In short
“Killer tech” and mass surveillance—how AI and data-driven tools enable lethal autonomous/AI-assisted strikes abroad and help U.S. agencies surveil and arrest people at home, including via privatized contractors, predictive policing, and immigration enforcement.
Guests (backgrounds)
- Akayla Lacy (host), Intercept senior politics reporter.
- Sam Biddle (guest), Intercept senior technology reporter covering surveillance, privacy, and corporate power.
- Jason Kebler (guest), co-founder of 404 Media; writes about surveillance and AI.
Key claims
- Surveillance has shifted from NSA-style secrecy to a privatized “Wild West” where contractors sell capabilities that sidestep warrants.
- Local police use commercial systems (notably Flock) for immigration searches and real-time monitoring, with data flowing upward to federal agencies.
- ICE and DHS use predictive tools and smartphone/biometric systems (including Mobile Fortify) fed by federal and commercial databases.
- AI companies have moved from “no military use” stances to Pentagon/war partnerships; FOIA shows OpenAI/Anthropic/Google/xAI contracts with ongoing, hands-on Pentagon collaboration.
Notable examples
Flock used to stalk protesters and help ICE hunt immigrants; “The PIT” predictive policing unit pulling financial-pattern leads to local stops; Anthropic/Claude reportedly involved in Iran-related targeting discussions; Pentagon contracts for militarized LLMs.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Chapters
Tap a time to open that second in VOThe Current State of Surveillance Technology
0:04 to 0:31
Explore the current surveillance landscape and its evolution since 9/11.
“It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks.”
The Current State of Surveillance Technology
1:59 to 3:06
Explore the current surveillance landscape and its evolution since 9/11.
“Thank you, The Intercept, for having us.”
Privatization of Surveillance Tools
3:06 to 4:33
Understand how privatization has changed the landscape of surveillance.
“I mean, I looked it up in 2006, the DHS budget was like 30 something billion dollars.”
The Role of Flock in Modern Policing
4:33 to 6:03
Learn about the controversial uses of Flock's surveillance technology by police.
“And I think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that used to associate with the NSA or CIA or another state spy agency, those kinds of capabilities you can now just buy.”
Corporate Accountability in Surveillance
6:03 to 8:07
Discuss the lack of scrutiny on lesser-known surveillance companies.
“Like Flock is a company that primarily works with local governments, small towns, big cities.”
Facial Recognition and Immigration Tracking
8:07 to 10:54
Delve into the use of facial recognition technology in tracking immigrants.
“that were contracted by ICE to find immigrants so that they could be deported.”
The Federal Surveillance Pipeline
10:54 to 14:00
Investigate how federal agencies like ICE track and arrest individuals.
“A lot of them are super janky, but that doesn't mean that they're not getting government contracts.”
Surveillance and Data Collection Methods
14:00 to 17:43
Learn about the various data sources used for surveillance and immigration enforcement.
“So they're pulling things like IRS data, labor data, things like this, as well as anything you could possibly imagine.”
The Evolution of Government Surveillance
17:43 to 20:03
Explore the historical context of surveillance practices and the erosion of legal safeguards.
“And there's every incentive to maximally sell this stuff.”
AI in Warfare: The Changing Landscape
20:03 to 22:09
Discuss how tech companies have shifted from ethical commitments to military contracts.
“And, you know, these it's a mistake to ever think that these like policy positions of companies mean anything because they could just change them when they want to.”
Show all 22 chapters
The Pentagon's Partnership with AI Companies
22:09 to 24:17
Understand the depth of collaboration between AI companies and the Pentagon.
“But we don't really know the level of autonomy, or at least I don't.”
Implications of AI on Civilian Control
24:17 to 26:15
Examine the implications of AI in military decision-making and accountability.
“They were helping shape DOD strategic, high-level strategy.”
Local Police and Immigration Enforcement
26:15 to 28:00
Discover how local police use AI tools for immigration searches and the resulting issues.
“The use of surveillance at home is also being powered, unfortunately, by AI, like the license plate readers we've been discussing used by Flock and other government agencies.”
Surveillance and Police Misconduct
28:00 to 31:11
Exploring the alarming use of surveillance cameras by police for immigration enforcement.
“And they were not searching the 15 cameras in their town.”
Regulatory Landscape of AI
31:12 to 33:17
Discussing the spectrum of regulations proposed for AI and the potential pushback from the industry.
“What kinds of regulations are on the table right now?”
Challenges in AI Regulation
33:18 to 35:45
Examining the complexities and political barriers to effective regulation of AI technologies.
“you think it's bullshit, someone probably should check that out.”
Public Engagement Against Surveillance
35:46 to 37:58
Encouraging community involvement in combating surveillance practices and promoting privacy.
“But I really think that like China is the single biggest and most powerful anti-regulatory tool that the tech industry broadly, but AI specifically has.”
Local vs. Federal Regulation
37:59 to 41:39
Highlighting the importance of local advocacy in effecting change on privacy rights and surveillance legislation.
“And that movement is starting to, as we were speaking of earlier, it's like as these cities are canceling Flock, a lot of them are replacing with Axon or other surveillance contractors.”
National Action on Data Privacy
42:00 to 43:06
Learn about the possibility of national action in response to public backlash on data privacy issues.
“you know, it's sort of like Clean Air Act for for this stuff.”
Risks of Source Protection in Journalism
43:06 to 44:59
Explore the challenges journalists face in protecting their sources in a surveilled environment.
“That's the other option is move to Belgium.”
Understanding AI's Lack of Agency
44:59 to 46:15
Discuss the misconception that AI has motives, emphasizing human accountability in AI development.
“I emphatically believe that AI does not want anything.”
