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Draft!\u00a0 Feedback welcome!<\/span> We’re living in the golden age of income inequality \u2026 and we\u2019re also living in the golden age of corruption. \u00a0 These two forces are very scary together. As legislators, what are you doing to protect Washington residents from these two storms?<\/p>\n — Livio De La Cruz, Black Lives Matter Seattle-King County, at the House committee hearing on the \u201cWashington Privacy Act\u201d<\/p>\n Two key bills continue to move forward in the Washington Legislature.<\/p>\n As House ITED Committee Chairman Zack Hudgins noted, the tech industry likes these bills — in fact, Microsoft and Amazon like them so much they\u2019re proposing them as a model for other states. \u00a0 It\u2019s not surprising, really. SB 6280 is sponsored by Sen. Joe Nguyen, who works at Microsoft.\u00a0 And SB 6281 is not all that different from the bill sponsored last year by Guy Palumbo, now a lobbyist at Amazon.<\/p>\n But from my perspective as a Washingtonian, and a privacy advocate, these are both bad bills.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just me!\u00a0\u00a0 Friday\u2019s Seattle Times <\/i>article Flawed data-privacy bill does not protect consumers or hold companies accountable<\/a>, by Jennifer Lee, Susan Grant of Consumer Federation of America, and Ed Mierzwinksi of WashPIRG goes into detail on the problems with 6281; and there are sections later in the post discussing the broad opposition to both these bills.<\/p>\n Fortunately, there\u2019s still time to make these bills stronger — or to kill them, which is what happened last year<\/a>.\u00a0 If you live in Washington, now is a great time to contact your state legislators and ask them to OPPOSE SB6280 an SB6280 as written, <\/b>and strengthen both bills to give us strong protections.\u00a0 Here\u2019s more about how to do let your legislators know how you feel<\/a>.<\/p>\n When companies line up behind a bill that consumer advocacy orgs raise red flags about, is it truly a *consumer* data privacy bill?<\/p>\n — Jennifer Lee, ACLU Washington, on Twitter.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sen. Reuven Carlyle is now the lead sponsor of SB 6281, taking over from his good friend after Guy Palumbo resigned<\/a> from the Senate to rejoin Amazon as their Director of Public Policy.\u00a0 A bad day for a bad privacy bill, a good day for privacy<\/a> discusses the bill’s February 21 committee hearing.\u00a0 I agree with Sen. Carlyle’s point in his opening session that we’re at an important time, with a dramatic desire for meaningful improvements in consumer privacy legislation.\u00a0 Alas, the current version of SB 6281 falls far short.<\/p>\n For me, some of the most moving testimony at the hearing was from Stan Shikuma of JACL,who reminded us of the role data abuse played in the the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans and observed \u201cnever again is now.\u201d Others opposing the bill included Black Lives Matter – Seattle King County, One America (the largest immigrant and refugee advocacy organization in Washington State), Impact CDA, the ACLU-WA, the Washington State Association for Justice.\u2026 and me! \u00a0 Here\u2019s some of what I said:<\/p>\n This is a really bad bill, especially for people from marginalized communities.\u00a0 Others today are telling you lots of reasons why. Please listen to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But Microsoft, the Washington Tech Industry Alliance, the Association of National Advertisers, and the Network Advertising Initiative all spoke in favor of it.\u00a0 As Ranking Member Norma Smith commented at a town hall the weekend after the hearing, it was very telling to see the difference between who was supporting the bill and who was opposing it.<\/p>\n Alas, on Friday, Rep. Smith\u2019s strong amendment on data minimization got voted down.\u00a0 The committee did approve an amendment from Chairman Hudgins with some improvements to a few of its many problems, but it\u2019s still a really bad bill.<\/p>\n Situations like this are very challenging and frustrating for legislators.\u00a0 They want to do the right thing; and in this case, they know what the right thing is — the bills the House ITED Committee worked on earlier in the session were much stronger then the current sad excuse for \u201cprivacy.\u201d\u00a0 But tech companies have a lot of power, and create a lot of jobs, so it\u2019s risky to go against them.\u00a0 Legislators want to find a way to make both sides happy by making compromises that work out okay for everybody.<\/p>\n But the compromises in this bill aren\u2019t okay for everybody.\u00a0 So it\u2019s a challenging situation for privacy advocates and consumer organizations as well. When we say \u201ca lot of people will be harmed as a result of this compromise, especially people form marginalized communities,\u201d there\u2019s a natural tendency for legislators not to hear us.\u00a0 It\u2019s much more pleasant to listen to the Governmental Relations and Public Policy offices of corporations, who assure legislators that they\u2019ve done a great job of balancing everybody\u2019s interests, and publish stories like the one (from Microsoft) saying this unenforceable bill is \u201craising the bar\u201d for privacy in the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cWashington is too important a state.\u00a0 This has to be done slowly and thoughtfully.\u201d<\/p>\n — AI policy expert Mutale Nkonde<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Sen. Nguyen kicked of the February 26 hearing on his bill by talking about how last year he favored a moratorium on facial recognition technology, but now thinks that a different approach is better. \u00a0 One of the things that really struck me in his statement is when he talked about how he\u2019s reached out to a lot of community organizations about this bill.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure that\u2019s true; Sen. Nguyen really does seem to understand that the impacts of bad legislation will fall primarily on marginalized communities. But how much he was listening to them, and how much was he listening to the tech industry?<\/p>\n In contrast, the Feb. 4 letter to the House ITED Committee calling for a moratorium was signed by CAIR Washington, Densho, Entre Hermanos, InterIm Community Development Association, Japanese American Citizens League Seattle Chapter, La Resistencia, MAPS-AMEN (American Muslim Empowerment Network), Puget Sound Sage, Urban League of Metropolitan Seattle, and Washington Immigration Solidarity Network.