"The state of your privacy is being decided by contract negotiations between giant tech companies and the U.S. government—two entities with spotty track records for caring about your civil liberties. It's good when CEOs step up and do the right thing—but it's not a sustainable or reliable solution to build our rights on."
"Given the government's loose interpretations of the law, ability to find loopholes to surveil you, and willingness to do illegal spying, we need serious and proactive legal restrictions to prevent it from gobbling up all the personally data it can acquire and using even routine bureaucratic data for punitive ends."
"Imposing and enforcing such restrictions is properly a role for Congress and the courts, not the private sector. The companies know this. When speaking about the specific risk that AI poses to privacy, the CEO of Anthropic Dario Amodei said in an interview, 'I actually do believe it is Congress's job.'"
The U.S. Department of Defense terminated its $200 million contract with AI company Anthropic after the company refused to grant unrestricted use of its technology for mass surveillance and autonomous weapons systems. Anthropic had explicitly prohibited these applications from the contract's inception in 2025. When the DoD demanded unrestricted access in January, Anthropic declined, leading to contract termination and orders for all military contractors to cease using Anthropic's products. This conflict reveals that civil liberties protection currently depends on corporate decisions rather than legal safeguards. While individual CEO actions may align with privacy interests, sustainable protection requires Congress and courts to establish binding legal restrictions on government surveillance capabilities and data acquisition practices.
Read at Electronic Frontier Foundation
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