Comment by notepad0x90
15 hours ago
No, this very devious and insidious. What the executive branch believes is legal is the real agreement here. Trump can say anything is legal and that's that. There is no judicial overview, there are no lawyers defending the rights of those who are being harmed. Trump can tell the pentagon "everyone in minnesota is a potential insurrectionist, do mass surveillance on them under the patriot act and the insurrection act".
Mass surveillance doesn't require a warrant, that's why they want it, that's why it's "mass". warrants mean judicial overview. Anthropic didn't disagree with surveillance where a court (even a FISA court!!) issued a warrant. Trump just doesn't want to go through even a FISA court.
This is pure evil from Sam Altman.
Is anyone listing these peoples names somewhere for posterity's sake? I'd hate to think this would all be forgotten. From Altman to Zuckerberg, if justice prevails they'll be on the receiving end of retribution.
That view does seem to be consistent with Anthropic's. It's sad if true, since it implies a belief that the system cannot be just in modern contexts.
mass surveillance is explicitly unlawful in the US. it is in the bill of rights. By definition it is injustice under the law. Even for terrorists in the US they have to go through a FISA court and get warrants.
Consider this, the bill of rights stipulates that a soldier cannot be stationed on your property in times of peace, but in times of war it will be allowed. It makes exceptions for times of war. but even in times of war, 4th amendment's search and seizure protection don't have an exception. Even in times of insurrection and rebellion. To deliberately violate that for personal and political reasons, that in itself is treason. With that intent alone, even without action, it invalidates all legitimacy that government has. If a clause in a contract is broken, the contract is broken. The bill of rights is the contract between the people and their government that gives the government its powers to rule, in exchange for those rights. With the contract explicitly, deliberately and with provable malicious intent broken, the whole agreement is invalidated.
I'll even say this, the US military itself is on the hook if they stand by and let this happen.
On the hook for what?
The current US government has a fundamentally different ontology for the derivation of human rights.
Wheras you and I likely agree that human rights are inalienable due to them being derived from the universe nature of human experience, the administration believes that human rights begin and end with them, the state. When they're the one able to affect the world with violence, it doesn't matter who's on the hook. The US electorate thought they could heal a status wound by authoritarianism instead of therapy and everyone else is paying the price.
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> I'll even say this, the US military itself is on the hook if they stand by and let this happen.
That would most definitely not be the Constitutional recourse. Or a sensible approach. If that happens, the Constitution is past tense.
Congress and the Supreme Court are the recourse. If they don't hold up the Constitution then violence or even a non-violent military coup, however well intended, are not going to put the splattered egg back together again.
The last two and a half decades have seen all four presidents, congress, the Supreme Court and both parties allow blatantly unconstitutional surveillance become the norm (evolving an adaptive fig leaf of intermediaries), and presidential military actions entirely blur out the required Congressional oversight. That the weakening of loyalty to the Constitution has been pervasive on those serious counts, is one of the reasons it has been so easy to undermine further.
When governing bodies become familiar with the convenient practice of "deciding" what the constitution means, without repercussions, that lost respect becomes very hard to reinstate.
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Right, which is probably the point made by the negotiators on behalf of the US Government. "We don't want Anthropic's standard, we want the Constitution."
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> Trump can tell the pentagon "everyone in minnesota is a potential insurrectionist, do mass surveillance on them under the patriot act and the insurrection act".
This is just incoherent. You can't have US companies fix an unhinged US government.
If the government runs wild, there are some serious questions to be asked at a state level, about how that could happen, how to fix it quickly and how to prevent it in the future – but I should hope none of them concern themselves with the ideas of individual company owners, because if the government can de fact do what it wants regardless of legality the next thing that this government does could simply be pointing increasingly non-metaphorical guns at individual AI company functionaries.
> This is just incoherent. You can't have US companies fix an unhinged US government.
Which part? No one expects them to fix the government, matter of fact they should stay far away from it. However, they have a duty to obey the law and to be patriotic. All companies must resist attempts by the government to betray its people, because the government derives its authority from the people, therefore in its betrayal it has become an illegitimate enemy of the people instead of their legitimate government.
> because if the government can de fact do what it wants regardless of legality the next thing that this government does could simply be pointing increasingly non-metaphorical guns at individual AI company functionaries.
It feels like you and half the country never even at least watched movies surrounding nazi germany. The government can do whatever it wants, but whether it is companies, individuals working for it, or soldiers under orders, the government's authority does not excuse their participation. The government can't do anything at all on its own, it needs people to do it. If Obama wanted to get Anthropic to let their models aid al-qaeda with attacking America, should Anthropic say "oh well, since you're the government, go ahead?" This is the same thing. Ever heard of the phrase "enemies foreign or domestic" in the swearing of oaths? Company executives are beholden to the laws of the country they operate in. I mean, with Nazis at least their orders, and the orders of companies under their regime was lawful, even then it was not an excuse but they just changed the laws to make their orders lawful. Right now, we have laws and the government is breaking it, even "i followed lawful orders" isn't an excuse. Sam Altman is complicit in the violation of the American constitution and the betrayal of its people.
If all else fails, I expect the government to just train their own models. In which case, I'd say the engineers working in that effort should have resisted.
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