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I'm coming to saulpw's house tomorrow at noon with a gun, and I'm gonna make them pay.

If a policeman notices the sentence above on my phone screen during a routine traffic stop, the response you want him to take is... nothing?

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For the record, under current US law, it is not illegal to have a sentence in your locally-stored notes on your phone outlining a plan to commit a crime. There has to be an overt act. The police in that instance could inform the intended victim, surveil you, etc, but they would not be able to successfully charge you with attempted murder. It's not illegal to be considering committing a crime, even if you have a tendency to write down your thoughts.

The law in this particular case, which seems to be intended for threats that you actually send to someone, is being interpreted broadly to apply to any "threat" that you transmit to a server. So in your hypothetical, the legality would depend on whether your notes are backed up to icloud or not.

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>the legality would depend on whether your notes are backed up to icloud or not

I agree, and it's nuts.

This feels like less of an issue with anthropic per say as it is a broad reading/misuse of the law's original intent.

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You're absolutely right, at least according to my own quick check on Gemini. I find this state of affairs amazing.

In my country, no "overt act" is required, but both here and in the US a "conspiracy to commit" charge requires an agreement with a second party. This is indeed consistent with a very broad interpretation of "no thought crimes".

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Correct. Nevermind how ridiculously contrived the scenario you've just concocted is.
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its not contrived just because you recognize how silly the argument its arguing against is
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Do you really think reading a snippet like that completely out of context should qualify as probable cause?
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Yes!

When you read something describing in detail a person's intent to do something very bad, in a place where they write things that they intend to do, and which in the past they have in fact consistently done, you don't attach any significance to that at all?

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How can you prove that it's not just me writing a dark and morbid story?
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