Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveillance

Re:Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveill... by zeroq on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @10:48PM (#42943492)

Years ago a friend working in security told me that every telco operator in Elbonia has to have a special room in their HQ that's available 24/7 to some goverment officials. Men in black come and go as they please, and while what is actually happening in that room remains a mystery, they can tap straight to the system from within with no restrictions or traceability.

Growing up in soviet bloc I took that story at face value. After all democracy was still a new thing, and people haven't invented privacy concerns yet.

Since then I always thought that some sort of cooperation between companies like Facebook or Google and CIA/DOD was an obvious thing to everyone.

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Re:Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveill... by somenameforme on Tuesday February 04, 2025 @10:59PM (#42943574)

PRISM [1] is the best evidence of how short-lived most people's memories are. Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook were the first 4 members. It makes it pretty funny when companies like Apple (who also joined more than a decade ago) speak about trying to defend customer's privacy against government intrusion. There's so much completely cynical corporate LARPing for PR.

And if one wants to know why big tech from China isn't welcome, be it phones or social media, it's not because fear of them spying on Americans, but because of the infeasibility of integrating Chinese companies into our own domestic surveillance systems.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

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Re:Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveill... by weikju on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @12:46AM (#42944347)

Nice story, but…

> Years ago a friend working in security told me that every telco operator in Elbonia

See info about the fictional country of Elbonia here, from the Dilbert comics:

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dilbert

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Re:Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveill... by theoreticalmal on Wednesday February 05, 2025 @09:15AM (#42948735)

Elbonia? How much mud did the men in black have to wade through to get to the secret room?

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Re:Google Drops Pledge Not to Use AI for Weapons or Surveill... by LargoLasskhyfv on Thursday February 06, 2025 @01:46AM (#42959744)

Magagagia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Room_641A

Allallarmia https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sichere_Inter-Netzwerk_Archite...

(Really süperspeciälly VPN-hardware used to securely suck data out of ISPs with extradeutsche Gründlichkeit,

mandatory to be installed by law,

just in case,

for some random chase.)

Edit: Thinking of it this is bubbling up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dagger_Complex ,

where Magagagia built some little base just 'a stones throw' away from Allallarmias former monopol government Telcos early internet exchange and HQ .

( https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fernmeldetechnisches_Zentralam... )

What are the odds?

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