Brave New World (Updated)

Since 2011, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) has paid Palantir [Palantir Technologies, the data mining company co-founded by billionaire and Trump transition advisor Peter Thiel] tens of millions of dollars to help construct and operate a complex intelligence system called FALCON, which allows ICE to store, search, and analyze troves of data that include family relationships, employment information, immigration history, criminal records, and home and work addresses.

In a separate multi-million-dollar contract signed in 2014, Thiel’s $20 billion company is building a complex case management system for ICE’s HSI, which processes tens of thousands of civil and criminal cases each year.

[...]

In recent years, the federal government has reportedly paid Palantir  some $340 million in contracts. Concerns over Thiel’s potential conflicts deepened last week when it was reported that he would not confirm whether or not he had signed standard paperwork barring him from participating in Trump transition matters that might conflict with his private interests.

  The Intercept

The entire federal government has conflicting interests with the citizenry.  It's bad enough this covers immigrants, but why couldn't it also be used to gather similar information about any group or individual the government chooses?  Maybe it already has been.

And, while we're on the subject...

Trump has brought yet another promoter of cheap foreign labor onto his Labor landing team, announcing on Monday that it has picked Diana Furchtgott-Roth, who is a fellow at the right-wing Manhattan Institute.

Furchtgott-Roth has long advocated in favor of America’s temporary worker visa programs, arguing that they fill in gaps in employment. Writing in the New York Sun in 2008, she argued that arrests of undocumented workers by immigration officials proved that “Congress authorizes too few visas for foreign workers, far fewer than the number employers want and need to hire to keep their businesses running.”

She argued that Congress was not permitting enough H-2B visas: special visas primarily for low-wage, low-skilled seasonal workers. “People who want to enter this country to work in jobs Americans are unwilling to take ought to have an easy, legal way to do so,” she concluded.

Furchtgott-Roth made similar arguments in a February 2013 Manhattan Institute issue brief, concluding the economic benefits of immigrants outweigh the negatives.

  The Inercept

Interesting, no?

I'm looking forward to a resurgence of workers' unions when Trump's base realizes he is not on their side at all, and in fact is just what you would expect a billionaire businessman who stiffs his contractors to be. Until the GOP passes a law banning unions, of course.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.