This ‘College Protester’ Isn’t Real. It’s an AI-Powered Undercover Bot for Cops

General News
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An investigation by 404 Media reveals that U.S. police departments are using artificially generated personas to infiltrate protest networks.

American police departments near the United States-Mexico border are paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for an unproven and secretive technology that uses AI-generated online personas designed to interact with and collect intelligence on “college protesters,” “radicalized” political activists, and suspected drug and human traffickers, according to internal documents, contracts, and communications that 404 Media obtained via public records requests.

Massive Blue, the New York–based company that is selling police departments this technology, calls its product Overwatch, which it markets as an “AI-powered force multiplier for public safety” that “deploys lifelike virtual agents, which infiltrate and engage criminal networks across various channels.” According to a presentation obtained by 404 Media, Massive Blue is offering cops these virtual personas that can be deployed across the internet with the express purpose of interacting with suspects over text messages and social media.

If you are organizing any sort of protest movement, please don’t add random people to your Signal groupchat…they might not be even real.

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This seems like a huge impact and possibly even a violation of the first amendment. Not only does it ruin the right to assemble for civilians it can ruin the rights to association. The courts have ruled before surveillance of political groups (especially in secret) infringe on those rights.

This even has the smell of the fourth amendment violation all over it. This most certainly ruins the expectation of privacy.

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While I agree that this is concerning, this is basically an AI version of an undercover cop, which isnt illegal at all. There’s no expectation of privacy from the person you are intentionally communicating to.

As it has always been, dont send information you dont want to be known by the government to people you dont trust.

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We can agree that this is an operational security at the end of the day!

Real-world undercover cops can’t really deage themselves or appear “hip” like real-world students. AI personas can do that however.

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