14 comments

  • epistasis 2 hours ago
    Back during the Iraq war days and government overreach into privacy violations, the tech companies were on the side of the American people. They fought to defend the 4th amendment.

    That has all changed today, except for Anthropic. You think Apple is going to stand up to an unlawful DoJ demand these days? Hell no. Tim Cook has lit Apple's reputation on fire. I've been a super dedicated Apple user for 25 years, but I'm heading for the exits now. All that trust has been burned.

    Stay strong Anthoproc, you are seemingly the only really large SV company with any principles and backbone. I won't forget what happens here, either way it goes.

    • vjvjvjvjghv 2 minutes ago
      [delayed]
    • pamcake 2 hours ago
      I'd hold off making that call on Anthropic here until at least after Friday. I'm not sure if persisting that "constructive dialogue is taking place in good faith" and saying nothing else in public signifies backbone considering preceding and consecutive public statements by government officials... It certainly doesn't instil confidence in honesty or transparency.
    • SanjayMehta 2 hours ago
      All our Intel Macs are getting repurposed for Ubuntu LTS - whatever version which supports our CAD tools.
      • mixmastamyk 1 hour ago
        Recommend Mint instead. Flatpak instead of snap.
    • myvoiceismypass 2 hours ago
      Hate to break the news but they might not be good guys either - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145963

      (Dropping safety pledge)

      • reasonableklout 1 hour ago
        Do you think it's possible the two are related?
        • yunnpp 1 hour ago
          It's obvious that they are.

          The best thing the company could do if they want to stick to principles is not be based in the US.

      • ipaddr 1 hour ago
        They over did the safety aspect in my opinion.
  • samrus 56 minutes ago
    Bullied into doing surveillance? Brother a large part of the tech companies valuations are built on how well they allow the government to do surveillance if the governement wants. They arent victims being bullied, they all knew this day would come ajd most were happy about it
  • saurik 1 hour ago
    Maybe tech companies should try a bit harder to not centralize the world's information, unencrypted, on servers they control.
    • sejje 1 hour ago
      Amen.

      But then they can't make their billions selling our data.

    • uutangohotel 49 minutes ago
      oops accidental surveillance machine
  • djoldman 1 hour ago
    As an aside, why is it not a law that the government can't pay another entity to do something it's not allowed to do itself, without a warrant? I'm thinking about geo data from mobile apps.
  • nzeid 1 hour ago
    Agree but a terrifyingly large number of tech companies have garbage security so the bullying is often unnecessary.
  • isodev 59 minutes ago
    Tech companies shouldn’t be able to do surveillance.
  • mcs5280 14 minutes ago
    Imagine a world where businesses considered the morality of their decisions instead of just maximizing profits
  • deadbabe 1 hour ago
    If they give in I will cancel all Anthropic subscriptions and never use anything created by them again. Recent versions of Claude were getting shitty anyway, I could go without it.
    • metadat 1 hour ago
      All other foundation model providers already caved (OpenAI, Google).
  • linksnapzz 1 hour ago
    Neither should banks, but that ship has sailed.
  • browningstreet 1 hour ago
    Hegseth & Co. has Grok but they actually want Claude. Elon hates Anthropic and.. well.. Hegseth has the power to put the hurt on them.

    Anthropic opened themselves to this disaster by making that first contract with the military.

    I don’t want them to lose this battle but it’s also one they brought upon themselves by stepping into that arena.

  • camillomiller 1 hour ago
    Well, it seems they don’t need that much bullying. They are absolutely happy to contribute if it means favors, no tariffs, more profit etc
  • ChrisArchitect 1 hour ago
    Related:

    Hegseth gives Anthropic until Friday to back down on AI safeguards

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47140734

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47142587

  • gaigalas 1 hour ago
    Totally agree with the statement: Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance.

    I would personally add "bullied, coerced and/or gaslighted into doing surveillance".

    I don't understand why the US government is doing this though. Wouldn't it be much easier to do use some of the already passed laws on foreign intelligence to open a surveillance data pipeline? You know, like PRISM.

    I mean, this is inconsistent with the previous M.O., and highly unusual.

    I also feel very conflicted to suddenly have to "defend Anthropic", a company that has been systematically doing evil things (destabilizing markets, promoting misleading media campaings, etc). I don't want to defend those guys.

    Can I just dislike both the US military and Anthropic at the same time, and say there are no good guys here?

  • SanjayMehta 2 hours ago
    "Tech companies shouldn't be bullied into doing surveillance for the govt."

    FTFY

    They're going to spy on you regardless.