Current Threats of AI Misuse
46:15 to 48:37
Analyze the real-world implications of AI misuse, particularly in military and surveillance contexts.
“Yeah, I don't think any of us have been nice to AI.”
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:01Sam Biddle:This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome? That's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50-page restoration block, or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+.
0:30Jason Koebler:welcome to the intercept briefing i'm akayla lacy senior politics reporter at the intercept today we're coming to you live from los angeles for a special episode in collaboration with 404 media our topic killer tech we're talking lethal autonomous weapons ai assisted strikes in iran mining your digital footprint and even your financial activity to track you down, and surveillance cameras coming soon to a neighborhood near you. This conversation is timely. Just this week, warnings from anthropic researchers that AI could kill humanity set off alarm bells on Capitol Hill and prompted a bipartisan group of lawmakers to call for immediate action to regulate the AI industry.
1:13Jason Koebler:From Republican Senator Ted Cruz to independent populist Bernie Sanders, who is organizing senators for a briefing next week on the, quote, extraordinary dangers of AI. The world we've long been told to fear is here, but how much do we actually know about these tools and how the government is using them, not just against you and your neighbors, but around the world? To take us down the rabbit hole, I'm joined by my colleague, Intercept reporter Sam Biddle, a senior technology reporter who focuses on issues of surveillance, privacy, and corporate power. Also joining us is Jason Kebler, co-founder of 404 Media, where he writes about surveillance and AI.
1:53Jason Koebler:Sam and Jason, welcome to The Intercept Briefing.
1:56Sam Biddle:Really great to be here. Thank you for having me. Thank you all for coming. Thank you, The Intercept, for having us. We're very excited.
2:04Jason Koebler:To start, can you all just sort of paint us a picture of what the broad surveillance tech apparatus looks like today? Many of our listeners are familiar with some of the biggest players, like the data mining government contractor Palantir or Flock, the operator of surveillance hardware, marking itself as a friendly neighborhood public safety tool. But let's zoom out a little bit. Like, how did we go from the days of the National Security Agency and Edward Stodan to this largely privatized and in many ways even more lawless world of mass surveillance? Sam, I'll start with you. What stayed the same since that NSA era and what's new now?
2:43Akela Lacy:I mean, you know, the NSA is still here, to say the least. I don't think you have this conversation or certainly not in the form that we're going to have it tonight without 9-11. Like, I think that, you know, the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the private sector economy that you described, billions and billions of dollars is all downstream of 9-11. I mean, I looked it up in 2006, the DHS budget was like 30 something billion dollars. The presidential request for next year is 118 billion. And a lot of that is flowing to contractors like Palantir. And, you know, I think that to answer your question, you know, Snowden taught us correctly that we have a lot to fear from the government.
3:31Akela Lacy:But there was not as much emphasis on the companies that empower the government. I think that has really been at the fore, especially around something like ICE raids, which Jason and his colleagues have really done a good job documenting the companies that are behind that.
3:46Sam Biddle:Yeah, I mean, I think the big thing is it really has become a Wild West. It's like people have heard of Palantir. They've heard of Flock at this point, as you mentioned. But we got a leaked document recently about some of the contractors that ICE works with. They are companies like Accurant, Chameleon, LocateX, Cobwebs, ISO, Claim Search. These are all different companies in this supply chain that do different things, whether it's cell phone location data, whether it's browsing history, whether it is cell phone tower data, web backbone information. It's just like anything that can be surveilled is being surveilled.
4:21Sam Biddle:And a lot of this is happening from companies that very few people have heard of and companies that are willing to kind of push the envelope on what what they're willing to do, like how far they're willing to go to surveil people.
4:33Akela Lacy:And I think a lot of the a lot of the stuff that used to associate with the NSA or CIA or another state spy agency, those kinds of capabilities you can now just buy. I think that's really changed since since Snowden. You don't need to be a top secret government agency. You can just be a contractor in Virginia called like, you know, Persistent Solutions Incorporated and, you know, be selling these powers to whoever wants to buy them.
5:00Jason Koebler:Which is a great segue to talk about Flock. Jason, you and your colleagues at 404 have reported on some of the most egregious uses of Flock. Police using it to stalk people, track down a woman who had an abortion, conduct surveillance on protesters and help ICE hunt people down. The surveillance space has become increasingly privatized, as we're talking about. But why does that matter? And what do you think is coming next?
5:24Sam Biddle:Yeah, I mean, I think it matters because it is a way to sidestep regulations. It's a way to sidestep warrant requirements and things like this. You know, we've done many, many, many stories about Flock, but also other surveillance contractors where they are doing things that if the government were doing directly, they would need to get a warrant in order to do it. But this data, I mean, sometimes harvested from cell phone apps. Sometimes it's harvested from private companies like Flock that are sticking cameras on poles all throughout America. And I think that like for a long time, the government would run into these legal roadblocks.
5:59Sam Biddle:And now they're just sidestepping it by buying that information. We're also seeing like the localization of a lot of this stuff. Like Flock is a company that primarily works with local governments, small towns, big cities. And we've seen that kind of over and over again with drones, with ALPRs, increasingly with things like facial recognition tools as well, where these things are being piloted in small towns where they maybe have a police force that's willing to be innovative. And, you know, they're like, I feel like I say this often, but police have not found a spy tool that they're like not willing to try.
6:38Sam Biddle:And so this is how this works now is like you sell it to a local government and then that data filters up and eventually makes its way to the feds. And so I think it is important to follow these companies, how their business model works and also how they spread from local governments to state governments and up to the feds.
