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Always easier when you can avoid the law and just buy it off the shelf. It’s fine to do this, we say, because it’s not being done by the government - but if the

Always easier when you can avoid the law and just buy it off the shelf. It’s fine to do this, we say, because it’s not being done by the government - but if they’re allowed to turn around and buy it we’re much worse off.

digiown 8mo ago
That's why it doesn't make sense to ban governments from doing things while still allowing private companies. Either it is illegal to surveil the public for everyone, or the government can always do it indirectly with the same effect. I don't think the deal described here is even that egregious. It's basically a labeled data scrape. Any entity capable of training these LLMs are able to do this.
- CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
  [flagged]
  - throwaway894345 8mo ago
    I would much rather have a democratically elected and constitutionally constrained government than private enterprise with limitless power. It would also be helpful if the “government is bad” people would stop electing the people who seek to sabotage the government.
  - plagiarist 8mo ago
    Facial recognition is not a legitimate private enterprise. It is a complete failure of legislation that it is allowed to exist.
    - CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
      Apple Face ID is not a good or legitimate feature? You just upset hundreds of millions of people
      - heavyset_go 8mo ago
        Most people miss Touch ID on the iPhone.
        CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
        So biometrtics are OK as long as it's not your face? Trying to derive the first principle here.
      - plagiarist 8mo ago
        When it's allegedly stored in the Secure Enclave and the data unable to leave the device, it is obviously not the same interaction. I personally would be fine with a law making that distinction with the on-device recognition as legal.
- asveikau 8mo ago
  The difference is that a government can take personal liberty away from people in the most direct way. A private company can't decide to lock somebody away in prison or send them to death row. (Hopefully anyway.) So we put a higher standard on government. That said, I do believe there ought to be more restrictions on private use of these technologies.
  - helterskelter 8mo ago
    Yeah but these companies are operating hand in glove with govt such that there's no discernible difference between the current system and government just doing it themselves. Ban it outright.
    - asveikau 8mo ago
      I don't disagree with the sentiment. I feel like what we're seeing lately is that private companies are doing the thing that would violate the 4th amendment if government did it, then they sell to the government. The idea that it's not the government itself violating the constitution because they did it through a contractor is pretty absurd. What specific legal measures you do to enforce this, I don't know, there's some room for debate there.
      - digiown 8mo ago
        I don't think there is an expectation of privacy for things you literally post to the public, like social media. Even the government doing the scraping directly I believe would not violate the 4th amendment. The third party doctrine also basically legalizes most types of search through people's "cloud data". To have an expectation of privacy, the data needs to not be shared in the first place. I don't think tying the hands of the government is a viable solution. The sensitive data needs to not be collected in the first place via technical and social solutions, as well as legislation to impose costs on data collection. - Teaching that "the cloud is just someone else's computer" - E2EE cloud - Some way of sharing things that don't involve pushing them to the whole internet, like Signal's stories. - GDPR type legislation which allows deleting, opting out, etc
- koolba 8mo ago
  What would such a ban look like? A private company can surely link its own cameras and data to create a private use database of undesirables. I’m certain that Walmart and friends do exactly this already. It’s the large scale version of the Polaroids behind the counter.
  - bad_haircut72 8mo ago
    wouldnt "Any person found to have implemented a system which violates the rights of people in xyz way will be punished with imrisonment" work ?
    - koolba 8mo ago
      In what way? A business can refuse to service any individual as long as it’s not a direct violation of things like civil rights laws.
      - digiown 8mo ago
        The whole point of a regulation is to ban something they are currently allowed to do. There was a time before the civil rights laws where you can discriminate by race, you know.
      - scarecrowbob 8mo ago
        It's possible to understand these things as "civil rights", unless you have a very narrow and likely pejorative understanding of the term.
        koolba 8mo ago
        Rights don’t entirely disappear because a group of individuals decides to form a collective entity. That’s the heart of the Citizen’s United decision. If an individual can aggregate data about his customers and make a decision to not serve a known offender, then surely a group of individuals can do the same. That’s their right. Again, this is not discrimination if it’s done for specific individuals, even if it’s done using data collected in aggregate. Banning a protected group wouldn’t be illegal. But banning a specific person would not. Whether it’s legal to sell that same data as a list of undesirables is the open untested question.
