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I hope what is happening in the US right now, with people getting deported for writing Op-Eds criticizing US foreign policy, is a temporarily thing and not the

I hope what is happening in the US right now, with people getting deported for writing Op-Eds criticizing US foreign policy, is a temporarily thing and not the direction we are heading into. But if it isn't temporarily, we should expect surveillance like discussed in this article to grow and our opinions to be monitored in a more pervasive fashion. It is a relatively trivial matter from a technology standpoint to feed in live feeds of opinions from FB, X, WhatsApp, BlueSky, as well as advertising data collections (from TVs, Taxi's etc) into a LLM powered summary of people's opinions and views and threat factors to the regime. I could see a scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US, and we should be honest that the big cloud providers like AWS and GCP and Microsoft would jump at the chance to host those systems, lots and lots of $$$ for them in this. This is just applying the technology in the US that has been pre-tested by Israel against the West Bank and the Gaza Strip. It can definitely suppress dissidents and solidify state control. This is just extrapolating into trends as a thought experiment that I hope are just temporary blips in the US's commitment to free speech and right to disagree with the government.

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belter 2y ago
> Could see a nightmare scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US. I can guarantee you such a system already exists.
- bhouston 2y ago
  > I can guarantee you such a system already exists. There is a limited one the US has built just to deport pro-Palestinian students from the US on visas: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-use-ai-revoke-visas-students-perceived-hamas-supporters-axios-reports-2025-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/u... The history of such "technology innovations" is that they generally do not stop at the initial scope, and likely will greatly expand its applicability to other groups, other opinions and for other purposes.
  - cyanydeez 2y ago
    Clearview already wrongly identifies suspects for the police. It's definitely going to be used to _wrongly_ ________________ to benefit far right fascist ethnostate. The question is really how much momentum has the accelerationists of whatever strips succeeded in.
- pjc50 2y ago
  This sort of thing has been talked about since Echelon and Cointelpro. The missing bit is the final one, which is now arriving: enforcement. Which is why the Abrego Garcia case is so important. (as always, I think people have underestimated the extent to which some people want the awesome power of an authoritarian state to be wielded against other people.)
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howmayiannoyyou 2y ago
[flagged]
- patagurbon 2y ago
  Surveillance of non-citizens on US soil implies surveillance of citizens.
  - pjc50 2y ago
    No, the surveillors will be issued with special microphones that are capable of detecting the residence status of the speaker from ultrasonics and not recording it. (/sarcasm, although I'm sure someone will make an argument almost as ludicrous about how this is actually fine) Also, I'm sure citizenship is a perfectly fixed status that it's not possible for the administration to decide to change administratively by altering a record in a database.
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- hiddencost 2y ago
  [flagged]
- Gigachad 2y ago
  For now
- lukev 2y ago
  A) The historical position of the US is that human rights (freedom of belief and speech among them) are inalienable. It plays out different for non-citizens but up until the current administration, largely the same constitutional and due protections have been judged to apply. B) We're talking about the government proactively monitoring communications for thought crimes. That doesn't actually protect or help anyone. C)The "reprehensible" positions here are things like "genocide is bad" or "Trump is a fascist." I don't know about you, but I don't believe such thoughts should be illegal.
xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y ago
Right. We've had mass data collection tools for a long time, web trackers, CCTV, microphones etc. But what AI brings to the table is how much easier it makes it to combine and analyse all that data, build peoples' profiles. It scales infinitely better than hiring human analysts to track someone. It's too cheap and too tempting.
dogleash 2y ago
> This is just extrapolating into trends as a thought experiment The late 2000s and early 2010s are here to deliver their "I told you sos". This is the surveillance systems they were warning you about. And then so many people ended up taking paychecks to go build those systems that it's now cringe to care about how morally abhorrent they are. What, you think it's only the US government and only under rulers you dislike who we should be against having surveillance data?
znpy 2y ago
At this point i came to the conclusion that people are generally okay with being recorded and everything. Were they not, there would ben an ever growing market for home-server appliances capable of hosting not only files but also some chat services (probably matrix?) and stuff like that. But there isn’t. Yeah some nas vendors do something similar, but it’s still a small market.

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belter 2y ago

> Could see a nightmare scenario where companies like Palantir create such a system for domestic usage in the US. I can guarantee you such a system already exists.

bhouston 2y ago
> I can guarantee you such a system already exists. There is a limited one the US has built just to deport pro-Palestinian students from the US on visas: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/us-use-ai-revoke-visas-students-perceived-hamas-supporters-axios-reports-2025-03-06/ https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/u... The history of such "technology innovations" is that they generally do not stop at the initial scope, and likely will greatly expand its applicability to other groups, other opinions and for other purposes.
- cyanydeez 2y ago
  Clearview already wrongly identifies suspects for the police. It's definitely going to be used to _wrongly_ ________________ to benefit far right fascist ethnostate. The question is really how much momentum has the accelerationists of whatever strips succeeded in.
pjc50 2y ago
This sort of thing has been talked about since Echelon and Cointelpro. The missing bit is the final one, which is now arriving: enforcement. Which is why the Abrego Garcia case is so important. (as always, I think people have underestimated the extent to which some people want the awesome power of an authoritarian state to be wielded against other people.)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
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    [deleted]

howmayiannoyyou 2y ago

[flagged]

patagurbon 2y ago
Surveillance of non-citizens on US soil implies surveillance of citizens.
- pjc50 2y ago
  No, the surveillors will be issued with special microphones that are capable of detecting the residence status of the speaker from ultrasonics and not recording it. (/sarcasm, although I'm sure someone will make an argument almost as ludicrous about how this is actually fine) Also, I'm sure citizenship is a perfectly fixed status that it's not possible for the administration to decide to change administratively by altering a record in a database.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
hiddencost 2y ago
[flagged]
Gigachad 2y ago
For now
lukev 2y ago
A) The historical position of the US is that human rights (freedom of belief and speech among them) are inalienable. It plays out different for non-citizens but up until the current administration, largely the same constitutional and due protections have been judged to apply. B) We're talking about the government proactively monitoring communications for thought crimes. That doesn't actually protect or help anyone. C)The "reprehensible" positions here are things like "genocide is bad" or "Trump is a fascist." I don't know about you, but I don't believe such thoughts should be illegal.

xeeeeeeeeeeenu 2y ago

Right. We've had mass data collection tools for a long time, web trackers, CCTV, microphones etc. But what AI brings to the table is how much easier it makes it to combine and analyse all that data, build peoples' profiles. It scales infinitely better than hiring human analysts to track someone. It's too cheap and too tempting.

dogleash 2y ago

> This is just extrapolating into trends as a thought experiment The late 2000s and early 2010s are here to deliver their "I told you sos". This is the surveillance systems they were warning you about. And then so many people ended up taking paychecks to go build those systems that it's now cringe to care about how morally abhorrent they are. What, you think it's only the US government and only under rulers you dislike who we should be against having surveillance data?

znpy 2y ago

At this point i came to the conclusion that people are generally okay with being recorded and everything. Were they not, there would ben an ever growing market for home-server appliances capable of hosting not only files but also some chat services (probably matrix?) and stuff like that. But there isn’t. Yeah some nas vendors do something similar, but it’s still a small market.