\u00a0 My guess is they told him similar things when he met with them.<\/p>\n There are a lot of problems with SB 6280 in its current form.\u00a0 The ACLU-WA and King County Public Defenders have an excellent analysis of how Section 12 undercuts our current constitutional protections.\u00a0\u00a0 I also had some sharp criticism from a software engineering perspective in my testimony at the hearing, and added more details about why the \u201caccountability report\u201d and \u201cmitigation plan\u201d need to include approval and enforcement in my follow-on mail.<\/p>\n That said, there\u2019s also a very good idea in SB 6280: a task force, including \u201ceight representatives from advocacy organizations that represent individuals or protected classes of communities historically impacted by surveillance technologies\u201d as well as other stakeholders including law enforcement, retailers, companies that develop and market facial recognition services, consumer advocacy organizations, and universities.\u00a0 \u00a0 As I said in my testimony<\/p>\n There are very complex and difficult issues here and we in Washington State are very well-placed to come up with good answers.<\/p>\n But we won\u2019t figure the answers out overnight.\u00a0 Until we do, we need a moratorium.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n AI researchers and civil rights lawyers have been calling for a moratorium on the use of facial recognition technology for several years, and momentum is building across the country — and internationally.\u00a0 Cities including San Francisco, Somerville, Oakland, Berkeley have adopted moratoria; Portland is considering a bill that\u2019s the strongest yet, and Masachusetts is considering statewide legislation. My email to the committee included a (very partial) list of moratorium supporters; here\u2019s a lightly-edited version with some typos fixed.<\/p>\n If Sen. Nguyen happens to read this, a couple of perspectives I\u2019d share from my own Microsoft experience: look at how much time you spend talking to community groups as compared to people from tech companies.\u00a0 Also, the Government Relations organization is goaled on getting legislation favorable to Microsoft approved here in Washington and across the country. Of course they care about privacy for Washingtonians as well (most of them live there!), but their priorities may not be the same as yours as a legislator, or ours as consumers.<\/p>\n Going back to Sen. Carlyle\u2019s opening testimony, I want to stress again that I very much agree that it’s a great opportunity to seize the moment.\u00a0 In the \u201crecommendations\u201d section of my mail to the committee<\/a>, I sketched a potential outcome that would richly deserve the summary \u201cWashington breaks new ground and establishes the gold standard.\u201d<\/p>\n Alas, we\u2019re a long way away from that right now.\u00a0 The Senate\u2019s versions of 6280\/6281 were big wins for the tech and advertising industry.\u00a0 The House ITED committee has a reputation for being strong on privacy, and didn\u2019t do much to strengthen either bill.<\/p>\n If the bills pass in something close to their current state, it\u2019s very good news for the tech industry.\u00a0 Washington is justifiably seen as a tech hub, and is known for being very good at consumer protection. And as I said earlier, companies like Microsoft and Amazon are already proposing these bills as a model for other states.<\/p>\n More positively, though, this is also a great opportunity for privacy and consumer advocates to seize the moment. \u00a0 In this heavily polarizing time, privacy and complaints about big tech companies\u2019 unchecked power are rare issues that cuts across partisan lines.<\/p>\n And Washington\u2019s Presidential Primary (coming up on March 10) offers the opportunity for a wild card.\u00a0 These sweetheart bills for the tech industry, written by an Amazon lobbyist and Microsoft employee, are perfect opportunities for Elizabeth Warren to highlight her plans to rein in big tech<\/a> and fight corruption<\/a> — as well as the Corporate Executive Accountability Act she introduced last year<\/a> to make it easier to criminally charge company executives when Americans\u2019 personal data is breached. \u00a0 If she weighs in, it could make a big difference, not just in terms of the legislation, but also the primary. I\u2019ve said for years that politicians won\u2019t take privacy and civil liberties activists seriously until these issues make the difference in some high-profile elections \u2026 now would be a great time to start \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Of course, as wonderful as that would be, we can\u2019t count on it.\u00a0 When Savannah Sly of the ACLU and I spoke at the Seattle Indivisible Resist Trump Tuesday rally last week, I talked about how grassroots activism can really make a difference at times like these; so please please please, contact your legislators<\/a> — and ask your friends and family to as well.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, though, it\u2019s up to our legislators.\u00a0 Do they work for Microsoft, Amazon, and the rest of the tech industry?\u00a0 Or do they work for us? And if so, what are they doing to protect our rights?\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Draft!\u00a0 Feedback welcome! Please do not forward! This may be split into multiple posts before publishing. We’re living in the golden age of income inequality \u2026 and we\u2019re also living in the golden age of corruption. \u00a0 These two forces are very scary together. As legislators, what are you doing to protect Washington residents from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[420],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1289","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1289"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1289\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1289"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1289"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1289"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nPlease do not forward!<\/span>
\nThis may be split into multiple posts before publishing.<\/span><\/p>\n\n
SB 6281: A really bad bill<\/h1>\n
SB 6280: We need a moratorium as well as a task force<\/h1>\n
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Who does our Legislature work for?<\/h1>\n