Given current developments in the USA, where most of our communication is hosted, many organizations and individuals should revisit their thinking around operational security.
Here are five things I consider facts:
- US spy agencies have in the past had on-demand access to all data stored by US companies, and in many cases even taken full copies by default.
- AI has almost completely removed the friction and cost associated with evaluating each individual message's contents or creating profiles on each person.
- The current administration is taking direct control of many agencies at will, and ignoring checks and balances.
- An increasing list of concepts, keywords and associations can land you on the list of organizations or persons considered "woke" or "radical leftist" (Note: the NIST just instructed AISI to eliminate any mention of "AI safety", probably not yet as bad as working on climate science, but the direction is clear).
- It would be trivially easy for a US agency to make a list of almost all EAs, if it doesn't exist already
In the past, when I advocated for EA orgs to use encrypted communication or platforms they themselves operate and control, the response I have gotten was usually the extra friction/security trade-off is not worth it.
It may well be that for many this trade-off is still not worth it, I just hope everyone is making this decision consciously.
Prediction time
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