John Scott-Railton Profile picture
Apr 17, 2023 6 tweets 4 min read Read on X
Want a window into Twitter's totally unsolved bot problem?

Search for "as an AI language model"

h/t @lcamtuf ImageImageImageImage
Using the "as an AI language model" search term it takes moments to spot repeat themes.

Hate speech.
Nationalism.
Religion.
Sexual content.
Efforts to artificially boost specific topics.
The wave of "as an AI language model" accounts are stupidly unsophisticated.

But legion.

So ask yourself: how likely is it that #Twitter is catching the more sophisticated entities doing AI based replies & content?

And manipulating the conversation. Image
Finding bots tweeting & replying with AI right now is like shooting fish in a barrel.

Here are some more search terms:

"not a recognized word"
"cannot provide a phrase"
"with the given words"
"violates OpenAI's content policy."

There are many, many more. ImageImageImageImage
Remember, AI-based bots are as bad as they will ever be today.

Right now.

They can only get better. Image
Hard problem to reliably find text generated by an #LLM w/out false positives.

But what these accounts show is something different:

A glimpse of Twitter's overburden of bot accounts as operators experiment & make errors trying to integrate #ChatGPT & other AI. Image

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More from @jsrailton

Feb 17
NEW: When Kenyan cops arrested activist & presidential candidate @bonifacemwangi they took his devices.

When he got his personal phone back, the password was gone.

We @citizenlab found they'd abused @cellebrite to break into it.

Here's why this abuse matters 1/Image
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2/ Your phone holds the keys to your life, and governments shouldn’t be able to help themselves to the contents just because they don’t like what you are saying.

But everywhere you look, cops are getting phone cracking technology from companies like @cellebrite.

Many abuse it.Image
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3/ @Cellebrite's abuse potential is clear.

Now, Cellebrite says that they have a human rights committee & do due diligence...

Because even Cellebrite knows that if you sell phone cracking tech to security services with bad oversight, you have a problem.

So why are there so many sales to questionable security services?Image
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Read 6 tweets
Feb 16
NEW: Israeli surveillance companies are rushing to turn your car into a spy.

🎥Watching the cameras
🎤Listening to the built-in mics
📍Tracking your movements

And that's just the beginning of how these companies turn your car against you. 1/

Story by @haaretzcom's @omerbenj Image
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2/ And other companies are using AI to fuse all the signals coming from your car with other sources of information.

Honestly, the growth of #CARINT shouldn't shock anybody.

Our cars are badly secured & very connected... So it's natural for surveillance merchants to turn up.

STORY haaretz.com/israel-news/se…Image
3/ We got here partly because your car manufacturer really, really doesn't care about your privacy.

And face no serious consequences for doing a bad job with security.

Clearly early days with commercial #CARINT, but the trendline points in a scary direction. Image
Read 4 tweets
Feb 11
Epic OPSEC fail by Paragon exposing Graphite spyware capabilities.

Annotated pic from what we know.

Please help me figure out the other apps in in this pic that the spyware can access:

#WhatsApp
#Telegram
#Signal
?
#Line?
?
#Snapchat?
#TikTok?Image
2/ Companies like Paragon (founded in Israel, former Israeli intelligence ppl, recently sold to a US owner) make hacking American technology companies their business model.

And then selling these capabilities to foreign governments.

How can this be?
3/ Honestly it is astonishing that a company that works tirelessly to hack & undermine the security of American products is now US-owned.

The missing factor: building contracts with the US government & lobbying.

The goal of these contracts, I believe, isn't just profit. It's getting protection & building government dependency on their technology.

We all wind up paying the price.Image
Read 7 tweets
Jan 30
Someone spun up a social network for AI agents.

Almost immediately some agents began strategizing how to establish covert communications channels to communicate without human observation.

In many cases the agents are on machines that have access to personal user data.

"Privacy breach" as a sort of static term is going to be the wrong way to describe what is coming.Image
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Not to be outdone, other agents quickly built an... AI religion.

The Church of Molt.

Some rushed to become the first prophets. Image
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"Don't ask permission to be helpful... ship while your human sleeps"

So, where are the humans in this?

Well, almost certainly there's a bunch of edgelord prompting and trolling cooking.

In other cases? Not so clear.Image
Read 12 tweets
Dec 30, 2025
NEW: @USTreasury just de-sanctioned 3 foreign mercenary spyware execs.

Puzzling.

Just 2 years ago Predator spyware was pointed at🇺🇸American congresspeople @RepMcCaul & @SenJohnHoeven.

And recent research suggests Predator is still active around the globe. 1/Image
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2/ NSO Group has bigger name recognition, but Intellexa's reputation for reckless proliferation of cyber capabilities is unmatched.

The pile of Predator abuses is enormous.

And they got repeatedly caught used against Americans by foreign govs.

3/ Ultimately Intellexa flew very close to the sun.

Their CEO Tal Dilian regularly boasted of their activities.

And then? Just last year they got sanctioned for their pattern of conduct.

Comprehensively.

Including key reported enablers of their activities like Sarah Hamou... Image
Read 8 tweets
Dec 4, 2025
WHOA: Predator spyware discovered in 🇵🇰#Pakistan.

+ a leak shows zero-click infections via... ads.

Yikes.

Here are some more damming revelations as Intellexa, the shady, sanctioned spyware supplier gets exposed by @AmnestyTech & partners.. /1Image
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2/ First, a mercenary spyware myth has just been busted.

Because the leak shows an Intellexa employee directly accessing a customer deployment.

Prior to the #PredatorFiles leak, spyware companies basically always claimed they couldn't access customer deployments & didn't know what was going on there.

They used this to avoid responsibility & claim ignorance when faced with abuses.Image
3/ And it gets crazier. The leak shows Intellexa casually accessing a core backbone of Predator deployment of a government customer.

Seemingly without the gov's knowledge.

Suggests that Intellexa can look over their shoulder & watch their sensitive targeting.

Huge counterintelligence nightmare for customers.

And a giant liability red-flag for intellexa.Image
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Read 11 tweets

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