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.
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.
“ the tech companies were on the side of the American people”
They are on the side of making money. And the bigger they are, the more pressure. The big tech companies are now so big that they can’t afford to leave any money in the table if they want to keep their growth rates.
Tech companies in the early 2000s were nerds who grew up in an environment where tech was for losers and a waste of time. A lot of those people had strong values and did it because they enjoyed it and wanted other nerds like themselves to have cool stuff.
Now companies are dominated by MBAs and nepotism. Most join tech for a quick cash out. Having values is seen as a loss, because if you can get a billion, why not? You're invincible if you're rich and none of these downsides apply to you. Screw everyone else. They could just be a billionaire themselves if they don't like it.
As a result, zoomers today meme about people like the unabomber making a good point.
> 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.
Your critique of Apple and Tim Cook is unsubstantiated and misleading. That same Tim Cook stood up to the FBI and refused to participate in breaking into phones for them when they were pressed in 2015-2016. The same Apple that later fought against the government forcing document scanning in iCloud and was able to keep them off device. They have been fighting the whole time. Apple is was first to normalize whole disk encryption on commercial machines, they have made Safari a weapon against tracking which is abused by governments. Also every single company in the US is subject to National Security Letters and Apple uses warrant canaries to inform the public within the limits of the law.
And then to appeal to Anthropic is just offensively, willfully ignorant.
Can you substantiate these claims with with anything? What unlawful DoJ demands has Apple given in to? Anthropic is still very early in their trajectory compared to Apple with its ~50 year run, so it's not exactly an Apple to apples comparison.
Anecdote, but I knew a couple senior folks at Apple during the San Bernardino encryption dispute [1]. My understanding is Cupertino was surprised—going all the way to the top—how much backlash they got for what they felt was the natural reaction. (Not to unlock.)
These companies use safety and intellectual property as excuses to achieve centralization. But if you think about it for more than a second, they're basically saying "intelligence for me but not for thee."
I don't want to live in a world where a handful of entities control all of the intelligence, and I don't think you do either. The best future we can hope for is one where everyone can run an open-source AGI on their own gaming PC. And by run I mean local matmuls, not API calls to a remote server.
There are such things and secret courts with secret rulings. You and I have no idea what is actually occurring because of this secrecy; we can only talk about that which is stated publicly.
Platforms went into full "Islamic extremist" panic for decades and would handover whatever the government wanted in the name of national security, would allow users to be spied upon over time, silence users and remove content, and users' private data was collated for, for example, research purposes.
That said, Anthropic finances PACs[1] that push legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)[2] that would make Anthropic the gatekeepers and censors of all user-generated content on the internet, in order to save the children. That same legislation would force you to scan your face and ID to access or create user-generated content online, again, to save the children. Anthropic would get paid to train on, and censor, all user-generated content that's shared online into perpetuity. If passed, it would also mark the death of free anonymous speech on the internet.
It hasn't really changed, the only thing that's truly different is what they publish. But the Snowden leaks confirmed what many people already suspected - the American agencies have silent, backdoor access to all US based internet companies.
I don't know if it can be verified whether end-to-end encryption like Whatsapp and co claim to offer is actually safe. I suspect it isn't, but, I don't know enough.
I don't think a big company can be on the side of anything, except making money, unless there's a majority owner. This is by design. If fighting the government is going to hurt the company more than not doing it they won't do it. The US government also has the possibility to blackmail people decision individually (like they do with European politicians or international court judges).
You should ask people who were there instead of doubting.
News articles are extremely available and things were so early that they did all fight like hell as a new industry.
The internet itself was the new unknown tech to politicians and their lobbyists just like ai is now.
Little is actually new except it’s maybe be to you just like the current crop of politicians the tech of the day that might impact power or connection between people.
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.
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.
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?
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
The Patriot Act and Data Analytical Services (DAS) program among others are examples of the government using surveillance as soon as the opportunity presents itself.
What would you do if you were a government in-charge of keeping a country full of independent thinkers safe from themselves?
