If I got $1M in funding, I’d use it towards some or all of the following projects.
The objective is to get secret information out of US ASI orgs (including classified information) and host it in countries outside the US. Hopefully someone else can use this info to influence US and world politics.
Black DAQ
whistleblower/spy guide
hacker guide
Grey DAQ
internet doxxing tool
drones/cctv outside offices/ datacentres
High attention
persuade Indian, Russian, Chinese journalists to run a SecureDrop-like system
digital journalism guide
OR run a journalist outlet outside the US myself, until I can persuade existing journalists to do better
All the DAQ will be aimed at leadership and employees of people involved in building ASI.
I’m not very optimistic on grey DAQ uncovering high-profile info, just that it could force the ASI company employees to isolate further from rest of society. I know many people have moral qualms about it but I don’t. I see it as more-or-less inevitable, and given that it is inevitable I’d rather have it work for everyone and against everyone, than let those with power alone decide who it gets used against.
More details
Whistleblower guide
Not bottlenecked
Will work on this
tldr, whistleblowers should focus on getting to russia like Snowden did, instead of improving their opsec and hoping to stay anonymous
Hacker guide
Knowledge bottlenecked
I don’t know enough to offer them technical advice. Mostly I’ll offer moral support and maybe some legal advice
Internet doxxing tool
Weakly capital bottlenecked
I tried building this by doing embedding search and anomalous word counts on reddit extract of commoncrawl. This will likely work better as a two pass system, first pass use PII, second pass do stylometrics.
I need capital for more servers, and maybe to purchase some PII datasets similar to whitepages/weleakinfo/snusbase. I need to check what price points these datasets tend to get sold at.
Drones/CCTV outside offices / datacentres
Capital bottleneck
Need capital for lawyers, and for setting up the cameras
This is legal in US (not UK) but I need to check legal precedents on this
High attention guide
Weakly capital bottlenecked. Attention bottlenecked.
Journalists-by-training suck both at opsec and at becoming popular on the internet.
Opsec means things like advertising a SecureDrop-like system or a Signal number.
Becoming popular means things like understanding heavy-tailed distribution of attention and importance of building a brand around your face and understanding what readers want to read.
Journalists-by-training are being replaced by YouTubers across US, Europe, India and Russia atleast.
I’m unsure if I should be trying to teach existing journalists this stuff or just run a non-US journalist outlet myself. Having funding and a public brand will enable me to try both approaches.
Misc
If I had $1M I’d definitely select a lawyer with experience in international law.
If I had $1M I’d also spend atleast $100/mo each on a security guard (as needed), a Chinese language teacher and a therapist.
I could fill this up with even more details if I had more time. Wanted to get a quick reaction.
I know most people on LW will be against this sort of plan for reasons I don’t have motivation to sit and critique right now (maybe go read my blog). I’m more interested in hearing from the handful of people who will be for it.
I think for a lot of societal change to happen, information needs to be public first. (Then it becomes common knowledge, then an alternate plan gets buy-in, then that becomes common knowledge and so on.)
A foreign adversary getting the info doesn’t mean it’s public, although it has increased the number of actors N who now have that piece of info in the world. Large N is not stable so eventually the info may end up public anyway.
If I got $1M in funding, I’d use it towards some or all of the following projects.
The objective is to get secret information out of US ASI orgs (including classified information) and host it in countries outside the US. Hopefully someone else can use this info to influence US and world politics.
Black DAQ
whistleblower/spy guide
hacker guide
Grey DAQ
internet doxxing tool
drones/cctv outside offices/ datacentres
High attention
persuade Indian, Russian, Chinese journalists to run a SecureDrop-like system
digital journalism guide
OR run a journalist outlet outside the US myself, until I can persuade existing journalists to do better
All the DAQ will be aimed at leadership and employees of people involved in building ASI.
I’m not very optimistic on grey DAQ uncovering high-profile info, just that it could force the ASI company employees to isolate further from rest of society. I know many people have moral qualms about it but I don’t. I see it as more-or-less inevitable, and given that it is inevitable I’d rather have it work for everyone and against everyone, than let those with power alone decide who it gets used against.
More details
Whistleblower guide
Not bottlenecked
Will work on this
tldr, whistleblowers should focus on getting to russia like Snowden did, instead of improving their opsec and hoping to stay anonymous
Hacker guide
Knowledge bottlenecked
I don’t know enough to offer them technical advice. Mostly I’ll offer moral support and maybe some legal advice
Internet doxxing tool
Weakly capital bottlenecked
I tried building this by doing embedding search and anomalous word counts on reddit extract of commoncrawl. This will likely work better as a two pass system, first pass use PII, second pass do stylometrics.
I need capital for more servers, and maybe to purchase some PII datasets similar to whitepages/weleakinfo/snusbase. I need to check what price points these datasets tend to get sold at.
Drones/CCTV outside offices / datacentres
Capital bottleneck
Need capital for lawyers, and for setting up the cameras
This is legal in US (not UK) but I need to check legal precedents on this
High attention guide
Weakly capital bottlenecked. Attention bottlenecked.
Journalists-by-training suck both at opsec and at becoming popular on the internet.
Opsec means things like advertising a SecureDrop-like system or a Signal number.
Becoming popular means things like understanding heavy-tailed distribution of attention and importance of building a brand around your face and understanding what readers want to read.
Journalists-by-training are being replaced by YouTubers across US, Europe, India and Russia atleast.
I’m unsure if I should be trying to teach existing journalists this stuff or just run a non-US journalist outlet myself. Having funding and a public brand will enable me to try both approaches.
Misc
If I had $1M I’d definitely select a lawyer with experience in international law.
If I had $1M I’d also spend atleast $100/mo each on a security guard (as needed), a Chinese language teacher and a therapist.
I could fill this up with even more details if I had more time. Wanted to get a quick reaction.
I know most people on LW will be against this sort of plan for reasons I don’t have motivation to sit and critique right now (maybe go read my blog). I’m more interested in hearing from the handful of people who will be for it.
Why do you want to do this as a lone person rather than e.g. directly working with the intelligence service of some foreign adverary?
I think for a lot of societal change to happen, information needs to be public first. (Then it becomes common knowledge, then an alternate plan gets buy-in, then that becomes common knowledge and so on.)
A foreign adversary getting the info doesn’t mean it’s public, although it has increased the number of actors N who now have that piece of info in the world. Large N is not stable so eventually the info may end up public anyway.