Comment by saulpw
3 hours ago
I think you should be allowed to write that exact line in your journal. If you rob the bank that can be used as evidence against you, but in no way is it acceptable for private reflections alone to be used to arrest you. Or else every author who's written a novel with 'bad' characters would be arrestable.
I'm coming to saulpw's house tomorrow at noon with a gun, and I'm gonna make them pay.
If a policeman notices the sentence above on my phone screen during a routine traffic stop, the response you want him to take is... nothing?
For the record, under current US law, it is not illegal to have a sentence in your locally-stored notes on your phone outlining a plan to commit a crime. There has to be an overt act. The police in that instance could inform the intended victim, surveil you, etc, but they would not be able to successfully charge you with attempted murder. It's not illegal to be considering committing a crime, even if you have a tendency to write down your thoughts.
The law in this particular case, which seems to be intended for threats that you actually send to someone, is being interpreted broadly to apply to any "threat" that you transmit to a server. So in your hypothetical, the legality would depend on whether your notes are backed up to icloud or not.
>the legality would depend on whether your notes are backed up to icloud or not
I agree, and it's nuts.
This feels like less of an issue with anthropic per say as it is a broad reading/misuse of the law's original intent.
This is true for the general criminal conspiracy law, but be aware that an “overt act” doesn’t have to be an illegal act, just some action in furtherance of that crime. That can be purchasing a weapon, or scouting out a location. There may also be other laws in play depending on the specifics
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You're absolutely right, at least according to my own quick check on Gemini. I find this state of affairs amazing.
In my country, no "overt act" is required, but both here and in the US a "conspiracy to commit" charge requires an agreement with a second party. This is indeed consistent with a very broad interpretation of "no thought crimes".
Correct. Nevermind how ridiculously contrived the scenario you've just concocted is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=14WE3A0PwVs
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its not contrived just because you recognize how silly the argument its arguing against is
> If a policeman notices the sentence above on my phone screen during a routine traffic stop, the response you want him to take is... nothing?
Anybody showing a cop their hacker news comments at a traffic stop should be arrested, for harassing the police
You joke, but part of the issue here is we're supposed to have laws that keep cops from reading over everything we type and using it to turn us all into crime suspects. There's a whole constitutional amendment about that, but our personal "papers and effects" that should be protected against unreasonable searches are increasingly really "owned" by others who are all too happy to snitch.
Part of me says that the solution is stop entering any personal data into any device and service you don't own, but I'm not sure if that's really what we want considering that there are zero private cell phones. Even desktops and laptops aren't 100% owned by you these days. The only thing you can really do is keep them offline 100% of the time so they can't spy on you, but that seems like a lot to demand.
Do you really think reading a snippet like that completely out of context should qualify as probable cause?
Yes!
When you read something describing in detail a person's intent to do something very bad, in a place where they write things that they intend to do, and which in the past they have in fact consistently done, you don't attach any significance to that at all?
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