and 3. $$$$$

Right, but in order to make that increasing profit year after year you need to pose that there is some vast frontier of unaccomplished innovation. There needs to be justification on some level for ever new iPhones and such.

Or, a frontier of yet unaccomplished exploitation.

I’m assuming you meant Andreesen but I could be wrong, I just don’t know a famous VC Anderson though I’m sure there is at least one.

I’ve listened to both Andreesen and Thiel and they both seem pretty anti-authoritarian, but perhaps they just espouse one ideology and practice another?

> ... both Andreesen and Thiel and they both seem pretty anti-authoritarian ...

Yet Thiel runs Palantir, which is arguably any authoritarian wet dream.

For Thiel: https://time.com/6092844/peter-thiel-power-biography-the-con...

Of course he doesn’t go around openly saying he’s pro fascism. Having listened to many of his speeches it’s not surprising he is though.

For Andreesen it’s not as clear there’s a direct link but after having listened to his Lex Friedman episode, I came of thinking he also thinks democracy won’t work.

You’re right; and most bakeries will sell their bread to anyone that can pay for it.

This is not a very good analogy. Bread is not a dual use technology like surveillance tech.

There are plenty of classes of goods that are heavily regulated. For example, explosives.

Sure, and nearly every government can buy explosives.

Can't speak for anyone else but I certainly don't consider bombsmonger an honorable profession.

Nobody said anything about honor. I was simply stating the fact that cherry-picking surveillance tech as suddenly “not to be sold to governments” is as equally absurd as suggesting that weapons manufacturers should not sell any weapons to any government.

Of course they will.

It's not cherry picking to point out that some technologies are more like arms than they are like ads, and that we should treat the creators as we do arms dealers. However that happens to be.

Okay. The article is about SV selling to America’s police.

America’s police has no problem acquiring arms.

I’d argue that, in effect, they’re already treated as arms dealers, who sell to police all the time.

And I suppose the Ukrainians are supposed to just defend themselves with sticks?

Why not? It's what we expect of palestinians isn't it?

This is a garbage take. I’d strongly reconsider your stance on what is or isn’t simple about the Israel/Gaza conflict.

For one, it turns out that Hamas had a lot more than sticks on 10/7.

The only simple thing about this conflict is that nothing about it is simple. Simplistic takes like this are meaningless trash, and I really genuinely mean that with no ill intent.

Good Lord, this is a morally bankrupt take on so many levels.

LEOs are ideal enterprise clients. Predictable, high budgets, very easy lock in, one success will create many other opportunities.

Eventually the surveillance drone will identify the criminal, sell the criminals information to a bondsman, and try to line up a defense attorney for the defendant, and set a court date. Imagine the efficiencies.

You could deploy them to schools as well to increase the funnel velocity.

> funnel velocity.

I read that as "funeral velocity"... maybe its all the school shootings that happen but that was a rather macabre.

Archive with full text of article: https://archive.ph/oYZEv

> That Silicon Valley is helping American law enforcement snoop on troublemakers may seem odd.

Nope! Not odd at all.

We have allowed the SV money folks to hide behind some version of the hacker ideal for too long.

The go wherever cash and tech meet.

At the end of the day, government agencies are just another customer, no different than a private sector customers. It's not that tech companies have some nefarious intent to spy on Americans, all they want to do is sell more of whatever it is that they make.

When you reduce it to a simplistic economic take you miss a much broader and graver reality. Dwight D. Eisenhower, a US president and 5-star general no less coined a phrase for it; "The Military Industrial Complex". Today it's the "Data Industrial Complex", but no matter. In his farewell address to the American nation he noted the tension between the economic prosperity obtained by armaments with the dangerous "acquisition of unwarranted influence".

While Ike had a point, that point is also usually blown way the hell out of proportion by people with zero experience in foreign relations, national security, or the military itself. Usually to make some ideological point it's arguable whether Ike himself would have agreed with.

We're seeing right before our eyes why a defense sector is a crucial part of a Western democracy's economy, and if the struggles to keep Ukraine in the fight don't convince people, just wait until Xi Jinping gets a bug up you-know-where about Taiwan.

In my philosophy one should not dismiss the words of an intelligent or experienced person because other fools misunderstood them.

I think you're right that naive people adopted Eisenhower's slogan as a banner for their own, sometime quite nutty theories.

"Military Industrial COmplex" has such a theatrically sinister sound to it doesn't it? It almost immediately conjures an image of the Death Star.

But I'm interested here in the point that this highly credible figure did make, and why, and that it's ever more important today in a world where kinetics and geophysical boundaries mean less than networks of business and financial relations.

As a pro-defence person, I sometimes use the example of the Claymore mine to explain this to hawkish, but simplistic thinkers;

On one side it has the words "THIS SIDE TOWARDS ENEMY" written in large clear letters. One can only cringe at the misadventures preceding that necessity, but I think the same needs writing on a lot of other technologies.

> a defense sector is a crucial part of a Western democracy's economy,

More. A defence sector is a crucial part of any nations existence. It is deflating that to a mere "economy" that is problematic. Because a bad defence sector can serve an economy while undermining an existence.

That's happens when, through expedient financial alliances with the wrong sorts you end up with the pointy end facing towards your own people and not the enemy.

The difference is that government money is recession proof

Except government buy those stuffs for your money and don't ask you, if you agree. Imagine that in private sector - that company would not exist.

Who wants (to use) the data we are collecting on people. If advertisers don't want it, we'll sell (access to) it to the government.

This is a great article. For more background on this growing industry, I recommend a recent academic study on the use of surveillance technology at the Los Angeles Police Department. The book documents the LAPD's use of data brokerage firms that collect and aggregate info from public records and private sources (e.g., Palantir), as well as automatic license plate readers (ALPR’s) which record vehicles are they move around the city, and Suspicious Activity Reports from police and civilians, which include reports of mundane activities such as using binoculars, drawing diagrams, or taking pictures or "video footage with no apparent aesthetic value." All this data ultimately gets parked in Fusion Center facilities built after 9/11 where federal, state and local law enforcement agencies collaborate to collect, aggregate, analyze and share information. As the author observes, "The use of data in law enforcement is not new. For almost a century, police have been gathering data, e.g., records of citations, collisions, warrants, incarcerations, sex offender and gang registries, etc. What is new and important about the current age of big data is the role in public policing of private capitalist firms who provide database systems with huge volumes of information about people, not just those in the criminal justice system."

Sarah Brayne (2020) "Predict and Surveil: Data, Discretion, and the Future of Policing," Oxford University Press

https://www.amazon.com/Predict-Surveil-Discretion-Future-Pol...

I'm sure it's different elsewhere.

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