That’s because until the last several many years, people weren’t generating massive clouds of information that opened up recent possibilities for surveillance. The Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure, was written when collecting information meant entering people’s homes.
Subsequent laws, just like the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act of 1978 or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, were passed when surveillance involved wiretapping phone calls and intercepting emails. The majority of laws governing surveillance were on the books before the web took off. We weren’t generating vast trails of online data, and the federal government didn’t have sophisticated tools to investigate the info.
Now we do, and AI supercharges what type of surveillance may be carried out. “What AI can do is it could take a whole lot of information, none of which is by itself sensitive, and due to this fact none of which by itself is regulated, and it could give the federal government a whole lot of powers that the federal government didn’t have before,” says Rozenshtein.
AI can aggregate individual pieces of data to identify patterns, draw inferences, and construct detailed profiles of individuals—at massive scale. And so long as the federal government collects the data lawfully, it could do whatever it wants with that information, including feeding it to AI systems. “The law has not caught up with technological reality,” says Rozenshtein.
While surveillance can raise serious privacy concerns, the Pentagon can have legitimate national security interests in collecting and analyzing data on Americans. “As a way to collect information on Americans, it needs to be for a really specific subset of missions,” says Loren Voss, a former military intelligence officer on the Pentagon.
For instance, a counterintelligence mission might require details about an American who’s working for a foreign country, or plotting to interact in international terrorist activities. But targeted intelligence can sometimes stretch into collecting more data. “This sort of collection does make people nervous,” says Voss.
Lawful use
OpenAI says its contract now includes language that claims the corporate’s AI system “shall not be intentionally used for domestic surveillance of U.S. individuals and nationals,” consistent with relevant laws. The amendment clarifies that this prohibits “deliberate tracking, surveillance or monitoring of U.S. individuals or nationals, including through the procurement or use of commercially acquired personal or identifiable information.”
However the added language won’t do much to override the clause that the Pentagon may use the corporate’s AI system for all lawful purposes, which could include collecting and analyzing sensitive personal information. “OpenAI can say whatever it wants in its agreement … however the Pentagon’s gonna use the tech for what it perceives to be lawful,” says Jessica Tillipman, a law professor on the George Washington University Law School. That would include domestic surveillance. “More often than not, corporations will not be going to find a way to stop the Pentagon from doing anything,” she says.
