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DHS Hunts Down 67-Year-Old U.S. Citizen Who Criticized Them in Gmail
(newrepublic.com)
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this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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In the articles I’ve read, it seems that his use of ‘Russian Roulette’ and ‘Taliban’ in his email is a big part of what triggered all of this.
Tinfoil hat: what if AI is flagging these emails based on keywords, which sets off the domino effect leading to this ‘investigation’? Given that he used a Gmail account, is it Google that is sending this info to this administration?
In light of all of the info gathering/stealing that is going on in this administration, I wouldn’t be surprised if this were true. They indeed want to terrorize people, and stunts like this are likely to become commonplace imo.
That shit was happening before GenAI was a thing. The NSA captures every bit of web traffic in the country.
The only thing that's surprising is that they weren't already sharing this information across agencies.
With the insane volumes of data collected by the TLAs, the problem is always relevance. If they have any tool sensitive enough to flag a threat, the false-positive rate is likely to be astronomical. So it doesn't really meet its claimed purpose, but it's really effective as an indiscrimate tool for oppression.
In this case they "captured it" by being the people it was sent to.
Spooky shit fr
This is the background I need, thank you.
It’s pertinent to assume nothing is safe, however it’s ever more important to exercise and defend our right to free speech.
Keep in mind that Lemmy isn't safe either. Anyone with their own instance can see your full comment, post, and voting history even if you've deleted it, and your IP address.
It's basically a guarantee that the feds have their own instance capturing everything.
Yeah, I sold that over 20 years ago
You don't need AI to flag emails based on keywords... let's not make everything about AI please.
It's not Google sending this out. It's literally the NSAs data center flagging it. And if you think your email is safe just because you host it then I got another thing to tell you about how the internet works.