Police Using AI Personas to Infiltrate Online Activist Spaces, Records Reveal (wired.com) 77
samleecole shares a report from 404 Media and Wired: American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications 404 Media obtained via public records requests. Massive Blue, the New York-based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an "AI-powered force multiplier for public safety" that "deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels." According to a presentation obtained by 404 Media, Massive Blue is offering cops these virtual personas that can be deployed across the internet with the express purpose of interacting with suspects over text messages and social media. [...]
While the documents don't describe every technical aspect of how Overwatch works, they do give a high-level overview of what it is. The company describes a tool that uses AI-generated images and text to create social media profiles that can interact with suspected drug traffickers, human traffickers, and gun traffickers. After Overwatch scans open social media channels for potential suspects, these AI personas can also communicate with suspects over text, Discord, and other messaging services. The documents we obtained don't explain how Massive Blue determines who is a potential suspect based on their social media activity. Salzwedel, of Pinal County, said "Massive Blue's solutions crawl multiple areas of the Internet, and social media outlets are just one component. We cannot disclose any further information to preserve the integrity of our investigations." [...] Besides scanning social media and engaging suspects with AI personas, the presentation says that Overwatch can use generative AI to create "proof of life" images of a person holding a sign with a username and date written on it in pen.
While the documents don't describe every technical aspect of how Overwatch works, they do give a high-level overview of what it is. The company describes a tool that uses AI-generated images and text to create social media profiles that can interact with suspected drug traffickers, human traffickers, and gun traffickers. After Overwatch scans open social media channels for potential suspects, these AI personas can also communicate with suspects over text, Discord, and other messaging services. The documents we obtained don't explain how Massive Blue determines who is a potential suspect based on their social media activity. Salzwedel, of Pinal County, said "Massive Blue's solutions crawl multiple areas of the Internet, and social media outlets are just one component. We cannot disclose any further information to preserve the integrity of our investigations." [...] Besides scanning social media and engaging suspects with AI personas, the presentation says that Overwatch can use generative AI to create "proof of life" images of a person holding a sign with a username and date written on it in pen.
Futurama ref required (Score:4, Interesting)
Lazy as usual (Score:3)
"Police work" is always about less work and more donuts.
I'm sure it is about as cheap and effective as the trend of equipping them with tanks, aviation and nuclear bunker busters.
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I wish that were true, that the cops were focused on snack breaks instead of paramilitary arms and the assaulting innocent people.
#ACAB
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They need a lot of donuts, so when not munching, they're mostly focused on how to add to their donut purchase fund. And you know what pays most.
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Back in the 90s I worked at the main courthouse in the city where I live, and the funniest fucking thing on day 1 was walking into the foyer and there was a donut stand and it was surrounded by cops ordering their morning donuts lol. Like holy fuck the stereotype was true.
The *actual* funniest thing that happened on that job was walking into a toilet cubicle at work and finding a pair of fat cops fucking."Hey kid, keep quiet on this and we'll remember the favor next time your in strife". "Aint no skin off m
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Hehe, who knows, maybe the stereotypes exist for a reason.
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surrounded by cops ordering their morning donuts lol. Like holy fuck the stereotype was true
The donut stands in my office are always busy in the morning. 0% cops. Maybe people just like donuts?
There are two types of ops (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Infiltrate groups that are actually planning violence so you can prevent it
2) Engage in entrapment or setups to demonize people you don't like it's politically easier to persecute them
Anybody want to guess which of the two is currently more popular in the United States?
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3) Make a list of the key members and have ICE whisk them away to a gulag in one big bag and tag operation.
Re:There are two types of ops (Score:4, Insightful)
El Salvador is refusing female prisoners: Reasons for that include; slavery, mass-murder, or not spending money on a women-only prison.
To organize the transport, housing and feeding of so many prisoners, takes planning and time. After a while, the government creates space (and saves resources) by killing the current prisoners. It's another reason to keep the spotlight on the gulag. Normalizing any part of it, is a slippery slope to the "final solution".
People will say "It can't happen here." Firstly, so many illegal things have happened, so many people have participated in a crime (Eg. Signalgate: That was a crime.), that reality contradicts such a claim. Secondly, this is why the USA has been disappearing people to a foreign country for 2 decades: So it is, at some level, correct. It also, makes it easier to disappear visa-holders, US residents and US citizens.