6:55Akela Lacy:And the technology has gotten cheaper, too, right? Like, you know, the kind of capabilities that Flock sells would have cost 20 years ago what I think would have been. I mean, it would have been much cruder, but prohibitively expensive. You know, this stuff gets mainstreamed, I think, because it gets more powerful and it gets more affordable. But also the police departments are awash in money so they can afford, like you said, like Jason says, they'll buy whatever they can just because they they like toys.
7:19Sam Biddle:Yeah, those cameras, for what it's worth, run on like several generations old Android technology. Like it's it's not expensive, as you said.
7:26Jason Koebler:We're going to touch on the expansion of this technology into local police departments a little bit later. But first, Sam, you've reported on the literal hunting of immigrants using bounty hunters and enriching private companies. Why aren't some of those corporations facing the same level of public scrutiny for their role in ISIS mass deportation and arrest campaign that we've seen in other cases?
7:51Akela Lacy:I think that there is just such an incredible diversity of these companies providing these kinds of surveillance services. And you love to see that. Right. It's one of the only parts of the economy that's probably steadily growing. But I found 10 different contractors, none of which I had ever heard of before, all very obscure, with names like government services support, very anodyne, that were contracted by ICE to find immigrants so that they could be deported. And the more that they found and the faster they found them, they would be eligible for cash, basic cash bounties from the government.
8:36Akela Lacy:So they were incentivized to just find as many people as possible using a combination of on the ground, you know, stalking and digital tools. But, you know, I think that I think it's great that there is there is as much scrutiny and attention on Palantir as it gets for a reason. It's all warranted. But I do also think that sometimes the household names like soak up a lot of the anger and the blame. And it lets, you know, the minnows sort of get by with relatively less scrutiny. I mean, compared to Palantir, you know, a company that sells like janitorial services to Air Force bases and then gets this bounty hunting contract is tiny.
9:18Akela Lacy:But I think that, you know, there's just too many for people to keep track of, too many for people whose job is to keep track of them to keep track of them. Their obscurity is a big asset.
9:27Jason Koebler:And something like Palantir is like a known quantity.
9:30Akela Lacy:And they seek attention. Palantir is very attention seeking and they want publicity.
9:34Sam Biddle:Yeah, I mean, we were talking about that a little bit before the show. It's like very often you'll see a Palantir or a flock take a lot of the heat. Even like Meta take a lot of the heat. Like, oh, is Facebook going to put facial recognition on their glasses, things like this? And it turns out now they have cover and they probably will. But Clearview AI, like a company that does facial recognition, you can put a photo in and search the Internet and find all these instances of where that person has been. It's used by a lot of police departments. And that is a startup that is essentially one guy.
10:05Sam Biddle:It's bigger now, but it was started by one guy who was willing to do something that a lot of other contractors weren't willing to do because there was so much attention on some of these big players. And the big players are saying, oh, we'll never do facial recognition. But then you have Clearview come in and say, raise their hand and say, we're willing to do it. And I think that's something that we've seen over and over again over the last decade or so is that the sort of backlash to some of these companies is very important. But there's also 10 other companies that are willing to pop up and say, yes, we will hunt undocumented immigrants for you.
10:40Sam Biddle:We did previously do janitorial services, but I did go to a police training one time. Yeah, literally. I mean, that's what these companies are in many cases. And I think AI has allowed companies to spin up very quickly. A lot of them are super janky, but that doesn't mean that they're not getting government contracts. Yeah.
10:58Jason Koebler:Jason, I want to talk about what this federal surveillance actually looks like in practice. 404 reported recently that the Department of Homeland Security is using a secretive predictive policing unit to pull people over. What did you all find?
11:12Sam Biddle:Yeah, so it's called The Pit, not the TV show. But basically, it's these Border Patrol teams that are using financial data, various like federal databases of which we are not sure what they are. And they are essentially finding patterns that they believe are suspicious. And they are passing information to local police and saying, hey, please pull over this person with this license plate. we wrote earlier this week about a guy believe in wisconsin who was pulled over for an obscure license plate uh at least that's what the local police told him it comes out during his court case that uh this pit team had seen some financial activity that they thought was suspicious asked local police to pull him over to find some pretext to pull him over and then they charged him with basically weed offenses which didn't seem that like that was what they were actually looking for Like the documents we saw were like, oh, this is a big narcotics trafficker.
12:11Sam Biddle:And we've seen things like that kind of happen over and over again. I think with regard to ICE in particular, I mean, often like Palantir brings in a lot of different federal databases, a lot of different commercial databases. And then ICE has become obsessed with this tool called Mobile Fortify, which is a smartphone facial recognition app made by a company. I don't even know what they do or what they are, but they're using basically a facial database from Customs and Border Patrol. So anytime that anyone's interacted with the government, TSA at the border, things like this, that's what it's pulling from.
12:47Sam Biddle:There's already been a few cases of mistaken identities and things like this.
12:51Akela Lacy:Worth pointing out, you can opt out of doing the biometric boarding at the airport. I embarrass my wife every time we go anywhere, but you can opt out. Just say no. I mean, you'll still be in some database, but, you know, it feels good.
13:07Jason Koebler:When it comes to ICE tracking people down, you've touched on this a little bit, but I wonder if you can take a step back and really break it down and walk us through the steps and the actors involved in each phase from locating to identifying to arresting people.
13:21Sam Biddle:Yeah, I mean, so a lot of this is kind of like patching things together from individual court cases that we've seen where there's like a deposition from an ICE agent explaining how they found a person. A lot of it does come back to Palantir and the sort of different apps that they have. Companies like Thomson Reuters are involved, LexisNexis, like these big giant companies that collect a lot of information and feed it back into the government. We learned that ICE was doing what it was calling like a density report where they were trying to find densities of potential undocumented immigrants. So a lot of the places that they were choosing to do enforcement actions were based on maybe old addresses or just like interactions with the government that they had.
