> when you only read the threat by spying on them

The AI companies have clauses in their user agreements saying they can review content flagged as harmful. It’s not legally spying.

If you recall previous outrage about ChatGPT being used in cases of suicides or shootings, this is the result. Every time a crime was committed and the police found ChatGPT history about the crime, the media turned it into a frenzy. So the AI labs added safety filters to their consumer plans that detect threats of violence, escalate them to human review, and report to the police.

Spying is not the right analogy because the information was given to the police by a third party which had a EULA saying they would do this. A more analogous situation would be someone reading another person’s diary and then turning it into the police department. There might be some limitation in the law that makes the evidence inadmissible because it was not intended to be shared with anyone, but that’s a separate decision.

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ibejoeb 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Not only that they can review flagged content, but they tend to have separate retention policies for flagged content. Anthropic's is this: "We retain inputs and outputs for up to 2 years and trust and safety classification scores for up to 7 years if your chat or session is flagged by our automated trust and safety systems as violating our Usage Policy."

So don't run for office or anything like that. Someone, somewhere will have a contact that will get that.

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Forgeties79 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

>Spying is not the right analogy because the information was given to the police by a third party which had a EULA saying they would do this. A more analogous situation would be someone reading another person’s diary and then turning it into the police department.

This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.

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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I was responding to a question about the legal case. The police did not perform any spying.

Frustrations about Anthropic’s EULA are a separate matter.

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fwn 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Was it claimed that the police did any spying?

Presumably, Anthropic did the spying and the reporting.

You argued that it is not spying, since the spying may have been made sufficiently explicit in the ToS/EULA.

This raises the question: Does announcing a spying operation mean that it is no longer spying? I've never heard that perspective before.

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mjr00 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Does announcing a spying operation mean that it is no longer spying?

Well, kind of, yeah; the dictionary definition of spying requires secrecy and lack of consent.

> to secretly collect and report information about the activities of another country or organization[0]

The only real debate is whether or not having a clause tucked away in a EULA that few people read makes it a secret. If Anthropic had a big flashing red banner that said "FYI we automatically flag and review any conversations about illegal things!!" on the front page nobody would call it spying.

[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/spying

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schoen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

I would call it spying in this sense at a minimum if individual people don't know whether their conversations were stored or disclosed in a way they don't want. For example, suppose someone said "we will monitor the activities of 10% of people". You don't know if you're in that 10% or not, but I would still want to call that spying.

A less central case would be when you clearly do know about the activity but you can't quite see the details, like with behavioral ad targeting or something. It feels pretty normal to me to call that spying even if it's disclosed to everyone and certainly happens to everyone, but it's also a less central example of the concept.

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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Anthropic could put a big flashing warning text at the top of every chat that says “We are spying on you and will report anything scary to the police!” and it would not make any difference in this case.

You can call it anything you like, but only the legal definitions matter for the legal case.

	▲	schoen 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		After working on several court cases about surveillance activities, I'm definitely aware that whether I call something spying or not has little relationship to whether courts will think it's legal.

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Forgeties79 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

> If Anthropic had a big flashing red banner that said "FYI we automatically flag and review any conversations about illegal things!!" on the front page nobody would call it spying.

If you change the situation then yes you can in fact change our responses. The problem is you then are no longer talking about the original situation.

It also bears mentioning that providing a dictionary link to “spying” is pretty patronizing/passive aggressive. On par with sending a basic Wikipedia page. You didn’t even bother to post the definition you want to apply.

	▲	fwn 6 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		No one claimed any case would be "thrown out for spying." The legal definition of spying is also not particularly relevant to the argument in the initial comment. The initial comment instead questioned how someone could be accused of making a threat if they did not realize anyone would read their private content. You probably also can not insult someone with a statement you never expected anyone but you will ever read.

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Aurornis 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Presumably, Anthropic did the spying and the reporting.

You don’t need to presume. Anthropic reported it.

“Spying” as a legal concept has a definition that does not apply here. You could say they were “spying” in the sense that they read someone’s input, but that’s literally what they said they were going to do in the agreement when the person signed up.

So I responded to the question about the case being thrown out for “spying” by trying to show that the word doesn’t apply in the legal sense. If you sign up for a service that says “Hey we’re going to monitor your chats and might report things to the authorities” and then they monitor your chats and report things to the authorities, you should not expect the case to be thrown out for “spying”.

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3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[deleted]

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drusepth 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Extra steps couched in corporate speak is often the defining line that defines whether something is technically legal or not.

	▲	Forgeties79 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I’m speaking from a functional/ethical framework to be clear. I’m just expressing frustration, not challenging the comment. Could’ve been clearer on my end there.

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philipallstar 3 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.

Calling something names doesn't invalidate it. It only invalidates what point you're trying to make.

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lenerdenator 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, let's say that you have a regular customer at a bar.

They get friendly and loose-lipped with the bartender over the span of months. Eventually they let slip that they plan on killing their spouse for a life insurance payout. At first the bartender thinks they're joking, but it becomes evident that there's an actual plan being acted upon and someone's life is very likely in imminent danger.

Does the bartender have a responsibility to go to the police?

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Joker_vD 3 hours ago | parent [-]

Depends on the country. In some places, there is no legal repercussions for not reporting this to the police; in some, it is an actual crime in itself.

	▲	lenerdenator 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		In this case, let's assume the country is the United States, and the state is... oh, of course it is... the state is Florida.

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asgf-qwr 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Many clankers deny data retention or spying on the user if you ask them. That should be completely illegal.

Then, you can write anything in an EULA but it is not automatically legal either.