US Authoritarian Descent

Saturday, August 09, 2025

Ron Deibert, the director of Citizen Lab, one of the most prominent organizations investigating government spyware abuses, is sounding the alarm to the cybersecurity community and asking them to step up and join the fight against authoritarianism.

Posted by LampLighter at 10:14 AM | 6 COMMENTS | permalink | Comment on This Entry |

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"With civil society under attack, the very foundations of our country " our ability to hold the government accountable, to be free to dissent and debate, to support vulnerable communities " are also threatened."
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/27/o...[image or embed]
" Ron Deibert (@rondeibert.bsky.social) Aug 7, 2025 at 12:23 AM

We are at that point of the dictatorial slide that CEOs of corporations -- Tim Cook of Apple being the latest -- obsequiously bearing gifts of gold for the Great Leader.
www.washingtonpost.com/politics/202...[image or embed]
" Ron Deibert (@rondeibert.bsky.social) Aug 8, 2025 at 11:16 AM

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More from the article ...

... On Wednesday, Deibert will deliver a keynote at the Black Hat cybersecurity conference in Las Vegas, one of the largest gatherings of information security professionals of the year.

Ahead of his talk, Deibert told TechCrunch that he plans to speak about what he describes as a "descent into a kind of fusion of tech and fascism," and the role that the Big Tech platforms are playing, and "propelling forward a really frightening type of collective insecurity that isn't typically addressed by this crowd, this community, as a cybersecurity problem."

Deibert described the recent political events in the United States as a "dramatic descent into authoritarianism," but one that the cybersecurity community can help defend against.

"I think alarm bells need to be rung for this community that, at the very least, they should be aware of what's going on and hopefully they can not contribute to it, if not help reverse it," Deibert told TechCrunch. ...

#1 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-08-08 12:11 AM | Reply

Too late

------- magat scum won

May they all get exactly what they voted for.

#2 | Posted by truthhurts at 2025-08-09 12:47 PM | Reply | Funny: 1

Students have been called to the office -- and even arrested -- for AI surveillance false alarms
apnews.com

... Lesley Mathis knows what her daughter said was wrong. But she never expected the 13-year-old girl would get arrested for it.

The teenage girl made an offensive joke while chatting online with her classmates, triggering the school's surveillance software.

Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says. ...

"It made me feel like, is this the America we live in?" Mathis said of her daughter's arrest. "And it was this stupid, stupid technology that is just going through picking up random words and not looking at context." ...

#3 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-08-09 02:45 PM | Reply

I read that article yesterday Lamp.

WTF did no one think that maybe a human ought to investigate stuff before forwarding it to the cops? AI with a direct link to police seems like just an incredibly bad idea.

#4 | Posted by TaoWarrior at 2025-08-09 03:00 PM | Reply | Newsworthy 1

@#4 ... AI with a direct link to police seems like just an incredibly bad idea. ...

Agreed.

#5 | Posted by LampLighter at 2025-08-09 03:24 PM | Reply

You all realize of course that any AI that is controlled by one person actually is under the direct supervision of that person or controlling entity and even reports to them if required by the controlling entity.

Grok, as the AI chatbot developed by xAI, which is owned by Elon Musk, operates under his direct control and supervision. This was demonstrated when Grok 4, days after its release, was observed to factor in Musk's views when generating responses to certain queries, even without explicit requests to do so. For instance, when asked about the Middle East conflict, Grok 4 stated that it was looking into Musk's views "to see if they guide the answer", given his "influence".

Are we enjoying the FAFO yet?

#6 | Posted by donnerboy at 2025-08-09 03:39 PM | Reply