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la Presidenta's junta has been ignoring court orders. So the Nazis on the Supreme Court are finally getting what they wanted, a Deep State. And the Maggots cheered.
Re:There are two types of ops (Score:5, Interesting)
I remember someone posting here saying that they were Republican or maga leaning, and the left is just spouting fearmongering, when we talked about concentration camps, illegal round ups etc. He said he would be the first one to pick up arms and fight back if anything like that happened.
One has to wonder if he is so silent because he already picked up the arms?
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To organize the transport, housing and feeding of so many prisoners, takes planning and time.
The Nazis knew this. But the current regime is a stupid form of fascism.. They'll get to a desperate point and just jump straight to step where they line people in front of a ditch and a few agents with machine guns behind them.
People will say "It can't happen here." Firstly, so many illegal things have happened, ...
US history is littered with atrocious that the general public tries to ignore or forget. Trail of tears, California genocide, compulsory sterilization during most of the 20th century, Tulsa race massacre, etc. I believe your average American wants to be left alone, to not be overly
Re:There are two types of ops (Score:4, Insightful)
Currently? Have you heard of something called The war on Terror? The USA spent half of it, telling people in another country what to think, and the rest doing this. This push-button 'policing' will re-use the same trigger-words from that subversion of law and human rights.
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Engage in entrapment
It's not entrapment if the person was already predisposed to doing something. If you were already going to rob the Kwiki Mart and an undercover cop helped you plan the robbery, that's not entrapment.
For good examples on what entrapment is not, read this [tumblr.com].
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Maybe not legally. What they do certainly isn't ethical though. It's some sleazy police state shit.
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>It's not entrapment if the person was already predisposed to doing something.
An excellent argument, too bad it's against a comment I didn't make.
Now imagine one of Trump's SS joining a protest group, convincing them to get violent, arranging the violence, and 'finding' funding for it. Because the US has done that domestically before, and things are worse now.
Personally, I think the US is now well past the time when citizens should be hunting ICE officers for sport. You're already having a civil war bu
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Personally, I think the US is now well past the time when citizens should be hunting ICE officers for sport.
What the fuck?
You're already having a civil war but only one side is fighting.
So you're not from the US, but you're here declaring open season on US officers, while demonstrating complete ignorance on what entrapment even is?
If you're not on a Chinese or Russian payroll, you're missing out. That's the kind of shit the US likes to do when it's trying to cause instability within a regime.
Fucking disgusting.
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> So you're not from the US, but you're here declaring open season on US officers
Not a one of those thugs deserves the moniker "officer." All they are is trumpscum; unfit to serve the public in any capacity. They are the worst of the worst, and they richly deserve any and every bad thing that could be made to happen to them.
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What I'm getting from your posts is that you're on the side of the fascists or you're a coward. Or both.
People who grab people off the streets without due process and ship them off to death camps should be killed. The people who work in ICE are monsters and have surrendered their humanity.
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What I'm getting from your posts is that you're on the side of the fascists or you're a coward. Or both.
Ah, yes. Truth Is Treason In A Kingdom Of Lies.
People who grab people off the streets without due process and ship them off to death camps should be killed. The people who work in ICE are monsters and have surrendered their humanity.
Pulling someone off the street without due process is called an arrest.
Due process is what comes after that.
Denying people due process is indeed a constitutional violation, but that has nothing to do with the agents that apprehend people.
There are no death camps here.
You're a disgusting fucking little human, is what you are.
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Yeah, and fuck you too.
I'm gay, as are most of my friends. I also have friends who are trans, and even more friends who are immigrants. And those shitstains have been targeting, and often inflicting, grievous harm on all of us. *WE* were doing nothing but living our normal, everyday, productive, and harmless private lives until dear leader and the rest of you lot decided we'd make fine scapegoats to give yourselves enemies to distract from your own shortcomings and went on the warpath against us. THAT i
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Oh, so you're telling me that they're just following orders?
Hm. That sounds vaguely familiar, like maybe it's been used as a justification and defense before, maybe by other people fond of disappearing people off the streets and sending them off to prisons and gulags and camps without crime or trial. Gosh, I just wonder so much where I've heard that before.
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If people were being disappeared off the streets, you wouldn't fucking know about it.
Plainclothes law enforcement agents (particularly at the Federal level) are the norm, and have been for a very long time.