The reason a tech company exists isn't solely your convenience. They need to find different ways to bill you, so they start by collecting telemetry. If their offering is a multi-tenant situation from their backend, then they need to address the noisy neighbor problem, thundering herd, abuse detection... The more programmable the product is, the heavier impact these tools have, and at some point, it gathers the attention of the state. They are not bullied, the tech companies are not the victims here. You are, as a customer, because you're lured in with generous free tier offerings first and you're locked in over time, and when the inevitable comes you either 1) Consider migration 2) Accept the vendor lock-in to whatever degree that feels comfortable to you.
This post makes me wonder if the EFF are adopting a deliberately obtuse stance. The tech companies that dominate the landscape have gotten to their lofty heights on the back of surveillance, which is being ignored here. The only difference is where the information is flowing. Their energy would be better spent convincing Google, Apple, and Microsoft to not become the gatekeepers of said information. Sadly it's our own years of encouraging and going to bat for these same companies that make us complicit.
Bullied? As I understand a few of the situations over the past 15-20 years I've been near, it was either a false bully (Godfather II, Michael at the Senate hearings) or just an outright delivery on promise - already paid for, thank you.
I don't think that there ever was big tech company bullied into surveillance. They do it on their own volition. The tech companies said to the users - all your data is belong to us. The US said the companies - all your data is belong to us. It is amusing.
66 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 66.6 ms ] threadThat 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.
(Dropping safety pledge)
They are on the side of making money. And the bigger they are, the more pressure. The big tech companies are now so big that they can’t afford to leave any money in the table if they want to keep their growth rates.
Now companies are dominated by MBAs and nepotism. Most join tech for a quick cash out. Having values is seen as a loss, because if you can get a billion, why not? You're invincible if you're rich and none of these downsides apply to you. Screw everyone else. They could just be a billionaire themselves if they don't like it.
As a result, zoomers today meme about people like the unabomber making a good point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM
PRISM started in 2007, during the Iraq war.
Companies such as?
And then to appeal to Anthropic is just offensively, willfully ignorant.
Anecdote, but I knew a couple senior folks at Apple during the San Bernardino encryption dispute [1]. My understanding is Cupertino was surprised—going all the way to the top—how much backlash they got for what they felt was the natural reaction. (Not to unlock.)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple%E2%80%93FBI_encryption_d...
https://www.anthropic.com/news/detecting-and-preventing-dist...
These companies use safety and intellectual property as excuses to achieve centralization. But if you think about it for more than a second, they're basically saying "intelligence for me but not for thee."
I don't want to live in a world where a handful of entities control all of the intelligence, and I don't think you do either. The best future we can hope for is one where everyone can run an open-source AGI on their own gaming PC. And by run I mean local matmuls, not API calls to a remote server.
That said, Anthropic finances PACs[1] that push legislation like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA)[2] that would make Anthropic the gatekeepers and censors of all user-generated content on the internet, in order to save the children. That same legislation would force you to scan your face and ID to access or create user-generated content online, again, to save the children. Anthropic would get paid to train on, and censor, all user-generated content that's shared online into perpetuity. If passed, it would also mark the death of free anonymous speech on the internet.
[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/02/12/anthropic-gives-20-million-t...
[2] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2025/12/congresss-crusade-age-...
So not only will we pretend PRISM didn't happen but somehow they even fought it?
I don't know if it can be verified whether end-to-end encryption like Whatsapp and co claim to offer is actually safe. I suspect it isn't, but, I don't know enough.
I doubt it. The largest tech companies of the time were Microsoft, Intel, Cisco, Oracle and IBM. It would be nice if you were more specific.
News articles are extremely available and things were so early that they did all fight like hell as a new industry.
The internet itself was the new unknown tech to politicians and their lobbyists just like ai is now.
Little is actually new except it’s maybe be to you just like the current crop of politicians the tech of the day that might impact power or connection between people.
FTFY
They're going to spy on you regardless.
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.
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?
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
What would you do if you were a government in-charge of keeping a country full of independent thinkers safe from themselves?
Either way, it's ALL business.
This is quite the same discussion like players shouldn't cheat, yet it's not the fault of the game but the player that is behaving wrong.
So search the responsibilities on the acting side.