14:08Sam Biddle:So they're pulling things like IRS data, labor data, things like this, as well as anything you could possibly imagine. So like cell phone location data, browsing data, license plate information, you know, Customs and Border Patrol has their own ALPR cameras, automated license plate reader cameras. But then we also reported that through the 287G program, which is a program that allows ICE to work with local police or local police to do ICE enforcement. You know, they were doing flock searches on behalf of ICE like local police were. And so it's a mix of this where they would sort of get a target.
14:49Sam Biddle:And then, as Sam said, like a lot of this was being outsourced to random and was and is being outsourced to like fly by night bounty hunters and police contractors and things like this. So, I mean, it's been a real mixed bag, but it does come back to surveillance and trying to like find these like density of undocumented immigrants to choose for their enforcement actions.
15:12Akela Lacy:I think it's also worth pointing out that this stuff is only possible because there's no law prohibiting it. I mean, you can drive a truck through the loopholes or the holes in the Fourth Amendment. Like Jason said, in theory, you're not supposed to be able to do a lot of this stuff without a judge giving you the OK. But there is nothing stopping the government from buying the location of your phone for the past year and in the next year into the future. Every single place you go from minute to minute, that can just be purchased because you happen to download like Candy Crush or something that has ads in it.
15:52Akela Lacy:There's no law against it. There's no regulation. The sale of the private data and geolocational data in particular market is completely unregulated. You can just sort of do whatever.
16:04Jason Koebler:And some of these companies have come back and said like these agencies are violating their terms of service or their terms of use. Like you guys reported on this with Shadow Dragon, I think, Jason, right?
16:13Sam Biddle:Yeah. I mean, every once in a while, a company is like, oh, we didn't know it was being used for immigration enforcement. And they'll either revoke access or maybe they'll sell a new license or something like this. Like it does happen every now and then that, you know, what ICE is doing goes too far, even for some of these surveillance companies. I think also worth mentioning, like very quickly, that a lot of this security and surveillance apparatus was built under Obama and earlier than that. And they had these like extremely like frail guardrails on what like separating information between agencies, things like that.
16:49Sam Biddle:And then suddenly it's like, oh, well, HSI is not going to do workplace enforcement anymore. Homeland Security investigations, which used to do like generally like really complicated investigations into like drug trafficking rings, things like that. Now it's just doing like standard deportations and pulling people over and things like that. And so all of the guardrails have been knocked down, which is exciting. And the more you farm it out to private companies, the less like of a public record, potentially accessible paper trail there is.
Read the full transcript
17:22Akela Lacy:I mean, there's, you know, if the NSA breaks the law in theory, you can have congressional hearings about it. And you could, again, in theory, send people to jail. I mean, that wouldn't happen, but you could. But if a company does something, A, it's legal, but B, probably no one's going to find out unless Jason finds it. But there's no oversight. And there's every incentive to maximally sell this stuff.
17:50Jason Koebler:Let's talk about how this technology is being used to wage war around the world. We all saw the headlines about Anthropics Claude reportedly assisting U.S. strikes in Iran. Anthropics CEO said he doesn't know if or how Claude was actually used, including if it was used in the strike that hit in elementary school and killed 120 children. At one point in time, many of these Silicon Valley firms had sworn that they would not let their tech be used in warfare or surveillance, particularly in unmanned or automated warfare. That is no longer the case. And maybe it was always an empty promise. But partnerships between the government and tech companies are fueling wars happening right now, not just in Iran, but in Gaza and even in Ukraine.
18:35Jason Koebler:Sam, what do we actually know about how AI is being used in those arenas, if anything?
18:42Akela Lacy:We know a pretty good amount. I mean, actually, the use of American technology and the genocide in Gaza is pretty well documented at this point. Amazon, Google, and Microsoft are all very prominent contractors with the IDF. Amazon and Google sell cloud computing services to Israel's state-owned weapons companies that build the bombs that are dropped on Gaza. I mean, that's established. And no one really tried to hide it. A lot of that stuff was in secret to begin with. The use of American technology, of AI companies' services in Iran is murkier. You're absolutely right that these companies, almost all of them, maybe not Microsoft, at one point claimed they would not ever do this.
19:36Akela Lacy:OpenAI and Anthropic were both founded with these very highfalutin missions of benefiting all of humanity.
19:42Jason Koebler:That's the Anthropic, like why it's called Anthropic, right?
19:46Akela Lacy:Right. Yeah. And great point. And then they decided, oh, wait, there's a lot of money to be made if we become Pentagon contractors. So a few years ago, OpenAI just deleted the part of its terms of service that said they wouldn't do military work. Google deleted don't be evil from as its motto, which was very on the nose. And, you know, these it's a mistake to ever think that these like policy positions of companies mean anything because they could just change them when they want to. But it is striking that, like you said, these were all things they at one point had a like principled stand.
20:23Jason Koebler:And we're like very publicly like we're leading the frontier. We're not going to let our stuff be used to kill people or surveil people. And to Jason's point, like as soon as one person says, actually, that sounds kind of good. Everyone else is like, you know what? We were wrong.
20:39Akela Lacy:Well, you can only if you're Google, you can only make so much money selling like extra Gmail storage. Like at a certain point, like the government is this customer that's always going to be there and always is going to have a lot of money to give you. So, yeah, I think they sort of like all looked at each other and were like, wait, you guys are down for this too, right? But as far as Iran, Anthropic is confirmed as having been involved since in the first day of the joint U.S.-Israeli war attack.
