Sen. Ron Wyden has weighed in on Anthropic’s fight with the Department of Defense over potential mass surveillance of Americans. The Democrat from Oregon says that all of our data, from location information to web browsing habits, is available for purchase in ways that should concern Americans. And he plans to fight back against the government through legislation.
“The Defense Department is throwing a fit over Anthropic asking for the bare minimum ethical guardrails on how DOD uses its product. That’s serious cause for alarm, given AI’s ability to turn disparate pieces of public or commercial data into highly revealing profiles of Americans,” Wyden said.
At issue is Anthropic’s refusal to let Claude be used for fully autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans, two use cases the AI company talked about in a public letter on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump announced Friday that the federal government would stop using Anthropic’s AI model Claude, with the Defense Department phasing out use over six months. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that any company that wanted to do business with the government would need to also stop working with Anthropic, a claim that’s pretty much guaranteed to be challenged in the courts. Anthropic has already said it will sue.
Wyden, a long-time privacy advocate, warned that DOD’s collection of data is happening through private data brokers, and if the government is able to combine all of this data, it can create a profile of every American.
“Location data, web browsing records, and information about mental health, political activities and religious affiliations are all available for pennies on the open market and could make Americans targets for doing things that are completely legal,” said Wyden.
All of that data can be compiled in a way that might genuinely shock the average American. For example, 404 Media has a new report that shows how the Department of Homeland Security is buying location data derived from ads served on mobile phones. The users have no idea they can be tracked by seemingly innocuous games and apps on their phones, but DHS is buying up this data for cheap.
“I’ve been warning for nearly a decade that data available for purchase from companies is just as sensitive as information the government collects directly. Creating AI profiles of Americans based on that data represents a chilling expansion of mass surveillance that should not be allowed, regardless of what the current, outdated laws on the books say.”
Greg Nojeim, the director of the Center for Democracy and Technology Project on Security and Surveillance, told Gizmodo that the DOD is purchasing commercially available information on Americans, and it’s all technically legal right now.
“There is a whole industry of data brokers who purchase and sell location information about Americans,” said Nojeim. “This data broker industry is largely unregulated at the federal level, and the Department of Defense is entering into contracts to purchase such data. Apparently, it wants to reserve Anthropic’s AI to analyze that data and draw intelligence from it, even when the data pertains to Americans.”
The Pentagon is trying to exert tremendous pressure on Anthropic and is making an example out of the company. President Trump will not tolerate dissent of any kind, and trying to put even the most basic guardrails against something like mass surveillance of Americans is seen as beyond the pale by Trump and his cronies. But Democrats are trying to fight back.
Wyden has two pieces of legislation that pertain to the purchasing of commercial data, the Fourth Amendment’s Not For Sale Act and the Banning Surveillance Advertising Act. With the Democrats in the minority in both the House and Senate, that legislation has little chance of becoming law until they retake both chambers and the presidency.
The Fourth Amendment’s Not For Sale Act passed the House in 2024 under Joe Biden’s presidency but failed in the Senate.
Source: gizmodo.com