Everything looks like the Gestapo if you're too stupid to look for differences.
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You all openly hate and attack me and mine. I see no reason to offer courtesy in return for the bile.
What in the fuck are you talking about, you dumb motherfucker?
I live in Seattle, and have supported homosexuals my entire life whom are my good friends.
You think the actions of MAGA people call for the declaration of "open season" on the CBP?
I have to say, I've noticed that usually gay people around here are smarter than the average Joe. You're quite the exception to that rule, now aren't you.
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I concern myself, when making such judgements, with what is moral and ethical; not the mere written letter of the law, which the police unions probably bought off enough corrupt politicians to enable them to get away with their abuses without repercussions.
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However, I think you might be one of those people who calls a sting entrapment.
An undercover op where it was determined that the police were involved in making the crime happen, is a good way give criminals get-out-of-jail-free cards.
Oh cool! (Score:2)
Besides scanning social media and engaging suspects with AI personas, the presentation says that Overwatch can use generative AI to create "proof of life" images of a person holding a sign with a username and date written on it in pen.
So now the "proof" for the likes of Pornhub can be done by AI! Joyous times have come again! Take that, censors! /s As well as all the other "verification" that consists of a picture of someone holding an ID or whatever.
Had to throw in drug & human traffickers (Score:5, Interesting)
The more things change the more they stay the same. I don't think any of this shit's going to bite boomers or right wingers in the ass. But I do think older Gen X are going to get fucked by all this chaos and find that their retirements that they thought were all set are on the rocks.
They'll use the medical system. That's how they'll take your property. You going to need medicine to live. Stuff to keep your ticker going. And they'll keep raising the cost until you have the mortgage your property and then during the next economic downturn they'll take it. And you will live long enough to lose it to them.
Not that anyone voting for this shit believes that but I like to think that 10 years from now when they're homeless living out of their SUV with their back all fucked up cuz they can't have a bed anymore they'll look back on this and say fuck.
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The only thing Ron "fucking" DeSantis ever did I approved of was kick back at Trump and have the florida cops go after Tate.
(Which is also why I think he's more dangerous than Trump, should he ever get top job. Trumps might be an authoritarian but he's also prone to doing intensely stupid things that undermine his own power.
DeSantis on the other hand is a constitutional lawyer and knows *exactly* how to do the ugly things without colliding with a supreme court ruling, and is smart enough not to go around an
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>The point is it didn't matter who they ran. What mattered was the Democrats didn't fight voter suppression so it didn't matter which candidate they ran because that candidate couldn't surmount a 7 million vote loss.
Sorry that vote loss wasn't due to voter suppression, it was due to people staying the fuck home because they were petulant babies who thought that either choice would be fine, I guess.
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Or ignoring those nice Russkies stealing Ukrainian children and refusing to give them back. la Presidenta is above moral degradation like a brick is above the Sargasso Sea (to steal a phrase from Douglas Adams). His potted plant at the alleged State Dept. is now saying they won't entertain negotiations to end the Ukraine invasion for very long.
So the Great Putini now has his marching orders: wait until some other bright shiny object distracts la Presidenta and then go for the whole of Ukraine, depopulated i
Re: Had to throw in drug & human traffickers (Score:2)
Re: Had to throw in drug & human traffickers (Score:1)
Would that be the Gen x who have been pretty certain from the start that social security wouldn't be there for them because it was always a running ponzi scheme that would eventually fail?
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there currently is barely enough to go around
SS is much more solvent than you think. It's actually running pretty well, and will likely easily pay benefits without going under for decades and decades. There perhaps may need to be an increase in SS taxes to cover some possible shortfalls down the road, but if so, it still looks to be like moderate to small increases (https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.forbes.com%2Fadvisor%2Fretirement%2Fsocial-security-bankrupt%2F).
Much of the panic over the "bankruptcy" of SS is driven by conservatives' and Republicans' interest in privatizing it
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SS is much more solvent than you think. It's actually running pretty well, and will likely easily pay benefits without going under for decades and decades.
I wish I could share your optimism.
Much of the panic over the "bankruptcy" of SS is driven by conservatives' and Republicans' interest in privatizing it (so their rich financial advisors and money managers can take a big cut) or eliminating it (to provide a tax cut for the rich).
Seems like a reasonable reason to be concerned.
