The AI Surveillance Arms Race: Can You Hide From Always-On Recorders?
Everything You Do Is Being Recorded
As AI-powered wearables that record everything become mainstream, a startup called Deveillance offers a countermeasure: Spectre I, a device that blocks nearby recording. The Atlantic explores the growing cat-and-mouse game between surveillance tech and privacy tools, noting that even mobsters used to strip-search for bugs—now ordinary people may need similar defenses.
Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.
- matheusmoreira
> Until recently, only spies and criminals had to worry this obsessively about their private statements being picked up by electronic equipment.
> But soon, the average person might need to deploy surveillance countermeasures.
Already there. If you want privacy and anonymity online, you're looking at literal terrorist cell tier tradecraft. That means pulling up documents written by people from the "counterterrorism community" and "intelligence community" and learning how all of these "clandestines" operate.
Unlinking one's identity from one's actions and speech requires some serious OPSEC now. It requires constant, never ending effort. It requires perfect execution and discipline.
- nextlevelwizard
>We and our 1255 technology partners ask you to consent to the use of cookies to store and access personal data on your device
you don't say...
- jrexilius
The original research project this company looks based on was very cool and way early: https://sandlab.cs.uchicago.edu/jammer/
- mawadev
I feel like sooner or later we all hollow out a little more. All this data is either used to prevent crime or to influence your thoughts and what you do in the world. Outsourcing your thinking to something else leads to digital dementia. What is the point of all of this technology?
- toofy
we desperately need a separation of corporations and state the same way we have a separation of church and state.
we need a government that is antagonistic towards corporations that are abusing us.
it’s wild how much influence they have and how little pushback the government ever gives them when they clearly abuse us from every direction.
- nubinetwork
> Apple is rumored to be developing an AI pin or pendant that would serve as an iPhone’s constant eyes and ears; many other products of this type are on the way. AI accessories could one day be as widespread as AirPods.
But why? Don't we already have phones, watches, glasses, tags, and airpods? If they were making a siri version of alexa/echo, then maybe that would make sense, but do we really need a specific apple device just to ai?
- octocop
commenting for digital footprint
- ares623
In this thread, the world's most brilliant minds are confused as to how to solve this problem.
If you're looking for the ones responsible for bringing this on, just look in the mirror.
How can you say both "oh, people won't need jobs anymore! I'm excited that technology is going to replace what I do" and "oh, I can't speak up about the things my company is doing, I need this job!" in the same breath?
- BrenBarn
> Meanwhile, only a few academics and small companies are defending us from these technologies. “The thing about cat-and-mouse games is that we know how they usually end up for the mouse,” Hartzog said. “And in this case, the cat includes some of the most powerful corporations to ever exist.”
This again points to how these problems have less to do with tech than with our socioeconomic system. The obvious solution (or step towards a solution) is to just shatter all such large tech companies. There should not be any companies powerful enough to do things like this.
- hamper653
> Some historians have argued that the ensuing radar arms race was more consequential to the war’s outcome than the Manhattan Project.
No kidding?