The classic example here is what happens when someone is being stalked by an abusive ex-partner who works in law enforcement and has access to those databases.

This ICE stuff is that scaled up to a multi-billion dollar federal agency with, apparently, no accountability for following the law at all.

Then again, we have ICE shooting American citizens in the streets, so I guess the law is whatever they decide it is, not least because our legislative branch is uninterested in laws.

https://www.congress.gov/crs_external_products/IF/PDF/IF1191...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748336

> The tool – dubbed Enhanced Leads Identification & Targeting for Enforcement (ELITE) – receives peoples’ addresses from the Department of Health and Human Services (which includes Medicaid) and other sources, 404 Media reports based on court testimony in Oregon by law enforcement agents, among other sources.

So, they have a tool that sucks up data from a bunch of different sources, including Medicaid. But there's no actual nexus between Medicaid and illegal immigrants in this reporting.

Edit: In the link to their earlier filings, EFF claims that some states enroll illegal immigrants in Medicaid: https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/07/eff-court-protect-our-...

I'm sure they'll run on not using it but when systems like this exist they tend to find applications

(For more context: https://www.tbf.org/blog/2018/march/understanding-the-census...)

HELP I AM SOOOO F**NG ANGRY. Sorry I just don't have anywhere to safely put this rage.

"he was an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), where he designed the company logo"

[1] https://www.newsweek.com/pam-bondi-ice-minnesota-shooting-ti...

They’re not even hiding the fact this has nothing to do with immigration and everything to do with compiling lists of people to target later.

1) Take the medicaid data.

2) Join that with rental/income data.

3) Look for neighborhoods with cheap rents/low income and low medicaid rates.

Dragnet those neighborhoods.

I'd say Palantir should be ashamed for facilitating this, but their entire business model is built around helping the government build an ever more invasive police state.

Medicaid is meant to be used only by citizens and green card holders who are eligible to be citizens.

Naturally they all are registered with the govt, and thus easy to pick up, jail, or murder.

This is the type of danger where last year amateur radio was legal, and now it gets you jailed. Thats the danger of this sort of data.

They are eligible for Emergency Medicaid, which covers emergency medical needs like labor and delivery or life-threatening conditions; hospitals that accept federal dollars for medicare/medicaid are required under federal law (EMTALA) to provide stabilizing emergency care regardless of immigration status or ability to pay.

If you work on this kind of tech, please, quit your job.

Social services left at the State level would be subject to a smaller pool of votes for approval and are more likely to be funded by actual tax revenue instead of debt.

That is: sustainably.

Furthermore, the lack of One True Database is a safety feature in the face of the inevitable bad actors.

In naval architecture, this is called compartmentalization.

There are good arguments against this, sure, but the current disaster before you would seem a refutation.