On this blog I will talk about how AI is being used to reveal information hidden by the FBI of a decades-long program of spying on US Muslims. There is a countless amount of evidence of the US government not being held accountable for unethical and illegal practices they incur into when they spy on their own citizens. After Assia Boundaoui won a lawsuit against the FBI, they were forced to release 30,000 documents that detail operation Vulgar Betrayal, which is focused on the surveillance of the Illinois arab community. However, as she received the documents, she realized that more than 70% of the document’s contents were redacted for the sake of “national security”.
It should come with no surprise that the US government is spying on its own citizens, it is something they have been doing for quite a long time, however people seem to be okay with being watched all the time these days. They feel like the information they post online is not very important, while it can actually be taken advantage of.
People need to be aware that nowadays they are always being watched, every bit of activity they do online, or that has anything to do with modern devices, is likely being tracked. Just carrying your cellphone around with you even without you using it, makes you leave a digital footprint of things you were doing and places you were at.
Talking a bit more about the article, since most of the documents are redacted, an AI is being used to try and “decrypt” these documents. Through the analysis of previous documents based on race surveillance and other FBI documents, there are hopes that we can get more information contained in the documents than the government wants us to see. This all helps to have a more transparent government. Having a government that is more transparent, at least in my opinion, makes the people trust the government a bit more, since we can actually know what they are doing and if anything they do is actually threatening any of us.
Carlos Rueda Blog 