1y ago

US immigration enforcement used an AI-powered tool to scan social media posts "derogatory" to the US | "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts"

www.techspot.com US immigration enforcement used an AI-powered tool to scan social media posts "derogatory" to the US

The system, called Giant Oak Search Technology (GOST), ranks a person's social media scores from one to 100 based on what it thinks is relevant to the...

US immigration enforcement used an AI-powered tool to scan social media posts "derogatory" to the US | "The government should not be using algorithms to scrutinize our social media posts"::undefined

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The government should not be scrutinizing anyone’s social media outside of a criminal investigation with a warrant.
- Public posts have no expectation of privacy.
  
  There's a world of difference between witnessing something in public and following someone around, making note of everything they say and do "in public." We call the latter "stalking" when an individual does it.
  
  If I click your username, I see everthing this account has posted to Lemmy. There's no real-world equivalent to that.
  Nearly everyone using Lemmy knows that's how the software works and should keep that in mind when posting.
  
  Looking at someone’s post history != following a person around.
  Further following someone around is not stalking there has to be an action that would make someone fear being harmed.
  
  It's not just public posts, private messaging apps are also scrutinized.
  
  The AI system searches public posts, it's not able to read DMs, it doesn't have login credentials.
  
  Though they do reserve the ability to seize, crack and search your phone within the Constitution Free Zone (one hundred miles of any US border) and will then search all your internet activity for wrongdoing. Dunno if that is treated with AI searching.
  
  Arr gotcha, I was referring to searching devices generally.
- On the other hand, if you don't want to be scrutinized by everyone don't put your whole life online for everyone to see and judge.
  Nobody is going to respect your privacy if you do not respect your own privacy.
- Hahahaha.
  'Warrant' for public data.
  "A regular 4th amendment violation right here! Everyone look - the government is looking at my Instagram without a warrant!"
  Please. At this point the NSA has probably already developed their own internal LLM based on illegally collected communications intercepts combined with many other data sources and is using that to aid in parallel construction efforts.
  But no, let's worry about whether what you post on Instagram should need a warrant, because somehow you have an expectation of privacy for the things you publicly post on the Internet...
  Lemmy is hilarious sometimes.
  Fun fact: The US government is allowed to read any emails in cloud storage older than 6 months old without a warrant.
  
  The issue I see is less a 4th amendment than a 1st. Any "derogatory" language has long since been upheld as protected, so any action they took based on the information would 100% be illegal. Yes, the CIA/NSA has actually stated that they love social media because we are all just surveilling ourselves for them. That is them, not ICE. ICE has no business tracking people's social media.
  
  Technically until they have successfully immigrated there's limited first amendment rights.
  As the supreme court has found over and over, given there is no inherent legal right to enter the country, there is no infringement of rights to discriminate who can and can't enter based on political speech. For prior cases if you are interested, see:
  Exclusion of a British anarchist was at issue in Turner v. Williams (1904).
  Harisiades v. Shaughnessy (1952) concerned deportation of communists.
  Kleindienst v. Mandel (1972) examined denial of a travel visa to a Marxist.
  So while ethically you may feel it's an infringement of the principles of the first amendment, it is not currently seen that way legally and hasn't for a long while.

32 comments