- ChoGGi 8mo ago
  Or that the government isn't allowed to purchase anything they'd normally need a warrant for?
  - digiown 8mo ago
    So everyone and their mom and all the foreign governments can buy the data, but not your own government? Do you really think this is a sustainable arrangement?
    - ChoGGi 8mo ago
      If the choice is between my own government and a foreign government spying on me, I'd rather the foreigners.
duped 8mo ago
This is why we should shun the people that build this stuff. If you take a paycheck to enable fascism, you're a bad person and should be unwelcome in polite society.
runlevel1 8mo ago
Just like when Verizon sold its customers' precise location history to data brokers who then sold it to law enforcement agencies.[^1] Laundered. [^1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-verizon-claim-that-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-ve...
Manuel_D 8mo ago
That's not how the law works in the US. The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. This is why the Biden administration had a restraining order filed against it, on account of them pressuring social media companies to ban content it didn't like. This violated the First Amendment, despite the fact that it was a third party that was doing the actual banning at the behest of the government. The government could legally create its own facial recognition technology if it wanted to. They're not avoiding the law, facial recognition isn't illegal.
- mothballed 8mo ago
  That's pretty much how KYC works. The government can't just willy nilly demand papers of everyone going into the bank to open up an account due to the 4th amendment. So they just make the bank do it so it is a "private" act, and then for instance IRS is authorized to do warrantless seizure on the accounts which are now tied to names that were forced to be revealed under KYC laws.
  - Manuel_D 8mo ago
    The government doesn't need a warrant to access bank records, as per the US's banking laws. They just need an administrative subpoena, which doesn't have to be signed off by a judge. This is not and example of the government sidestepping laws through a third party. You just don't like the existing laws, and would prefer to make certain things illegal that are presently legal.
    - mothballed 8mo ago
      There wouldn't be any identity linked for an anonymous bank account to 'access', were it not for the warrantless search of your papers required under KYC but done via private entity (sidestepping 4th amendment) to open an account. That part is done without even a subpoena. That is, the US banking laws force private actors, under color of law, to systematically inspect the papers of those opening an account, which conveniently sidesteps the 4th amendment implication of the government searching the papers themselves at everyone opening an account at the bank. And then allows the government to act on the information of that forced search, even without a warrant. ---------- re: below due to throttling ------- I'm referring to this: >The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. It is illegal for the government to violate the 4th amendment, whether or not a 'law' beyond what is written in the constitution is present. Clearly the government would love to just take all your information directly when you open an account, as that would be even better for them, but due to the 4th amendment they can't do that. But just asking or without a warrant requiring the bank to act on it or reveal it is almost as easy, so they just sidestep that by just requiring via the law the bank to search your papers instead. It's effectively a government imposed search but carried out by a 3rd party. -------------------- >This is just factually wrong. The Bank Secrecy Act specifically requires that banks to provide this info. The 4th amendment does not prohibit this. If a bank refused to provide this required information, the government would go in and get that information directly. >Again, no law is being avoided. You just don't like the This is not 'just factually wrong.' The bank is doing the search instead of the government. A blanket search of everyone, even without a subpeona, even without an individualized notice, even without any sort of event that would require reporting to the government under the BSA, even then they still are required to search the information even in the instances that it doesn't end up being required to be transmitted to the government. You're saying the portion of data the government collects might be 4A compliant, but that doesn't mean the private actor being forced to collect information that doesn't even get reported is 4A compliant if the government did it. You're just saying the subset of required KYC collected information that ends up transmitted to the government was 4A compliant, which isn't sufficient to establish the government could have collected all the information to begin with under the 4A as they have required the bank to do. >the government would go in and get that information directly A blanket sweep of everyone's information willy nilly by the government is not 4A compliant, that's why they've had the bank do it on their behalf.

digiown 8mo ago

That's why it doesn't make sense to ban governments from doing things while still allowing private companies. Either it is illegal to surveil the public for everyone, or the government can always do it indirectly with the same effect. I don't think the deal described here is even that egregious. It's basically a labeled data scrape. Any entity capable of training these LLMs are able to do this.

CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
[flagged]
- throwaway894345 8mo ago
  I would much rather have a democratically elected and constitutionally constrained government than private enterprise with limitless power. It would also be helpful if the “government is bad” people would stop electing the people who seek to sabotage the government.
- plagiarist 8mo ago
  Facial recognition is not a legitimate private enterprise. It is a complete failure of legislation that it is allowed to exist.
  - CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
    Apple Face ID is not a good or legitimate feature? You just upset hundreds of millions of people
    - heavyset_go 8mo ago
      Most people miss Touch ID on the iPhone.
      - CGMthrowaway 8mo ago
        So biometrtics are OK as long as it's not your face? Trying to derive the first principle here.
    - plagiarist 8mo ago
      When it's allegedly stored in the Secure Enclave and the data unable to leave the device, it is obviously not the same interaction. I personally would be fine with a law making that distinction with the on-device recognition as legal.
asveikau 8mo ago
The difference is that a government can take personal liberty away from people in the most direct way. A private company can't decide to lock somebody away in prison or send them to death row. (Hopefully anyway.) So we put a higher standard on government. That said, I do believe there ought to be more restrictions on private use of these technologies.
- helterskelter 8mo ago
  Yeah but these companies are operating hand in glove with govt such that there's no discernible difference between the current system and government just doing it themselves. Ban it outright.
  - asveikau 8mo ago
    I don't disagree with the sentiment. I feel like what we're seeing lately is that private companies are doing the thing that would violate the 4th amendment if government did it, then they sell to the government. The idea that it's not the government itself violating the constitution because they did it through a contractor is pretty absurd. What specific legal measures you do to enforce this, I don't know, there's some room for debate there.
    - digiown 8mo ago
      I don't think there is an expectation of privacy for things you literally post to the public, like social media. Even the government doing the scraping directly I believe would not violate the 4th amendment. The third party doctrine also basically legalizes most types of search through people's "cloud data". To have an expectation of privacy, the data needs to not be shared in the first place. I don't think tying the hands of the government is a viable solution. The sensitive data needs to not be collected in the first place via technical and social solutions, as well as legislation to impose costs on data collection. - Teaching that "the cloud is just someone else's computer" - E2EE cloud - Some way of sharing things that don't involve pushing them to the whole internet, like Signal's stories. - GDPR type legislation which allows deleting, opting out, etc
koolba 8mo ago
What would such a ban look like? A private company can surely link its own cameras and data to create a private use database of undesirables. I’m certain that Walmart and friends do exactly this already. It’s the large scale version of the Polaroids behind the counter.
- bad_haircut72 8mo ago
  wouldnt "Any person found to have implemented a system which violates the rights of people in xyz way will be punished with imrisonment" work ?
  - koolba 8mo ago
    In what way? A business can refuse to service any individual as long as it’s not a direct violation of things like civil rights laws.
    - digiown 8mo ago
      The whole point of a regulation is to ban something they are currently allowed to do. There was a time before the civil rights laws where you can discriminate by race, you know.
    - scarecrowbob 8mo ago
      It's possible to understand these things as "civil rights", unless you have a very narrow and likely pejorative understanding of the term.
      - koolba 8mo ago
        Rights don’t entirely disappear because a group of individuals decides to form a collective entity. That’s the heart of the Citizen’s United decision. If an individual can aggregate data about his customers and make a decision to not serve a known offender, then surely a group of individuals can do the same. That’s their right. Again, this is not discrimination if it’s done for specific individuals, even if it’s done using data collected in aggregate. Banning a protected group wouldn’t be illegal. But banning a specific person would not. Whether it’s legal to sell that same data as a list of undesirables is the open untested question.
ChoGGi 8mo ago
Or that the government isn't allowed to purchase anything they'd normally need a warrant for?
- digiown 8mo ago
  So everyone and their mom and all the foreign governments can buy the data, but not your own government? Do you really think this is a sustainable arrangement?
  - ChoGGi 8mo ago
    If the choice is between my own government and a foreign government spying on me, I'd rather the foreigners.

