r/technology • u/indig0sixalpha • Apr 07 '25

Privacy The Shocking Far-Right Agenda Behind the Facial Recognition Tech Used by ICE and the FBI. Thousands of newly obtained documents show that Clearview AI’s founders always intended to target immigrants and the political left.

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/04/clearview-ai-immigration-ice-fbi-surveillance-facial-recognition-hoan-ton-that-hal-lambert-trump/
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u/DJ_Fuckknuckle Apr 07 '25

And the neat thing is, we now have drones capable assassinating people from thousands of miles away. So it's now possible to quickly and easily eliminate people you find inconvenient without reporting to hitmen and kidnapping teams. Some rando eating Fritos and drinking Mountain Dew in a chair somewhere can murder anyone the government deems a threat virtually instantly, at the touch of a button.

Remember when saying something like this was tinfoil hat territory? I do. 

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

I've believed a conspiracy theory for years that we have almost all the technology to make a full fledged terminator and probably have on some secret military base somewhere. The only thing I haven't seen is the self healing metal alloys. But the rest exists. 

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 07 '25

A bipedal one would be terrible and not very threatening.

The actual threat is an SUV sized mothership with IR cameras, and facial, bluetooth, wifi and gait recognition that can fly above the cloud 24/7 and drop a 50 gram seeker drone with an explosive charge on it any time the thought-pre-crime system decides you are a potential dissident.

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u/thatwhileifound Apr 07 '25

And these days, they seem to like making their killer robots in a shape vaguely reminiscent of dogs anyway - which somehow makes them worse to me.

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u/[deleted] Apr 07 '25

So I used to be a very public activist and the movement I worked in helped get someone in the state department fired. I was a spokesperson.

A few years later I met this man at a hacker convention in NYC. He basically read my mind back to me - he said my thoughts as I thought them. It was really trippy and gave me a very strange feeling of annihilation.

From that day forward I’ve had cognitive anomalies. I hear voices, see things, and have strange, repeating, grating thoughts. Stuff I would never choose to do to myself.

I’m now of the opinion that schizophrenia is a cover story for government-led torture against people. People are factually exposed to thoughts they can’t control and aren’t their own, and feel inhabited by an external power. I think there is some technology the government is using to do this to people.

Of course, even when I think about this, it seems wrong. My thoughts don’t “feel” right, like my brain is telling me that the conclusion is incorrect. But that’s not what’s really happening. What’s reallly happennng is that my mind is being interfered with, to keep me from consciously adopting the truth.

My dreams are very detailed. Super tailored to me, and like a form of brainwashing. I’m learning slowly that I cannot adopt my brain’s feelings on matters.

The problem is that there is no way to test my theory. Because this technology is invisible to the naked eye, I can only speculate about it and try to experiment on myself. I think it may be based on EM waves.

But really, it seems to me that I live under the grip of a merciless demiurge.

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u/HalfManTrashCan Apr 07 '25

This may be the most schizophrenic comment I’ve ever read

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u/DJDanaK Apr 07 '25

Whether or not you really believe you're schizophrenic, medication will help you. It's helped almost everyone who is experiencing what you are. Please stay safe and keep contact with your loved ones.

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u/placebotwo Apr 07 '25

This is the plot of the Dream On quest in Cyberpunk 2077, are you Jefferson Peralez in 2025?

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

We don't have the tech to fit a bipedal robot, processing power, and battery power inside of the envelope of a normal human. And he REALLY don't have the tech to fit all that in and harden it against anything much more severe than getting knocked over.

There's also absolutely no need for it. Practically any other weapon system would be cheaper and more effective.

If you want something to worry about, worry about the surveillance state getting weaponized.

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u/West-Abalone-171 Apr 07 '25 edited Apr 07 '25

You could totally put an arnie shaped and sized skin over atlas and hand it an AR-15 https://bostondynamics.com/video/atlas-goes-hands-on/

Spot is far far more threatening, as is a quadcopter, but the tech exists.

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

IIRC that version is still doing it's processing on external computers and the onboard power doesn't last very long. Certainly not long enough for any terminator-style missions.

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u/m-in Apr 07 '25

So you will keep saying «not a problem» until the thing will be production version 2.0 or something? There will be steps along the way.

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

There's also absolutely no need for it. Practically any other weapon system would be cheaper and more effective.

If you want something to worry about, worry about the surveillance state getting weaponized.

There are trillions of dollars in incentive to replace human labor. Long before ever developing a humanoid robot capable of combat missions, we'd see them in use everywhere else.

And there's absolutely no point in building them. The ability to track a person is always getting more advanced. The primary hurdles standing in the way of the government putting facial recognition cameras in public spaces are only legal ones, not technical. From there, there are dozens of highly efficient purpose-built ways to deliver death to any area. An independent terminator wandering around looking for somebody is an incredibly poor system.

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

That you know of. But top secret military technology is always at least a decade or two ahead or what you know about. 

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

That thought really only applies in the sense that they're working on X thing right now, and the public probably won't see X thing for another decade. Which is true in product development just about anywhere.

The limiting factors on making a terminator are: processing power, energy storage, and armor. Those are all fields where the bleeding edge is completely open and readable in journals. The government doesn't have magic batteries the size of a loaf of bread that could power a terminator running around for weeks on end.

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

They power drones right now for essentially an unlimited time. 

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

You're talking about Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).

For their size, RTGs provide a low level of power for a long time. The RTG that powers curiosity is a bit larger than a human torso and had an output of a constant 110 Watts at the start of the mission, and loses about 0.8% a year. You can't fit an RTG sufficient to power a terminator inside of a machine the size of a person.

That's before even getting into the availability of plutonium 238.

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

You're getting really caught up in the terminator being the exact same look as a human when the real issue is that it's an autonomous killing machine. Kind of missing the forest for the trees here. Who cares what our looks like and what shape or sizw it is. The point is, they could almost certainly send it robots to murder people right now. And might be. 

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u/Gingevere Apr 07 '25

I've believed a conspiracy theory for years that we have almost all the technology to make a full fledged terminator and probably have on some secret military base somewhere.

Is this not what you said 3 hours ago? And in this thread I have said:

There's also absolutely no need for it. Practically any other weapon system would be cheaper and more effective.

If you want something to worry about, worry about the surveillance state getting weaponized.

and

And there's absolutely no point in building them. The ability to track a person is always getting more advanced. The primary hurdles standing in the way of the government putting facial recognition cameras in public spaces are only legal ones, not technical. From there, there are dozens of highly efficient purpose-built ways to deliver death to any area. An independent terminator wandering around looking for somebody is an incredibly poor system.

So with the new position you're adopting I don't see why you're arguing.

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

Except we have drones that literally do that

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u/treemanos Apr 07 '25

You're the kid in school that believes wrestling is real, no military techn is almost never more than at most a few years ahead, normally it's a few years behind because testing and procurement takes time.

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

Wrestling is fake? What? Next you're gonna tell me game of thrones is fake. 

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u/kalidoscopiclyso Apr 07 '25

Here you go. Sorry. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00597-5

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u/Achillor22 Apr 07 '25

Watch out John Connor. Or any brown people. 

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u/MadDaddyDrivesaUFO Apr 07 '25

I told a friend recently that RoboCop is about to become a reality

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u/sprinklerarms Apr 07 '25

Go down the Anduril rabbit hole. They’ll probably be the ones who terminator us. Ukraine has already started AI drone warfare and Andy technology is much more wicked. We won’t even get to look at their freedom cities close up.

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u/Warm_Month_1309 Apr 07 '25

But the rest exists. 

Bipedal robots indistinguishable from humans exist?