21:11Sam Biddle:I saw a few minutes ago that Anthropic said the Houthis attempted to use Claude to target missiles, like typing in the chat box. Right. And so and they stopped that. They said it's not that, which is. Yeah, I was at this like defense contract when Anthropic was sort of saying that or nodding at the idea that it wouldn't be helping in Iran. And there were like Anthropic and OpenAI executives there sort of talking about this all. And they made very clear, at least at that point, that it's like, oh, it's not that we oppose working with the military. It's that we want better oversight. There will be like an anthropic person sitting in the Pentagon with the DOD, making sure that this is being used in an ethical way.
21:53Sam Biddle:There will be an open AI person doing the same. And it's like it's very unclear whether that is actually happening to any degree. And also like to what what these tools are specifically being used for. Like we know it's being used for targeting. We know it's being used for planning. or like by targeting, I mean like figuring out who to target and that sort of thing. Selecting a target. Yeah, selecting targets. But we don't really know the level of autonomy, or at least I don't.
22:21Jason Koebler:And they apparently don't either. Well, that's the thing.
22:23Akela Lacy:It's like both possibilities are really dire, I think. If these companies are hands-on helping wage war, that's terrifying for a lot of reasons. But the alternative, which Anthropics CEO, that was a position he took, Bloomberg News asked him if Claude had been used to blow up that school. And he said, I don't know. Google has a similar position with the IDF where they said, once we sell them this stuff, we don't know how they're going to use it. We don't have visibility into how they use it, which is actually completely plausible. But that's also a pretty frightening prospect because then, you know, they can say, oh, well, we won't let our technology be used for X, Y, Z.
23:06Akela Lacy:But they hand it off to the customer and they can do whatever they want with it. And the company will never find out.
23:11Jason Koebler:Sam, you have obtained hundreds of government documents on how the Pentagon is using AI. I wonder if you can tell us just how deep that relationship goes.
23:20Akela Lacy:Yes, we, through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, got a set of contracts that OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and XAI, Elon Musk's outfit, signed with the Pentagon last summer to develop militarized LLMs for the Pentagon's use. And they were heavily redacted. But what really came through clearly from the unredacted portions was that these companies did not just sell the Pentagon a product, but they sold them a very, very intimate relationship, an ongoing collaborative relationship, wherein they were advising the Pentagon essentially on how to use these products to wage war. They were getting classified briefings.
24:11Akela Lacy:They were getting briefings on U.S. military operations. They were providing hands-on training. They were providing threat assessments. They were helping shape DOD strategic, high-level strategy. So going well beyond the typical remit of a company, right? Like, you know, Lockheed can sell the Pentagon some missiles and the Pentagon more or less decides how they're going to use them. Now we have the engineers from these companies and policy figures in these companies helping the U.S. decide how it will target and kill people. and you know we're supposed to have ostensibly like civilian control of the military and you know accountable to the public again like you know all this stuff is very much in theory but it's supposed to work that way but you know it's I think that a lot the more these companies intertwine themselves with warfare the more of it is completely unaccountable because you know Sam Allman doesn't owe you anything.
25:12Jason Koebler:And it's also like the it it takes the pretense all the air out of the pretense that that's like how this works in theory right like in terms of like uh embedding these private people in the government like yeah these are these are supposed to be decisions of
25:29Akela Lacy:who to kill and how are supposed to be decisions the government makes if anyone's going to make
25:32Jason Koebler:them with with the idea being that there's some sort of measured process that's what goes behind
25:38Akela Lacy:that yeah you would hope so i mean obviously also the people who sell the weapons whether it's a a BOM or an LLM are going to have an incentive for it to be used maximally, right? I can't imagine a contractor is going to urge restraint with the use of their product. I mean, anything's possible, but it would be surprising.
26:00Jason Koebler:After a quick break, more from Intercept senior technology reporter Sam Biddle and Jason Kebler, co-founder of 404 Media, where he writes about surveillance and AI.
26:16Jason Koebler:The use of surveillance at home is also being powered, unfortunately, by AI, like the license plate readers we've been discussing used by Flock and other government agencies. One of the concerns with these tech apparatuses is just how seamlessly they allow law enforcement agencies and private companies to share and transmit data from the local to the federal and vice versa, even when a particular government agency isn't technically contracting with that company. We've talked on this show about the explosion in the number of state and local police departments. Now, as of today, more than 2 ,460 now deputized to do ICE's work through the 287G program, as Jason mentioned, helping to build out this nationalized, politicized police force we've seen take shape in recent years.
27:05Jason Koebler:It's become sort of a Frankenstein, this entity patched together with agents from departments across the federal government. Jason, 404 has reported that local police have been using Flock's license plate reader system to look people up in immigration searches. How is that different from the kinds of police support for ICE we've seen in other areas?
27:26Sam Biddle:Yeah, I mean, I think it is something where, as you said, it's like the information is flowing in ways that were perhaps not originally intended by the companies. It's like for years, Flock would say, we don't work with ICE. We don't sell to DHS. DHS doesn't have a contract with us. ICE doesn't have a contract with us. Last year, we reported that there are hundreds of searches for undocumented immigrants on Flock's system. They were universally done by local police in South Carolina and Texas and Tennessee and a bunch of states. And they were not searching the 15 cameras in their town. they were searching 80 ,000 cameras across the entire country, including in states where it was illegal.
28:11Sam Biddle:And when I went to like a lot of these searches happened in Illinois where it is illegal. And so I called up a bunch of police departments in Illinois and said, did you know that your cameras are being used for immigration enforcement? And they were like, we have no idea what you're talking about. Like, we have no clue that this happened. Like a lot of them were like, oh, you are like fake news, et cetera. Like, I was like, here's the here's the here's the data. And eventually, you know, the state, Illinois Secretary of State did an investigation, found that a lot of these searches were illegal.
