Back during the Iraq war days and government overreach into privacy violations, the tech companies were on the side of the American people. They fought to defend the 4th amendment.
That has all changed today, except for Anthropic. You think Apple is going to stand up to an unlawful DoJ demand these days? Hell no. Tim Cook has lit Apple's reputation on fire. I've been a super dedicated Apple user for 25 years, but I'm heading for the exits now. All that trust has been burned.
Stay strong Anthoproc, you are seemingly the only really large SV company with any principles and backbone. I won't forget what happens here, either way it goes.
I'd hold off making that call on Anthropic here until at least after Friday. I'm not sure if persisting that "constructive dialogue is taking place in good faith" and saying nothing else in public signifies backbone considering preceding and consecutive public statements by government officials... It certainly doesn't instil confidence in honesty or transparency.
“ the tech companies were on the side of the American people”
They are on the side of making money. And the bigger they are, the more pressure. The big tech companies are now so big that they can’t afford to leave any money in the table if they want to keep their growth rates.
Some tools go out of their way to whine piteously if they can't find Ubuntu in /etc/issue et al. We were using Mint, just got tired of messing with installation scripts every time an upgrade came. And as the transition to Linux accelerates, it's just more convenient to stick with whatever the vendor wants.
Bullied into doing surveillance? Brother a large part of the tech companies valuations are built on how well they allow the government to do surveillance if the governement wants. They arent victims being bullied, they all knew this day would come ajd most were happy about it
As an aside, why is it not a law that the government can't pay another entity to do something it's not allowed to do itself, without a warrant? I'm thinking about geo data from mobile apps.
If they give in I will cancel all Anthropic subscriptions and never use anything created by them again. Recent versions of Claude were getting shitty anyway, I could go without it.
Totally agree with the statement: Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance.
I would personally add "bullied, coerced and/or gaslighted into doing surveillance".
I don't understand why the US government is doing this though. Wouldn't it be much easier to do use some of the already passed laws on foreign intelligence to open a surveillance data pipeline? You know, like PRISM.
I mean, this is inconsistent with the previous M.O., and highly unusual.
I also feel very conflicted to suddenly have to "defend Anthropic", a company that has been systematically doing evil things (destabilizing markets, promoting misleading media campaings, etc). I don't want to defend those guys.
Can I just dislike both the US military and Anthropic at the same time, and say there are no good guys here?
That has all changed today, except for Anthropic. You think Apple is going to stand up to an unlawful DoJ demand these days? Hell no. Tim Cook has lit Apple's reputation on fire. I've been a super dedicated Apple user for 25 years, but I'm heading for the exits now. All that trust has been burned.
Stay strong Anthoproc, you are seemingly the only really large SV company with any principles and backbone. I won't forget what happens here, either way it goes.
They are on the side of making money. And the bigger they are, the more pressure. The big tech companies are now so big that they can’t afford to leave any money in the table if they want to keep their growth rates.
(Dropping safety pledge)
The best thing the company could do if they want to stick to principles is not be based in the US.
But then they can't make their billions selling our data.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third-party_doctrine
Anthropic opened themselves to this disaster by making that first contract with the military.
I don’t want them to lose this battle but it’s also one they brought upon themselves by stepping into that arena.
Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140734
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587
I would personally add "bullied, coerced and/or gaslighted into doing surveillance".
I don't understand why the US government is doing this though. Wouldn't it be much easier to do use some of the already passed laws on foreign intelligence to open a surveillance data pipeline? You know, like PRISM.
I mean, this is inconsistent with the previous M.O., and highly unusual.
I also feel very conflicted to suddenly have to "defend Anthropic", a company that has been systematically doing evil things (destabilizing markets, promoting misleading media campaings, etc). I don't want to defend those guys.
Can I just dislike both the US military and Anthropic at the same time, and say there are no good guys here?
FTFY
They're going to spy on you regardless.