"AI-detectors" are still probabilistic and none of them are exactly stellar. (No, even Pangram. It still screws up on the regular, very badly.) And some of that includes calling real people's writing "AI-generated", which isn't acceptable for this task.
It's even worse: Since cell phones broadcast your location at all times, this means telling hundreds of companies (and a number of governments) your location at basically all times.
That's already an issue with most cell phones. Making this apply to prepaid phones is even worse.
One thing I wonder is if this is just one step removed from 'Now we know the identity of every user so we can now have both probable cause and verified identity to arrest over statements containing speech we do not like.' "
Like that is Carr's FCC in a nutshell - he wants to control speech by controlling the airwaves. That is a raw fact in his behavior. But when the news stations say the thing they want them to say, what happens next other than slightly extending the definitions of public good to the internet and then restricting speech?
If you have to wonder, you don't need to wonder. So now not only can "antifa"-related speech qualify you as a terrorist (https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/09/coun...), now your phone is legally required to track you and report your location at all times. The legal infrastructure is in place to track and bring a wide range of consequences down on just about any and all political enemy, whether that be ruining their life by dragging them through years of criminal charges or simply black-bagging them and whisking them off to a prison for "enemy combatants" without any oversight from a court. All of this is being done in full view of Congress and the Supreme Court, therefore one can only conclude that they are comfortable with and complicit in what is going on.
Not just "antifa" in scare quotes, the executive order literally says "anti fascist". My government says I'm a terrorist now because I'm opposed to fascism.
That's rather public. Most likely is monitoring a journalist so you can more easily discover their sources or engaging in "parallel construction" to deal with "undesirables" of any stripe.
It's important to remember that Carr is but a bureaucrat doing what he needs to do to make his boss (or, rather, his boss's boss) happy.
We have a real problem with people in government buying into the idea that it's basically a private company set up for the benefit of one man in particular.
They won't do that because that'll cause an uproar.
What they'll do, what they always do, what you can see them actively doing (albeit on other policy axis) even at the local government level, is simply scrutinize these people for other laws they've broken or rules they've run afoul of and then enforce the shit out of those.
It does make me wonder if we're just racing to the day we've got our kyc-blessed phone in a drawer at home at the official address that's already known to carrier. And strap on it the software needed to either forward messages and calls via voip to our real phone, or open a server on it to let us access it from wherever we are to poll for our messages.
Assuming your movements are tracked by other methods (surveillance cameras and facial recognition, purchase records, etc) the absence of your phone when you would otherwise normally have it is a data point, too.
There is no time that I would normally have my phone other than when I am at home; the data point that I provide would be the rare times I take my phone out of the house and most of that time it is off, I only turn it on if I actually need it. My phone is turned off a fair amount which also means I do not have internet since I get my internet through my phone's hotspot, it is nice to be able to disconnect from the world so simply, just turn off my phone. If this was the norm, location data would have far less value and possibly not be worth the expense. Phone addiction seems the real issue here.
My purchasing data is not much better, two purchases so far this year other than my three monthly bills and groceries once or twice a week where I also get cash for my other expenses. I don't do this out of concern about being tracked, just how I live my life. Sometimes I leave my phone off for a week, nothing bad happens, at least nothing that having my phone on would have prevented.
How is it so different from, I don't know, directly grabbing it and tearing it apart? There are only so many ways they have to kill something (or injure it enough to allow killing it).
Hmm, weird. I've not found real maple syrup to be too runny. (But then, I haven't had the fake stuff in decades... maybe they add a bunch of thickener to it.)
reply