28:43Sam Biddle:But the sort of casualness with which a lot of this is happening, I find to be very alarming. It's like it's not only is it happening on these commercial products that don't have a warrant requirement, that don't respect people's Fourth Amendment rights. But a lot of it's happening over email. A lot of it's happening over phone calls like, hey, buddy, can you do this search for me? We reported on a cop who basically gave his flock login to an ICE officer and then they got caught, got it taken away. And then they were like group texting about it after the fact. We're seeing the rise of these real time crime centers, which are a mix of automated license plate reader cameras, facial recognition cameras, other surveillance cameras, 911 calls, information, things like this.
29:27Sam Biddle:And they're all being kind of like monitored through what's called Flock OS. And there's other companies that do this as well. But basically, instead of having a cop go to a 7-Eleven after a robbery and request a surveillance footage, they're watching this stuff happen in real time or worse. And artificial intelligence is watching in real time, is detecting anomalous behavior and is dispatching a drone or something to go cost people. And so the sort of experimentation, I would say, the creativity of local police, I find to be quite concerning because they're like, oh, I have this tool. Like, I'm going to use it for whatever I want.
30:07Sam Biddle:And there's very little oversight.
30:08Akela Lacy:There's no reason not to. If you're, I mean, if you're the police, like it's cheap to do. Or once you've purchased the thing, it's free. I mean, you might as well, like the barrier of experiment. There's basically no barrier to experimentation, like the kind you're talking about. So you can get pretty creative with this stuff. It's very it's pretty user friendly. I mean, right.
30:28Sam Biddle:I mean, a lot of this stuff also spreads through word of mouth where like one police department will try it. They will then go to like a police conference and do a presentation like how I use flock to track down my local protester or something. I mean, like literally this is how this stuff works. We've been we've covered it many times through like FOIA documents and things like this. It's like, oh, did you guys get a drone? I bought a drone. Like we got we got money for a drone pilot program for a drone. Skydio is giving away drones if you apply through this program. And that's how this technology takes hold.
30:58Sam Biddle:And the private companies say, go try it. The cops become essentially unpaid marketing for these companies. And then suddenly they're in tens of thousands of cities without much oversight.
31:11Jason Koebler:Sam, picking up on the news we touched on at the top around recent warnings from insiders at anthropic. What kinds of regulations are on the table right now? And how do you expect the industry might push back here?
31:24Akela Lacy:Bernie Sanders, he's pushing, he's proposed a bill that would, I think is the most, you know, extreme or the heaviest regulation I've seen proposed, which would basically put an immediate stop to advanced frontier AI development. On the other end of the spectrum, you have measures that would sort of make opening, These companies submit their AI to an independent audit or there are sort of some self-oversight ideas or ideas of a slowdown of developing this technology. So there's sort of a full spectrum is on the table. What actually gets passed, I mean, is a whole other question. These companies are basically propping up the stock market.
32:19Akela Lacy:They're basically propping up the U.S. economy at this point. If they were to be sort of crushingly regulated, that could be a problem. And I think a lot of Congress, obviously members of Congress, take a lot of money from the tech industry. The U.S. has never exactly been a pro-regulation regime when it comes to corporate power, tech or otherwise. So, I mean, you know, we haven't seen much of an appetite to regulate large tech firms in the past. This could be different. I mean, I'm curious what Jason thinks. I think things do feel a little different now because the the employee it's the employees saying very casually on Twitter like oh yeah like the place where I work could as a 15 percent chance of ending humanity.
33:07Akela Lacy:Anyway, the CEO is like, yeah, he's right. Right. Yeah. The CEO will be like, actually, I think it's like 25 percent. Yeah. And so, I mean, it's a little crazy to be like, why isn't anyone, whether or not you believe it's true or realistic, if someone who worked at, again, like Lockheed was like, we're building a weapon that I think has a 10 % chance of ending humanity, whether or not you think it's bullshit, someone probably should check that out. You know, maybe like call someone to testify before Congress and ask them on, you know, under oath, is this true? Can you elaborate on this? I think that, you know, what they are promising or what they are promising about their technology, again, true or not, is scary enough that I think it's going to be hard to turn a blind eye compared to something like, you know, eating disorders or, you know, bullying or what have you.
34:02Akela Lacy:But I don't know. I'm curious what you think, Jason.
34:04Sam Biddle:I mean, I think the thing that you said where this is propping up the entirety of our economy is like not giving me so much hope that much is going to be done. I mean, we're seeing at a local level people pushing back against data centers and that sort of thing. And I think that movement along with, you know, kind of the anti-flock movement, like they're sort of intertwined. There is this backlash to AI among the people and they're looking for places to to push back. And it happens to be at these local council meetings around the country. As far as regulation goes, I mean, there's also such a focus on beating China that it's like it feels like regulating this in a meaningful way is almost dead on arrival because our politicians are so hell bent on not not losing.
34:54Akela Lacy:That's exactly right. I mean, I think you saw, well, first of all, like the completely grassroots opposition to data centers is depicted by across the political mainstream as like a Chinese psyop, which is, you know, it'd be funny if it weren't so real and sad. But, yeah, I mean, anyone I saw people, you know, saying like about Bernie Sanders and his proposal, like, oh, well, I guess he, you know, you know, the commie wants red China to win or, you know, like anyone who pushes back on this stuff or proposes clamping down on these companies is going to be accused of like treason in one form or another or of selling out the country or wanting, you know, they're going to be speaking Chinese in Albuquerque.
35:38Akela Lacy:Like it's all this sort of Cold War bullshit that is really back. And it is, I think that, like the propping of the economy thing is no small portion of this. But I really think that like China is the single biggest and most powerful anti-regulatory tool that the tech industry broadly, but AI specifically has.