duped 8mo ago

This is why we should shun the people that build this stuff. If you take a paycheck to enable fascism, you're a bad person and should be unwelcome in polite society.

runlevel1 8mo ago

Just like when Verizon sold its customers' precise location history to data brokers who then sold it to law enforcement agencies.[^1] Laundered. [^1]: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-verizon-claim-that-selling-location-data-without-consent-is-legal/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2025/09/court-rejects-ve...

Manuel_D 8mo ago

That's not how the law works in the US. The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. This is why the Biden administration had a restraining order filed against it, on account of them pressuring social media companies to ban content it didn't like. This violated the First Amendment, despite the fact that it was a third party that was doing the actual banning at the behest of the government. The government could legally create its own facial recognition technology if it wanted to. They're not avoiding the law, facial recognition isn't illegal.

mothballed 8mo ago
That's pretty much how KYC works. The government can't just willy nilly demand papers of everyone going into the bank to open up an account due to the 4th amendment. So they just make the bank do it so it is a "private" act, and then for instance IRS is authorized to do warrantless seizure on the accounts which are now tied to names that were forced to be revealed under KYC laws.
- Manuel_D 8mo ago
  The government doesn't need a warrant to access bank records, as per the US's banking laws. They just need an administrative subpoena, which doesn't have to be signed off by a judge. This is not and example of the government sidestepping laws through a third party. You just don't like the existing laws, and would prefer to make certain things illegal that are presently legal.
  - mothballed 8mo ago
    There wouldn't be any identity linked for an anonymous bank account to 'access', were it not for the warrantless search of your papers required under KYC but done via private entity (sidestepping 4th amendment) to open an account. That part is done without even a subpoena. That is, the US banking laws force private actors, under color of law, to systematically inspect the papers of those opening an account, which conveniently sidesteps the 4th amendment implication of the government searching the papers themselves at everyone opening an account at the bank. And then allows the government to act on the information of that forced search, even without a warrant. ---------- re: below due to throttling ------- I'm referring to this: >The government cannot have a third party take action on its behalf to do something that would be illegal for the government to do itself. It is illegal for the government to violate the 4th amendment, whether or not a 'law' beyond what is written in the constitution is present. Clearly the government would love to just take all your information directly when you open an account, as that would be even better for them, but due to the 4th amendment they can't do that. But just asking or without a warrant requiring the bank to act on it or reveal it is almost as easy, so they just sidestep that by just requiring via the law the bank to search your papers instead. It's effectively a government imposed search but carried out by a 3rd party. -------------------- >This is just factually wrong. The Bank Secrecy Act specifically requires that banks to provide this info. The 4th amendment does not prohibit this. If a bank refused to provide this required information, the government would go in and get that information directly. >Again, no law is being avoided. You just don't like the This is not 'just factually wrong.' The bank is doing the search instead of the government. A blanket search of everyone, even without a subpeona, even without an individualized notice, even without any sort of event that would require reporting to the government under the BSA, even then they still are required to search the information even in the instances that it doesn't end up being required to be transmitted to the government. You're saying the portion of data the government collects might be 4A compliant, but that doesn't mean the private actor being forced to collect information that doesn't even get reported is 4A compliant if the government did it. You're just saying the subset of required KYC collected information that ends up transmitted to the government was 4A compliant, which isn't sufficient to establish the government could have collected all the information to begin with under the 4A as they have required the bank to do. >the government would go in and get that information directly A blanket sweep of everyone's information willy nilly by the government is not 4A compliant, that's why they've had the bank do it on their behalf.