I wonder if something similar will happen to Palantir et al.

It's the phones and the propaganda being streamed through them 24/7. And if your reaction is, "the rest of the Western world has that too," well, they're really not all that far behind us.

AI is now the digital Walmart. It's basically proposing to do exactly what mom & pop found out, except everywhere on the internet.

For me (not OP) a clear example I can give from a collage of my past three visits: arrive at JFK, get in the immigration queue, heavily armed agents walking around, some ICE agents looking tough surrounding the area, someone is directing the queue like we are cattle.

Get to the immigration officer, answer questions, get a cold stare a few times looking at me and my passport, unpleasantly asked why do I have two passports (I'm a dual citizen), told I don't look Swedish (of course, I'm naturalised), get told to wait, they leave to get someone else to check something, two immigration officers start shuffling my passport, wait while no one talks to me or acknowledge I'm there, passport stamped and I get told to "move".

Get my bags, and out of the terminal, on the walk through the terminal there's another 15-20 officers with rifles strutting around, get out of the terminal and there are two massive armoured cars from NYPD parked up front, more cops looking a bit tough.

It's an overwhelming presence of "security" everywhere, signs plastered with messages about how illegal stuff will be punished (littering, leaving your bags unattended, smoking, every message seems to say something about "under penalty of the law").

I think if you live with that all the time it's easy to filter out the noise but there's an eery feeling of oppression all around, like a boot is just waiting the right moment to stomp on you.

And we just want people to be safe.

Heh. Real-world occurrence of Silicon Valley "We just want to make the world a better place" (also $billions, mainly that actually)

https://archive.is/9FuDK

Oh nooooooo! /s

I cannot believe how tone deaf this quote is. Mind boggling. Veep, torture nexus-level parody.

“Because you go on to X or you go on to Reddit and you go, why are people so mad at us when we've been doing the same thing for nine years?” Langley said. “And why are they so mad at us for things we don't do? And we just want people to be safe.”

I find this story to be heartwarming. I hope the employees flee to companies with missions and products more worthy of their talents.

It would be nice to think this will significantly hamper Flock and its goals and methods in any way, but it will probably just have the effect of selecting for the employees who are either true believers, or are desperate enough that they'll keep their heads down and get good work done just to keep their jobs.

Sporadic vandalism, a handful of canceled contracts, some employee morale problems, all of this falls far short of the organized campaign of resistance that would be needed to roll back Flock at this point. Flock really should be the last nail in the coffin of Edward Snowden's libertarian take that mass surveillance can be fought only with individual action and technology rather than political movements.

"Founded in 2017, Flock raised money at a valuation of more than $8 billion in a funding round that closed in April."

Why are they doing this when they're hiring:

https://www.workatastartup.com/companies/flock-safety