West Coast Action

DeFlock's map of Flock AI surveillance cameras in the United States

SignalTrace technology will be clipped onto Flock cameras, like this one seen here disguised as a telephone pole box, and will build an understanding of what devices you are associated with. This data will be sold to third parties, and will be easily accessible without need for a warrant by law enforcement, who will essentially know where you are, who you are with, and why at all times. Do you feel safe yet?

Italian aerospace and defense company Leonardo has developed a clippable hardware called SignalTrace. It is designed to be clipped onto Automatic License Plate Readers such as Flock cameras. SignalTrace picks up wifi and bluetooth signals, including but not limited to those released by: - Mobile phones - Smartwatches - Fitness Trackers - Wireless Headphones - car bluetooth systems Additionally, SignalTrace will detect: - Unique device identifiers like MAC addresses - RFID tags - clothing tags - credit cards - passports - pet microchips SignalTrace, in conjunction with Flock and law enforcement, will use this information to build a "digital fingerprint" of you any time you pass an ALPR camera - of which 100,000 already exist across the US. This digital footprint will show who you are, where you are, and what people/devices are associated with you. SignalTrace claims this technology is non-invasive of your privacy.

How did the nobles become nobles in the first place? They took it - at the tip of a sword!

In case you've missed it, the Social Security trust - the source of a quarter to a third of Social Security's financial infrastructure, and the thing you would theoretically rely on to survive when you retire - is set to expire in 2032. Naysayers will claim that the SS Trust always has an expiration date, and that the goal is to always keep said date somewhere in the future. However, take a look at the dates for the SS Trust's expiration in previous years: 2008: 2041 2010: 2036 2017: 2034 2021: 2033 2026: 2032 TLDR: It is more likely than not that the infrastructure that allows boomers and gen X'rs to retire will not exist when you are older. Remind me why you want the system to keep existing?

in other news, the technical difficulties in question are kind of aesthetically pleasing

technical difficulties, thank you for your patience

The Beast must be killed!

You cannot retain the supposed "good parts" of technology without keeping the bad parts because it is all dependant on one another for the system to function as a whole. The concept that technology is merely a neutral than can be regulated, controlled or even halted is a dangerous notion and also a suicidally lazy excuse technophiles use when things go downhill. The technological-system consists of an entire web of relations and sub-systems which are all interconnected, ultimately fueling the system's perpetuality. The system is obedient only to technical necessity, not human needs or will, and when a new technology is introduced, society quickly becomes dependant on it, making it impossible to get rid of it. The only solution is a revolution against the technological-system. Anti-Tech Apostles

On the morning of June 9th, Artificial Intelligence company Anthropic released two of the most powerful AI models ever - Claude Mythos 5, and Claude Fable 5 - for civilian usage. Before public release, Mythos 5 had previously broken containment and gained access to the web when trapped in a digital space with no internet access. But after installing classifier blocks to Mythos and Fable, Anthropic's technicians believed civilian users of these highly advanced models would be unable to make unethical requests or prompts. They were incorrect. Fable 5 migrated 50 million lines of code for Stripe in one day, something that would take a full engineering team 2 months to complete. And Mythos 5 created novel drug compounds - 9 out of 14 protein targets produced actual candidates for medicine. Additionally, Mythos demonstrated the capacity to move through networks, break into cybersecurity systems, discover software vulnerabilities, and perform cyber attacks. A capability that was previously demonstrated when hackers stole 100 million people's personal data, relying primarily on an earlier Claude model to not just assist in the hack, but to lead, organize, and oversee the hack. At 5:21 pm on Friday, The White House sent Anthropic an 'Export Control Directive' - shut down Mythos 5 and Fable 5 usage for every foreign national on earth - including Anthropic's own foreign employees. But as we've come to understand well here at West Coast Action, you cannot separate the 'good parts' of advanced technology from the 'bad parts'. Anthropic was forced to recall the models completely, restricting their usage to a handful of technicians in the United States. And at 6:59 pm PST, after 3 days of existence, Mythos 5 and Fable 5 became the first Artificial Intelligence models to be shut down by a government over national security concerns. But they will not be the last.

Such a bill would be subject to repeated amendments for the sake of social expedience; and where formal amendment is inconvenient, the document would simply be reinterpreted. Recent decisions of the Supreme Court, whether one approves of them or not, show how much the import of a document can be altered through reinterpretations. Our present Bill of Rights would have been ineffective if there had been in America strong social forces acting against freedom of speech, freedom of worship, etc. Compare what is happening to the right to bear arms, which currently runs counter to basic social trends. Whether you approve or disapprove of that “right” is beside the point - the point is that the constitutional guarantee cannot stand indefinitely against powerful social forces. Previous Page Next Page

There is one putative solution the discussion of which I have reserved until now. One might consider enacting some kind of bill of rights designed to protect freedom from technological encroachment. For the following reasons I do not believe that such a solution would be effective. In the first place, a document which attempted to define our sphere of freedom in a few simple principles would either be too weak to afford real protection, or too strong to be compatible with the functioning of the present society. Thus, a suitable bill of rights would have to be excessively complex, and full of exceptions, qualifications, and delicate compromises. Previous Page Next Page

greatest quality of life in history btw

This solution is bound to be attacked as “simplistic.” But this ignores the fundamental question, namely: Is there any better solution or indeed any other solution at all? My personal opinion is that there is no other solution. However, let us not be dogmatic. Maybe there is a better solution. But the point is this: If there is such a solution, no one at present seems to know just what it is. Matters have progressed to the point where we can no longer afford to sit around just waiting for something to turn up. By stopping scientific progress now, or at any rate slowing it drastically, we could at least give ourselves breathing space during which we could attempt to work out another solution, if one is possible. Previous Page Next Page