Sean O'BrienOn Feb 20, I had the honor of speaking at the Fletcher School at Tufts University on a panel with, among others, @josephcox of @404mediaco . He highlighted his incredible journalism on #adtech surveillance over the years and the ever-looming threat of #smartphone #surveillance. https://www.vice.com/en/article/us-military-location-data-xmode-locate-x/
@josephcox @404mediaco The event, called "Nothing to Hide? #Surveillance Tech and #AI's Risks & Rewards," was mostly dire warnings from the panel for a packed room of young students from Tufts, the US Naval Academy, Brazil, Cameroon, India, Kenya, Lebanon, Pakistan, Rwanda, South Africa and Uganda.
@josephcox @404mediaco I spoke last and couldn't help but think about the big picture. The #Internet has consumed our world, as many predicted, but its hopeful promise has all-but-faded from the horizon.
"What we call #ArtificialIntelligence today, especially generative #AI and hybrid models...
@josephcox @404mediaco "...like #ChatGPT and #Perplexity, represents the culmination of a project that began roughly 25 to 30 years ago. It traces back to the early days of the World Wide Web, an information system that promised unprecedented access to knowledge, education, empowerment, and innovation..."
@josephcox @404mediaco "Over time, however, that promise began to shift as the Web was increasingly shaped by early dotcom companies. These firms were not sophisticated at analyzing people yet, but they understood something fundamental: the most valuable part of the network was the data. Advertising was secondary..."
@josephcox @404mediaco "The focus moved away from publishing information and enabling open communication. Instead, the web browser became a tool for watching users. As people read and interacted with content, the system learned from their behavior, tracked what they consumed, and began building detailed profiles about them... looking back at them..."
@josephcox @404mediaco Then I told a few stories of #surveillance from my personal experience, and I talked about @JohnKiriakou to remind the US Naval Academy how important it was that *he remembered* his oath was *not* to the administration, but to the #Constitution. I hope cadets will also remember.
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou And then I pulled out a device I had in my pocket, something very familiar to @josephcox . "This is a #Rayhunter. You may have heard of devices like this. It's a bespoke consumer device that has been #hacked on by researchers at the @eff , with contributions from a company called Cape.co ..."
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou @eff "The purpose of the device is to detect cell site simulators. These are systems we know about from sources like the #NSA ANT catalog. They operate by pretending to be legitimate cell towers in order to intercept communications..."
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou @eff "The #Rayhunter itself is waay behind the kinds of technology you would encounter in signals intelligence. But we're scrappy civilians trying to figure this out. If we looked at populations in #Russia, #China, or #NorthKorea and saw that ordinary folks..."
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou @eff "...had to carry these strange little devices in their pockets just to figure out if they were being spied on, we would call that *crazy.* But of course that's *exactly* what we're facing in *this* country. And here I thought the political situation I grew up in was bad enough."
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou @eff If you get a chance, check out this @404mediaco interview with @eff about the #Rayhunter project. https://www.404media.co/how-to-detect-phone-spying-tech-with-cooper-quintin/
@josephcox @404mediaco @JohnKiriakou @eff ...and if you want to check out what we're building to protect #privacy (we have a BIG announcement this month!) see our full source code for @privacysafe 👇
We haven't lost faith in #freesoftware and we *know* it's even more vital in tough times.
