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Listen

Ali Velshi — Do We Now Live in a Surveillance State?

The MSNBC host and Citizen board member talks with Caitlin Dickerson and Petra Molnar about the growing surveillance state and how big-donor tech companies are threatening due process

Listen

Ali Velshi — Do We Now Live in a Surveillance State?

The MSNBC host and Citizen board member talks with Caitlin Dickerson and Petra Molnar about the growing surveillance state and how big-donor tech companies are threatening due process

BY Ali Velshi

Apr. 21, 2025

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Almost everyone can agree with Ali Velshi that our immigration system is broken, and has been for years. As a democratic nation, our commitment to fairness, liberty, human rights, dignity and due process should be guiding our efforts to make the system work. It has instead become increasingly clear that commitment is failing. Last week, Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons expressed his desire that deportations be handled “like [Amazon] Prime, but with human beings.”

Rounding up immigrants at the scale our government is working for requires technology and data to track and identify individuals — everything a surveillance state requires. Private corporations, especially tech companies, are increasingly aiding in the process. Co-founded by Trump mega-donor Peter Thiel in 2003, Palantir is a tech firm that has a new $30 million contract with ICE, which will provide the agency with technology for a mass surveillance system.

Now, GEO Group’s surveillance tech is helping the Trump administration to deport immigrants through their tracking capabilities. Velshi sits down with Caitlin Dickerson of The Atlantic and Petra Molnar of Harvard’s Center for Internet & Society to discuss how these tools are not just “questions of technology, but questions of power and who has it.”

America’s efforts to remove immigrants at all costs is putting us under the control of a surveillance state run by tech companies who have heavily donated to the Trump administration for the privilege.

LISTEN: VELSHI DISCUSSES THE GROWING SURVEILLANCE STATE

 

 

WATCH: VELSHI, DICKERSON, AND MOLNAR ON THE USE OF SURVEILLANCE TECH

 

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