@mguariglia
Historian of race, policing, surveillance, and technology. Senior Policy Analyst at EFF. Sometimes teach at Emory. The Church Committee Report is out now! My views are not my employers. MatthewGuariglia.com
I'm going to put sandpaper on my keyboard to have physical proof that I write myself--and then I'm going to start calling AI-users "soft hands" like I'm some kind of lumberjack.
Everything we've seen about OpenAI's contract with the U.S. Military--even after they supposedly amended the "sloppy" initial agreement--indicates that they are obviously leaving the door open for the military to do mass surveillance of U.S. persons.
I decided on a whim to dig out and charge up an ipod I haven't used since probably about..2016. It reiterated in me two things I miss about technology: 1. smaller tech and 2. gizmos and gadgets.
AP reports that the apparent hack of the FBI's unclassified phone-surveillance database involved "sophisticated" techniques like piggybacking on a commercial ISP's infrastructure to access to the FBI network: apnews.com/article/fbi-...
We are hiring a Head of Global Advocacy and Internet Policy at the Internet Society! This is a rare opportunity to join our team and shape the future of the Internet during one of its most challenging eras. 1/5
They just hate freedom, Jessica.
I'm haunted by a moment from the 2016 primary where Ted Cruz said something like, "experts all agree ISIS formed from lack of economic opportunity, political instability, poor quality of life in the region and we need to address those issues..." and then he paused and said, "what a load of BS."
The third reich of dreams: the nightmares of a nation on a book cover picturing a bullet hole in a pane of glass.
This book is messing me up. Published in 1966, but originally recorded in the 1930s, its the diary/ analysis of a Jewish journalist under nazism that recorded her own and her friends’/neighbors’ nightmares as they began to slowly reflect the anxieties and images of life under fascism.
This administration believes the only legitimate function of government is punishment and is contorting the whole bureaucracy to that end.
“Thomson Reuters aggregates a wide spectrum of public and proprietary information into CLEAR — billions of data points in all.”
ALPRs are “incredibly ripe for abuse,” EFF’s @mguariglia.bsky.social told @SFstandard.com. “No matter how many legal or bureaucratic guardrails you put on those searches, officers are going to find a way to use it for their own personal reasons.” sfstandard.com/2026/02/27/...
The Anthropic dustup has one clear message: Our privacy rights should not be dependent on backroom deals between tech CEOs and the surveillance state.
"even now, half a century after its creation, the church committee remains the most influential investigation ever undertaken into the work of the country's secretive intelligence bureaucracies."
The Church Committee may not have been a solution to unaccountable government power--BUT it is useful now for:
1. Showing us how the government disrupts movements.
2. Giving us a blueprint for how to conduct deep Congressional investigations into secretive topics.
bookshop.org/p/books/the-...
So glad sthg like this is finally happening, largely thx to @kristenthomasen.bsky.social. Been ~2.5 years now of layers of disheartenment & sustained moral injury (5 if count covid), and a public discussion focused specifically on Canadian complicity, from a tech /tech law angle, is long overdue.
Starting to think that whatever democrat running in 2028 puts joining the ICC onto their platform might just become a front runner.
bsky.app/profile/mgua...
Be wary. For the next few weeks likely every mugging and car accident is going to have suspected ties to Iran.
It sucks to have to think this way, but:
Just saw a headline saying the FBI is investigating the Austin mass shooting bc of what they claim are preliminary indicators of a "nexus" to terrorism.
I think papers should be VERY wary of reporting FBI claims along these lines early on, bc of this here.
“I would not be ready to declare Ring harmless because the company has called off a potential partnership with Flock Safety,” Dr. Matthew Guariglia, Senior Policy Analyst for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told WIRED. “People need to realize that all these police devices and data streams are incredibly interoperable. Axon, the maker of a huge percentage of police body-worn cameras and a popular operating system for fusing all police surveillance, is making a tool to let police request Ring footage, so the fight continues, despite some feeble PR maneuvering.”
Canceling a potential partnership with Flock Safety was not the end of the fight with Amazon Ring....it was a shallow face-saving measure after it's Super Bowl commercial blunder.
www.wired.com/story/how-to...
Reading this, again, you get the sense that someone at Anthropic knows how the intel community misleads by using definitions of words that are different than everyone else believes. And the people at OpenAI simply don't know or don't care about that.
U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, reportedly for "intelligence assessments, including target identification and simulation of combat scenarios" even after the supposed ban
U.S. Strikes in Middle East Use Anthropic, reportedly for "intelligence assessments, including target identification and simulation of combat scenarios" even after the supposed ban
User Chris: What was the core difference why you think the DoW accepted OpenAI but not Anthropic Sam Altman: I can't speak for them, but to speculate with the best understanding of the situation. *First, I saw reporting that they were extremely close on a deal, and for much of the time both sides really wanted to reach one. I have seen what happens in tense negotiations when things get stressed and deteriorate super fast, and I could believe that was a large part of what happened here. *We believe in a layered approach to safety--building a safety stack, deploying FDEs and having our safety and alignment researcher involved, deploying via cloud, working directly with the DoW. Anthropic seemed more focused on specific prohibitions in the contract, rather than citing applicable laws, which we felt comfortable with. We feel that it it's very important to build safe system, and although documents are also important, I'd clearly rather rely on technical safeguards if I only had to pick one. *We and the DoW got comfortable with the contractual language, but I can understand other people would have a different opinion here. *I think Anthropic may have wanted more operational control than we did
I saw some folks asking what the difference was between what OpenAI signed with the DoD and what Anthropic said they wanted, and Sam more or less admits here the key point: OpenAI's deal requires them to trust the NSA. Anthropic's contract had real safeguards.
always.
Another day, another abuse of mass #surveillance infrastructure!
"No matter how many legal or bureaucratic guardrails you put on those searches, officers are going to find a way to use it for their own personal reasons," said @mguariglia.bsky.social
#deflock #alpr 🚫
Unrelated, but remember in 2019 when the secret service at Mar-a-lago caught an intruder with a flash drive and *plugged that flash drive into one of their government computers* and it immediately downloaded a bunch of malware.
Exclusive: Prior to Iran attacks, CIA assessed Khamenei would be replaced by hardline IRGC elements if killed, sources say reut.rs/4l9SCAs
What do you call it?
Yes, more or less what I suspected. Thanks for sending it over.
