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X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

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Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#311
post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>The Paris prosecutor's office said it launched the investigation after being contacted by a lawmaker alleging that biased algorithms in X were likely to have distorted the operation of an automated data processing system. I'm not at all familiar with French law, and I don't have any sympathy for Elon Musk or X. That said, is this a crime? Distorted the operation how? By making their chatbot more likely to say stupid…

Holocaust denial is illegal in France, for one, and Grok did exactly that on several occasions.

Also, csam and pornographic content using the likeness of unwilling people. Grok’s recent shit was bound to have consequences.

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#312
post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These days many tech company offices have a "panic button" for raids that will erase data. Uber is perhaps the most notorious example.

>notorious What happened to due process? Every major firm should have a "dawn raid" policy to comply while preserving rights. Specific to the Uber case(s), if it were illegal, then why didn't Uber get criminal charges or fines? At best there's an argument that it was "obstructing justice," but logging people off, encrypting, and deleting local copies isn't necessarily illegal.

[deleted]

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence. Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care. That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France. We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.…

> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. I remember something (probably linked from here), where the essayist was comparing Jack Ma, one of the richest men on earth, and Xi Jinping, a much lower-paid individual. They indicated that Xi got Ma into a chokehold. I think he "disappeared" Ma for some time. Don't remember exactly how long, but it may have been over a year.

[deleted]

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#314

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> defendents have rights and due process. As they say: you can beat the rap but not the ride. If a state wants to make your life incredibly difficult for months or even years they can, the competent ones can even do it while staying (mostly) on the right side of the law.

We are not entirely sure the rule of law in America isn't already over. People are putting a lot of weight on the midterm elections which are more or less the last line of defense besides a so far tepid response by the courts and even then consequence free defiance of court orders is now rampant. We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.

> We're really near the point of no return and a lot of people don't seem to notice.

A lot of people are cheering it (some on this very site).

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a perfect way for the legal head of the company in-country to visit some jails. They will explain that it was done remotely and whatnot but then the company will be closed in the country. Whether this matters for the mothership is another story.

Of course they will not lock the data but hide it, and put some redacted or otherwise innocent files in their place.

That sounds awfully difficult to do perfectly without personally signing up for extra jail time for premeditated violation of local laws. Like in that scenario, any reference to the unsanitized file or a single employee breaking omertà is proof that your executives and IT staff conspired to violate the law in a way which is likely to ensure they want to prosecute as maximally as possible. Law enforcement around the world hates the idea that you don’t respect their authority, and when it slots into existing geopolitics you’d be a very tempting scapegoat.

Elon probably isn’t paying them enough to be the lightning rod for the current cross-Atlantic tension.

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#316

Honest question: What does it mean to "raid" the offices of a tech company? It's not like they have file cabinets with paper records. Are they just seizing employee workstations? Seems like you'd want to subpoena source code or gmail history or something like that. Not much interesting in an office these days.

Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence. Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care. That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France. We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.…

> We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power.

Interesting point. There's a top gangster who can buy anything in the prison commissary; and then there's the warden.

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#317
post #188

Guess that will be a SpaceX problem soon enough. What a mess.

How was that move legal anyway? Like... a lot of people and governments gave Musk money to develop, build and launch rockets. And now he's using it to bail out his failing social media network and CSAM peddling AI service.

Once he launched the rockets he can do whatever he wants with the profit. And he wants to train Grok.

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#318
post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gather evidence against employees, use that evidence to put them under pressure to testify against their employer or grant access to evidence. Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care. That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France. We all forget that money is nice, but nation states have real power. Western liberal democracies just rarely use it.…

>Sabu was put under pressure by the FBI, they threatened to place his kids into foster care. >That was legal. Guess what, similar things would be legal in France. lawfare is... good now? Between Trump being hit with felony charges for falsifying business records (lawfare is good?) and Lisa Cook getting prosecuted for mortgage fraud (lawfare is bad?), I honestly lost track at this point. >The same way the president of…

fighter jets ARE a threat of violence, and it is widely understood and acknowledged.

Again: the threat is so clear that you rarely have to execute on it.

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#319
post #294
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> fairly open platform where people can choose what to post and who to follow. It is well known Musk amplifies his own speech and the words of those he agrees with on the platform, while banning those he doesn’t like. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/jan/15/elon-m... > could you clarify what the difference is between the near right and the far right? It’s called far-right because it’s further to the rig…

[flagged]

I was surprised by your claim that Wikipedia would categorize mild restrictions on immigration as an element of far-right politics, so I read that article to see it for myself. I didn't see anything about mild restrictions. Would you care to point out where you saw that?

Re: X offices raided in France as UK opens fresh investigation into Grok

#320
post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's voluntary

They'll make a judgement without him if he doesn't turn up.

An "audition en tant que témoin libre" is more or less the way for an investigation to give a chance to give their side of the story. Musk is not likely to be personally tried here.
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