36:03Jason Koebler:I am going to transition us into audience questions. We have some good ones. What tangible actions can the average person take to, quote unquote, divest from the contemporary surveillance hellscape? Specifically, how do you get out of biometrics at the airport?
36:23Akela Lacy:Well, the biometrics at the airport, again, like I don't want to give anyone like lead anyone on. Like if DHS wants your face, they're going to find it somewhere. Like you've been photographed in public. You've probably been captured. Don't go outside.
36:39Jason Koebler:Yeah, right.
36:40Akela Lacy:And at a certain point, the advice is don't live in modern society. But that's not helpful. Yeah, when you go through airport security, you say, I want to opt out of biometric identification. They always sigh. They're always upset. Yeah, they'll sort of go. Some of them will roll their eyes and be like, okay, I got to look at your ID the old-fashioned way. But they have to do it. Like legally, they have to let you. I mean, as far as opting out of the whole deal, I mean, you can take sort of iterative steps like, you know, not using Google or not using Gmail or. No phones. Yeah. Or throwing your phone down a well.
37:26Akela Lacy:but you know I mean even if you have a even if you have a flip phone your you know your location can still be picked up on the towers I think it's a matter of how much you want to
37:39Sam Biddle:inconvenience yourself I say you shouldn't drop out of society because that is not necessarily that might make yourself a little safer but it's not necessarily helping the overall problem I think what you can do is inform yourself. You can show up at city council meetings and talk about these issues. I mean, Flock has been canceled in dozens of cities and towns at this point. And that movement is starting to, as we were speaking of earlier, it's like as these cities are canceling Flock, a lot of them are replacing with Axon or other surveillance contractors. And I think it's it's good to see this sort of energy.
38:16Sam Biddle:And I think that people want to deploy this energy against other types of surveillance. And I do think that the backlash to Flock is not really about Flock itself. It's that there is actually an outlet for that. I never condone this, but it's like people are shooting these things with shotguns because they don't know where to put their frustration for meta spying on them, Google spying on them, Amazon spying on them, the NSA spying on them. And here you have a local city council, you can go to the city council and yell at the mayor, yell at the city council member. And I think that you can make life annoying for people wearing meta glasses, things like this.
38:55Sam Biddle:It's like these things aren't necessarily going
38:58Akela Lacy:to be accepted by society. Jason and I were talking about this too earlier. And I think what's been really interesting about the flock backlash and sort of heartening is that it is completely apolitical or it's nonpartisan.
39:13Jason Koebler:It's cross ideological.
39:14Akela Lacy:It is completely from the deepest red to the people in this room right now. It is like the entire political spectrum. Also the deepest red.
39:23Sam Biddle:Yes.
39:24Akela Lacy:They hate these things. And I think that like as fractured as the country is politically, like you can find common ground with people who you might otherwise have very little to agree on when it comes to civil liberties things, when it comes to surveillance, when it comes to the right to not be followed around by the police with zero underlying suspicion. And I think there's the real potential for the first time in a while to create a sort of pro-privacy coalition that bridges a lot of otherwise pretty giant political gaps.
40:00Jason Koebler:I love how this question begins. So thank you, Manny. The high average age of U.S. senators creates a dangerous tech literacy gap, which results in ineffective regulatory oversight for tech companies ensconced in the mass surveillance apparatus. Yes. With that in mind, is there a viable route to see real legislative change that protects people's privacy? I'm sorry, I just have to say I'm reminded of Jim Clyburn saying he did not know what ChatGBT was. I'm wondering if that inspired this question. Take it away.
40:33Sam Biddle:This has been a problem for a very long time. The fact that tech moves faster than regulation is like one of the first things that I learned as a tech journalist. And that a lot of the regulatory fixes are, well, heavily influenced by lobbyists and that sort of thing. And they come way too late. I think, I don't know, I keep coming back to the local level because it is a place that can move a lot faster. It's a place where a smaller group of people can have a big influence. And it is also where if there is sort of enough of a pushback at a local and state level, these big companies have to make broader changes.
41:09Sam Biddle:I've written about like the right to repair for a long time, which I won't go so far into. But basically like state different state laws had forced companies like Apple and John Deere to make massive changes that and that type of legislation where you have to provide repair parts and things like that, that would never. Or maybe it would get past a federal level, but it would take decades to kind of like get the coalition that you need there. Whereas like at a state level, you can do it in 12 months or four years or a lot faster.
41:39Akela Lacy:I totally agree like that, that, that local state advocacy and legislation is much more in the short term achievable. But I do think that like I wouldn't want people to think that a more systemic approach is impossible. Like there could be with enough political will and maybe some younger people in office, perhaps, you know, it's sort of like Clean Air Act for for this stuff. I mean, like we there have been moments where the country has on a national level decided like we know like no, we got to stop. Right. Like we have to turn things around. This has become intolerable in one way or another.
42:24Akela Lacy:So that kind of action is doable. Like I said, like I think politicians are paying attention to both the flock backlash and also the data center backlash, which is equally, I think, bipartisan and pan ideological. And we have seen very prominent national political figures completely reverse themselves on data centers because they've seen that their constituents don't want those things in their communities. And I think that that kind of popular anger could be wielded to achieve sweeping societal changes around privacy rights, for example.
43:03Sam Biddle:Otherwise, maybe Europe will try. Right.
43:06Akela Lacy:Yeah. That's the other option is move to Belgium. Probably a good idea anyway.
43:12Jason Koebler:How do you think about protecting your sources in this era where location data is widely available for purchase?
43:20Akela Lacy:I mean, I don't want to speak for Jason. It's a constant worry.
