Government Funds Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship
Government Funds Whole-of-Internet Surveillance and Censorship
Crucial and terrifying all-of-society implications.
Disclaimer
I personally do not advocate any process or procedure contained in any of my Blogs. Information presented here is not intended to provide legal or lawful advice, nor medical advice, diagnosis, treatment, cure, or prevent any disease. Views expressed are for educational purposes only.
It’s already here
Feb 11.24
Internet-wide surveillance and censorship enabled by unimaginably vast computational power of artificial intelligence (AI), is here. A tool powerful enough to surveil everything said and done on Internet (or large portions of it) becoming available to the government to monitor all of us, all the time. Based on that monitoring, the government – and any organization or company the government partners with – can then use the same tool to suppress, silence, and shut down whatever speech it doesn’t like.
Using the same tool, the government and its public-private, “non-governmental” partners (i.e. the World Health Organization, or Monsanto) can also shut down any activity linked to the Internet. Banking, buying, selling, teaching, learning, entertaining, connecting to each other – if government-controlled AI does not like what you (or your kids!) say in a tweet or an email, it can shut down all of that for you.
We saw this on a local and politicized scale with, for example, the Canadian truckers.
Documents Show Government-Funded AI Intended for Online Censorship
The US House Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government was formed in January 2023 “to investigate matters related to the collection, analysis, dissemination, and use of information on US citizens by executive branch agencies, including whether such efforts are illegal, unconstitutional, or otherwise unethical.”
In its investigations, this committee uncovered some astonishing documents related to government attempts to censor the speech of American citizens.
These documents have crucial and terrifying all-of-society implications.
In the Subcommittee’s interim report, dated February 5, 2024, documents show that academic and nonprofit groups are pitching a government agency on a plan to use AI “misinformation services” to censor content on internet platforms.
How the relationship is visualized in the Subcommittee’s report
Here’s a specific quote presented in the Subcommittee’s report from “Speaker’s notes from the University of Michigan’s first pitch to the National Science Foundation (NSF) about its NSF-funded, AI-powered WiseDex tool.” The notes are on file with the committee.
Our misinformation service helps policy makers at platforms who want to…push responsibility for difficult judgments to someone outside the company…by externalizing the difficult responsibility of censorship.
This is an extraordinary statement on so many levels:
It explicitly equates “misinformation service” with censorship.
It refers to censorship as a “responsibility.”
It states that the role of AI is to “externalize” the responsibility for censorship.
What Happens When AI Censorship is Fully Implemented?
No manpower limits:
No one is responsible:
No recourse for grievances:
No protection for young people:
Monetize-able censorship services:
Can We Reverse Course?
Unknown: How many government agencies and how many platforms are using AI censorship tools?
Unknown: How quickly can they scale up.
Unknown: What tools we have at our disposal – other than raising awareness, trying to lobby politicians, and file lawsuits to prevent government censorship and regulate the use of AI tools on the internet.
If anyone has any other ideas, now would be the time to implement them.
Details for each of the above elements can be read at
Spotlight
The above link made a brief appearance in my Feb 20.24 hunger crisis [games] Blog. https://www.ourgreaterdestiny.ca/p/what-experts-predict-for-hunger-crisis
The significance and implications, in my opinion, warrant a stand alone publication. Please inform others. TY!
Without prejudice and without recourse
Doreen Agostino
Our Greater Destiny Blog
censorship