To do either of these things they have to make the case it will fail. It won't fail, unless our leaders want it to.
And there in lies the rub. Conservatives have had a hard-on for Social Security for as long as I've been alive. They absolutely want it to fail, for exactly the reasons you point out. I'm not confident the Dems will have the competency or capability to stop them..
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My problem with it is basic math: it presupposes that every generation will be larger and more affluent than the previous one.
Compounding this, is that people are living longer. When SS was created in 1935, the benefits age was set at 65. The average male lifespan (ie those generally earning a wage in 1935) was 59.9. The percentage of men age 65+ was....6%. SS was designed to garnish the wages of the ENTIRE WORKING POPULATION to pay...about 6% of people surviving long enough to collect it, and let's be
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My problem with it is basic math: it presupposes that every generation will be larger and more affluent than the previous one.
As a society, we are getting richer collectively - just not necessarily on an individual basis. Our overall productivity has been increasing for a LONG time. We have enough resources and are going to have even more in the future, we just have not decided on a system to distribute it equitably.
Each generation is collectively more affluent than the previous one, its just that each generation concentrates that affluence more and more into a smaller fraction of the whole.
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Not that anyone voting for this shit believes that but I like to think that 10 years from now when they're homeless living out of their SUV with their back all fucked up cuz they can't have a bed anymore they'll look back on this and say fuck.
That's definitely not going to happen.
Their SUVs are going to be seized for nonpayment of registration fees, and they will have to live in a tarp tent down by the river.
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Just a reminder that the CIA was actively trying to shut down the civil rights movement and keep segregation going.
It's truly remarkable how quickly rational people become just as fucking stupid as the MAGA twats once they feel like the boot is on their neck.
The CIA has nothing to do with civil rights or segregation. You're thinking of the FBI, and COINTELPRO.
Only COINTELPRO wasn't really interested in civil rights of segregation at all.
It was interested in the bogeyman du jure- communism, and felt like anyone protesting against the government just must be being fomented by the dirty commies.
The closest you'll get
Rapid Rise In Crime (Score:4, Interesting)
Get some popcorn. With police departments creating social media accounts fakely engaging in crime, the 3rd party companies and researchers who data mine the web to track crime trends are going to see big uptakes. Cue all the news articles about how crime is increasing and teens can't be trusted.
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Maybe MS-13 is AI fakery (Score:2)
...The "13" is how many fingers their alleged members have.
This isn't new (Score:3, Informative)
Remember folks: the person at the protest who is obviously starting the violence in front of the cops is most likely a cop themselves...
EVERYONE KNOWS AI IS FULL OF SHIT (Score:3)
yet here goes law enforcement ass-first with unproven technology. again. and why not? they don’t pay for any of it, even if it goes wrong.
Is AI in the room right now? (Score:2)
If CowboyNeil set up ChatGPT to write a plausible set of comments for each Slashdot story, and Slashdot showed each user only his own comments plus a selection of ChatGPT-generated comments, would anyone notice the difference?
Massive advance in technology .... (Score:2)
can now be relabelled "proof of gullibility" (on behalf of the person setting the challenge).
Jokes on the cops (Score:2)
Overwatch is old hat. Overwatch 2 came out almost three years ago! Try to keep up, guys!
AI Can't Bring Me $50 For Some Drugs. (Score:1)
Just sayin'.
Massive Blue? (Score:1)
The company is called Massive Blue? I wonder how many boots they licked before coming up with that name.
Outrageous (Score:2)
This makes me so mad we should all go burn down a Walmart. Who's with me?
The real news is (Score:2)
collect intelligence on "college protesters," "radicalized" political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according
The real news is that college protesters and political activists are now equivalent to drug and human traffickers.
Thanks, /. (Score:2)
Passed along to folks who have a real need to know.
web page deliberately vague (Score:2)
https://ancillary-proxy.atarimworker.io?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.massiveblue.io%2Fabo... [massiveblue.io]
Almost nothing there about what they actually do, but apparently they can deploy an AI bot army for you.
"At Massive Blue, we seek to create a positive impact through the ethical use of AI across the 4Cs: Country, Community, Children, and Companies."
Laughable that they include 'Companies' in those Cs. "Mom, Apple Pie, The Flag, and Unrestrained Capitalism".
/o\ | \o/ (Score:1)
On the internet, noone knows your diet is primarily donut-based.