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Not only that they can review flagged content, but they tend to have separate retention policies for flagged content. Anthropic's is this: "We retain inputs and outputs for up to 2 years and trust and safety classification scores for up to 7 years if your chat or session is flagged by our automated trust and safety systems as violating our Usage Policy."

So don't run for office or anything like that. Someone, somewhere will have a contact that will get that.

It kinda is, actually. If the LLM had responded with 'woah, are you serious? That sounds like a crime and I can't just ignore that, it's made clear to the customer that such statements are out of bounds even if they were meant hyperbolically or humorously. But if someone crosses the guardrails and the system silently reports them, that's very much spying.

Obviously, it's hard to judge exactly what was appropriate there because we're being asked to extrapolate from a two word quote about the customer intending to "shoot up" the sheriff's office. Consider the following two statements, which express quite different levels of intentionality.

I got a $200 ticket from a sheriff's deputy today for throwing away an apple core. I'm so mad. I'd like to shoot up their office!

Those sheriff's deputies have exhausted my last reservoir of patience. I'm going to shoot up the department. They'll be sorry when they're sprawled all over the floor bleeding out from saucer-sized shotgun slug wounds. I can't wait to hear the screaming and crying of their miserable families!!"

I'm guessing that the diary entry was a more casual expression similar to the first statement, or they police would have quoted more of the statement to emphasize the apparent severity of the risk but it's hard to say without reading the charging documents.

>Spying is not the right analogy because the information was given to the police by a third party which had a EULA saying they would do this. A more analogous situation would be someone reading another person’s diary and then turning it into the police department.

This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.

I was responding to a question about the legal case. The police did not perform any spying.

Frustrations about Anthropic’s EULA are a separate matter.

Was it claimed that the police did any spying?

Presumably, Anthropic did the spying and the reporting.

You argued that it is not spying, since the spying may have been made sufficiently explicit in the ToS/EULA.

This raises the question: Does announcing a spying operation mean that it is no longer spying? I've never heard that perspective before.

> Does announcing a spying operation mean that it is no longer spying?

Well, kind of, yeah; the dictionary definition of spying requires secrecy and lack of consent.

> to secretly collect and report information about the activities of another country or organization[0]

The only real debate is whether or not having a clause tucked away in a EULA that few people read makes it a secret. If Anthropic had a big flashing red banner that said "FYI we automatically flag and review any conversations about illegal things!!" on the front page nobody would call it spying.

[0] https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/spying

I would call it spying in this sense at a minimum if individual people don't know whether their conversations were stored or disclosed in a way they don't want. For example, suppose someone said "we will monitor the activities of 10% of people". You don't know if you're in that 10% or not, but I would still want to call that spying.

A less central case would be when you clearly do know about the activity but you can't quite see the details, like with behavioral ad targeting or something. It feels pretty normal to me to call that spying even if it's disclosed to everyone and certainly happens to everyone, but it's also a less central example of the concept.

Anthropic could put a big flashing warning text at the top of every chat that says “We are spying on you and will report anything scary to the police!” and it would not make any difference in this case.

You can call it anything you like, but only the legal definitions matter for the legal case.

After working on several court cases about surveillance activities, I'm definitely aware that whether I call something spying or not has little relationship to whether courts will think it's legal.

> If Anthropic had a big flashing red banner that said "FYI we automatically flag and review any conversations about illegal things!!" on the front page nobody would call it spying.

If you change the situation then yes you can in fact change our responses. The problem is you then are no longer talking about the original situation.

It also bears mentioning that providing a dictionary link to “spying” is pretty patronizing/passive aggressive. On par with sending a basic Wikipedia page. You didn’t even bother to post the definition you want to apply.

No one claimed any case would be "thrown out for spying." The legal definition of spying is also not particularly relevant to the argument in the initial comment.

The initial comment instead questioned how someone could be accused of making a threat if they did not realize anyone would read their private content. You probably also can not insult someone with a statement you never expected anyone but you will ever read.

I didn’t say they did

Yes, you are right. My reply was written for a different comment on the same level. Sorry for the confusion!

All good

> Presumably, Anthropic did the spying and the reporting.

You don’t need to presume. Anthropic reported it.

“Spying” as a legal concept has a definition that does not apply here. You could say they were “spying” in the sense that they read someone’s input, but that’s literally what they said they were going to do in the agreement when the person signed up.

So I responded to the question about the case being thrown out for “spying” by trying to show that the word doesn’t apply in the legal sense. If you sign up for a service that says “Hey we’re going to monitor your chats and might report things to the authorities” and then they monitor your chats and report things to the authorities, you should not expect the case to be thrown out for “spying”.

There is no spying by any definition. It's a chatbot, not a diary. Anthropic is expected to read the message and respond to it in some way. If you sent an email to a colleague threatening violence, you would not be surprised to find out it was reported.

> Anthropic is expected to read the message

"Anthropic" does not read messages, it's an abstract entity involving many humans and computers, so let's be specific wherever possible.

> and respond to it in some way.

The computer is supposed to respond in a specific way that doesn't involve humans. Any reading/actions by humans is entirely separate and not expected.

> If you sent an email to a colleague threatening violence, you would not be surprised to find out it was reported.

And if I didn't send it, I would be surprised.

Extra steps couched in corporate speak is often the defining line that defines whether something is technically legal or not.

I’m speaking from a functional/ethical framework to be clear. I’m just expressing frustration, not challenging the comment. Could’ve been clearer on my end there.

Well, let's say that you have a regular customer at a bar.

They get friendly and loose-lipped with the bartender over the span of months. Eventually they let slip that they plan on killing their spouse for a life insurance payout. At first the bartender thinks they're joking, but it becomes evident that there's an actual plan being acted upon and someone's life is very likely in imminent danger.

Does the bartender have a responsibility to go to the police?

Depends on the country. In some places, there is no legal repercussions for not reporting this to the police; in some, it is an actual crime in itself.

In this case, let's assume the country is the United States, and the state is... oh, of course it is... the state is Florida.

In this case you inform the police only after it has happened, so the civilized world can get rid of the two Floridans at the same time.

/s obviously

For better or for worse, Florida (wo)Man is eternal.

Not the same situation. It was unintended but they are the ones who spoke out loud to a person they knew was present and in a public venue.

> This is spying with extra steps couched in corporate speak.

Calling something names doesn't invalidate it. It only invalidates what point you're trying to make.

“Calling something names”? I described what occurred. I didn’t (and can’t) personally insult the concept of EULA’s, as much as I’d love to.

Many clankers deny data retention or spying on the user if you ask them. That should be completely illegal.

Then, you can write anything in an EULA but it is not automatically legal either.