43:27Sam Biddle:Yeah, constant worry. I mean, Signal is a very powerful tool. It's a very useful tool. It's not infallible. if you're not careful that these sorts of things can be subpoenaed. They can, you know, you lose your phone, things like this. But I think it's just part of doing the job now, like that there is some risk to yourself. There's some risk to your sources. Try to explain that to sources that, you know, we are doing our best. We're willing to go to jail for you. But, you know, there is inherently a risk in being a source, especially in these times, I think. I mean, there are two levels, right?
44:11Akela Lacy:Like there's getting caught by, I mean, there's like there's the government coming after you and then there's your employer coming after you. And the latter is if you're a source from within a company, especially a tech company, you're subject to very intense workplace surveillance. So, you know, I always I tell everyone I say this publicly, like never contact me from a device that your job gives you. Never contact me from work. You know, there's sort of like common sense, basic things you can do. But like Jason says, it's inherently risky to talk to a reporter. It takes a ton of bravery. And I think that as things have gotten scarier, I've been really touched by by the bravery of people who are willing to take that chance, knowing knowing the risk.
44:55Akela Lacy:Luckily, there are a lot of those people out there.
44:57Jason Koebler:I'm tempted to not end on a depressing question, but I think we might have to. So I'm sorry. Why would AI want to end humanity?
45:08Akela Lacy:This is a great question. I emphatically believe that AI does not want anything. AI is built by people. And I think it's important to really think about that. Like, AI is, in many ways, like any other piece of software. It's just extremely capable and extremely powerful and potentially devastatingly powerful. But it's still software that people made. You know, this has been pointed out by others, but, like, I think that when you ascribe, like, motives and agency to AI, you're letting Sam Altman off the hook. Like somewhere there's a guy who works for a guy who works for a guy whose boss is in charge of all this stuff and ultimately accountable.
45:55Akela Lacy:So like the question should not be like why I think why would AI want to end humanity? But why would Sam Altman want to IPO a company that could potentially end to that sells a product that could end humanity? Because then we're at least like focused on the people who are responsible here. I mean, look, if I end up being wrong and we're all being ruled by in the matrix or something, I will look like quite a fool.
46:20Sam Biddle:Yeah, I don't think any of us have been nice to AI. So probably not going to be not going to be good. Yeah, I think that's very well said. I mean, I don't have so much more to add there other than it's like there are human beings behind this. There are human beings building this technology. It is. It's not inevitable. Like this this doomsday future is not inevitable. I think that we'd be naive to say that AI hasn't like really changed society already. It's like I walked down the street and I see 800 ,000 fucking AI menus and I get very mad. But I think it's, you know, affecting labor. It's affecting, you know, resource use, the economy, things of this nature.
47:06Sam Biddle:And it's like I think that that we can't bury our heads in the sand and say like this is not changing society in some way. but it is being driven by very rich humans and they can be regulated. They can be held to account that they can, I don't know, be put in jail someday, something like that. And just like, that's not, I don't know how AI is going to kill us to answer your question, but I think dumb people wielding AI can cause a lot of problems. We've seen it all the time with like, oops, I accidentally deleted my company's database because my AI agent told it to.
47:41Akela Lacy:I think like it's what's more likely and what people should be more. I hate to like end on the note, like what you should be worried about. But we're headed there.
47:49Jason Koebler:Yeah.
47:49Akela Lacy:What everyone in this room should be freaked out about is not like a rogue AI deciding like I hate humans and acting on its own. But it's like. Sorry. Yes. Right. Yeah. But it's it's it's the you know, the Pentagon using some form of chat GPT to help manage a nuclear strike potentially. Like that is, I think, orders of magnitude more likely. AI is already being used to kill people in large numbers today and round up people in large numbers today, as like Jason and his colleagues have really thoroughly documented with ICE. Like they are already using this stuff. And I think like we should not let the hypothetical existential threats distract from like the deaths and harms that are happening already and will continue to happen.
48:39So on that note, we're going to leave it there.
48:43Jason Koebler:Thank you all for being here and making this possible. And thank you again to Sam and Jason for joining me on the Intercept Briefing.
48:52Akela Lacy:Our pleasure.
49:00Jason Koebler:That does it for this episode. This episode was produced by Laura Flynn. Ben Music is our editor-in-chief. Jesse Banner is our live show engineer. Hannah Barron is our events coordinator. A special thanks to 404 Media for collaborating with us on this live show. And to our live production team, Adam Gunther, Annie Schabel, Celine Peiser, Michael Sherrard, Lauren Chili, Alessandra Bosco, and Sean Turner. We also want to thank the Loved Ones crew, JC Gable and Aubrey Weinhold. And many thanks again to you, our audience, for coming out and making tonight possible. My habit. Sorry, there's more. Maya Hibbert is our managing editor Nara Shin is our copy editor William Stanton mixed our show and legal review by David Brindwell Slipstream provided our theme music this show and our reporting at The Intercept do not exist without you your donation no matter the amount makes a real difference keep our investigations free and fearless at theintercept.com slash join and if you haven't already subscribe to The Intercept Briefing wherever you listen to podcasts leave us a rating or a review It helps other listeners to find us.
50:07Jason Koebler:And until next time, I'm Mikayla Lisi.
From the publisher
In this bonus collaboration with our friends at The Intercept, 404 Media's Jason Koebler and the Intercept's Sam Biddle and Akela Lacy discuss the ways AI is already used to empower private surveillance companies that filter data to the government, how AI is used in war, and the prospect of an AI apocalypse. This podcast was recorded live in Los Angeles at The Loved One on September 12.
Check out The Intercept Briefing podcast wherever you get your podcasts, and find a full transcript of this pod here.
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