Smash Notes

Back to Inside Anthropic’s IPO + How AI agents spy on your messages, with Meredith Whittaker.

How Can an AI Agent Read Signal Messages?

Meredith Whittaker says an AI agent on a phone or computer can erase the privacy Signal is able to offer. Encryption still hides a message on the way. It does not help if the other person's agent is allowed to read the screen, copy what is on the device, or pull the text out of Signal to write a summary.

She describes the steps as ordinary plumbing: a screenshot, storage, character recognition, then a copy sent to a remote server for inference. That can expose the person who sent the message, not only the person who turned the agent on. A reporter was warned not to leave Signal open on a desktop that also runs an agent. Assistants such as Muse, advertised around San Francisco, can build dossiers of contacts and of how you write to them. If that design stays in place, Signal cannot keep working with its integrity intact.

Transcript

Inside Anthropic’s IPO + How AI agents spy on your messages ·

Machine Gods

More from this episode

  1. Which AI Company Filed to Go Public First?Kevin Roose says Anthropic has officially filed to go public, and he calls the listing potentially one of the largest IPOs in history.
  2. What Is Anthropic's 900% Net Revenue Retention?Casey Newton says Anthropic's filing reports 900 percent net revenue retention.
  3. How Can Anthropic Lose Money and Still Generate Cash?Kevin Roose says Anthropic reported an $80.7 billion net loss for the six months ending June 30, and that most of the loss comes from convertible notes.
  4. Who Gets Rich When Anthropic Goes Public?Casey Newton expects Anthropic going public to create hundreds, maybe a couple thousand new millionaires, multimillionaires, and decamillionaires in San…
  5. Why Does Signal Want an Opt-out From Phone AI?Meredith Whittaker says Signal blocked screenshots on desktop a little over a year ago, after Microsoft Recall started watching what people did on their…
  6. Why Do Governments Still Want Encryption Backdoors?Meredith Whittaker says governments have tried to get through encryption since the crypto wars of the 1990s.
  7. Who Built Uncle Murray the Talking Skeleton?Kevin Roose says a Halloween skeleton in his neighborhood was not the handiwork of a middle-aged dad.

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