![\"The](\"http:\/\/achangeiscoming.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/7\/2020\/02\/capitol-1024x874.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
After a dramatic debate on the floor, the Washington House voted to send improved versions of two key bills back to the Senate.\u00a0 Now, the lobbying will get even more intense, as the tech industry and law enfocement try to convince legislators to return to the really bad versions of the bills the Senate passed earlier.\u00a0 But momentum’s on the side of the community, consumer, and privacy groups who have been pressing for improvements — so let’s continue to press for more.<\/p>\n
There’s a more detailed update below on what happened in the House and what might happen in the Senate, but first: now’s the time to contact your legislators and let them know what you think.\u00a0 As well as thanking the House for their hard work, please ask the Senate to PRESERVE the improvements in the House bill, and work to further STRENGTHEN the legislation.<\/p>\n
Demand good privacy legislation here in Washington State<\/a> has details about how to contact your legislators.<\/p>\n There’s still a lot of work to do on the legislation, but it’s amazing how much it’s improved since the hearing I talked about in A bad day for a bad privacy bill, a good day for privacy<\/a>. \u00a0 For example:<\/p>\n This is a huge amount of progress in the last two weeks.\u00a0 The private right of action is huge; as Livio De La Cruz of Black Lives Matter – Seattle King County said, it puts the power in our<\/em> hands. \u00a0 Tech companies were successful in keeping a private right of action out of California’s CCPA privacy legislation, and are currently fighting to keep it out of federal legislation as well.\u00a0 Here’s a real chance for Washington to set a new bar for privacy protection.<\/p>\n There are lots of other improvements in the House versions of the bills as well.\u00a0 A few more examples:<\/p>\n The powerful testimony at the hearing<\/a> from people like Livio, Stan Shikuma of Japanese Americans Citizens League – Seattle Chapter, Derek Lum of InterIm CDA, Eli Goss of OneAmerica, and Jennifer Lee of ACLU Washington clearly had an impact.\u00a0 So did the consumer and privacy groups who weighed in, including Consumer Federation of America, WashPIRG, Common Sense Kids Action, EPIC, and Privacy Rights Clearinghouse as well as EFF and Consumer Reports.\u00a0\u00a0 And the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) Consumer Protection Division bombshell testimony on enforceability had a huge impact as well.<\/p>\n The House ITED Committee has taken a major role here. \u00a0 Kudos to Chairman Zack Hudgins, Ranking Member Norma Smith, and all the members of the committee!\u00a0 Reps. Hudgins, Smith, Debra Entenman, and Luanne Van Werven all introduced strong amendments.\u00a0 And Reps. Shelley Kloba,\u00a0Matt Boehnke, Sharon Wylie, Gael Tarleton, and Vandana Slatter all spoke passionately and knowledgeably during the floor debate.\u00a0 Really impressive work all around!<\/p>\n And kudos as well to the House as a whole, which also did excellent work — in extremely difficult circumstances. \u00a0 I am very sympathetic to the hard choice legislators faced, under incredible time pressure, voting on the 27 (!) amendments that had just been introduced, and then a version of a very complex bill that even its supporters agree is still very imperfect.<\/p>\n Watching the debate, I was very proud to be a Washingtonian.\u00a0 Representatives from both sides of the aisle made good points in the debate, clearly understood the importance of this issue, and were genuinely looking for the best solution even in situations where they had different viewpoints.\u00a0 So thanks to all of you, no matter how you voted.<\/p>\n As Rep. Boehnke said, you’ve earned your stripes.\u00a0 I’m very glad the House advanced these bills, and hope that your colleagues in the Senate seize the opportunity and build on your hard work. In their final remarks Reps. Kloba, Wylie, Boehnke and Smith all did a great job at teeing things up for the Senate — for example, Rep. Kloba’s framing “we improved it a lot and got the message from consumers that it still needs to be better”. \u00a0 So now t<\/span><\/span>he Senate has a few options:<\/p>\n It’s hard to know just what will happen.\u00a0 Of course there will be pushback.\u00a0 At the same time, though, consumer, community, and privacy organizations will be pressing for further improvements.\u00a0 There’s some easy low-hanging fruit, like Rep. Van Werven’s excellent amendment (which alas failed on the House floor) raising the age of children protected from 13 to 16. \u00a0 Rep. Smith’s amendments also offer clear improvements.\u00a0 Maybe Senators will see which way the wind is blowing and decide that they also want to have a hand in improving the legislation. All that being said, groups wanting strong privacy legislation are justifiably very nervous right now — and so am I.\u00a0 It was only a few weeks ago that the Senate voted for an unenforceable version.\u00a0 Maybe they didn’t realize how bad it was; after all, Microsoft, Amazon, the WTIA,\u00a0 industry-funded “impartial” non-profits and have been telling the Senators that the unenforceable version included “strong enforcement” that would “raise the bar” on other states.\u00a0\u00a0 Then again, maybe the Senate really does want unenforceable regulation.\u00a0\u00a0 Time will tell.<\/p>\n There’s certainly a chance the Senate will decide to kill the bills.\u00a0 This seems to me like it would be political suicide — even those who oppose the current versions would be better off sending it to concurrence for future improvements.\u00a0 But you never know.\u00a0 If the Senate does kill one or both bills, expect this to be a big campaign issue in the August primary and November general election.\u00a0 There’s also likely to be pressure on Jay Inslee to call a special session if lawmakers once again choose not to protect Washingtonians’ privacy and rights.<\/p>\n Even though there’s still a lot of room for improvement in the current legislation,\u00a0 there’s also a path to getting something that really would raise the bar for privacy.<\/p>\n On SB 6280, the warrant requirements and strengthened accountability report are certainly much better in the House bill (although both sections need further improvements).\u00a0\u00a0 Even once that happens, though, the current contents of SB 6280 really need to be coupled with a moratorium on face surveillance– or at the very least provisions that permanently prohibit any government agency from engaging in face surveillance with a few very narrow exceptions (for example allowing law enforcement to do face matching against the Department of Licensing database with a warrant in very specific circumstances such as rape or kidnapping). <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Perhaps there’s a path to getting similar results without using the m-word.\u00a0 The accuracy and biases in all of today’s systems are so bad that a real review and approval process probably would halt all deployments. \u00a0 Section 3 could be further strengthened, as could Sections 6 and 7 (including along the lines I discussed in my testimony<\/a> and follow-on mail)<\/a>. \u00a0 Still, there’s a risk is that the approval process lets corporations can throw lawyers and money at the problem and get dangerous systems approved.\u00a0 In the short term, a moratorium seems like a cleaner solution to me.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n There’s broad support for a moratorium.\u00a0 ACLU Washington has joint letters and other comments from many community groups demanding a moratorium<\/a>; 80% of Massachusetts voters support a facial recognition moratorium,<\/a> and I expect the numbers are similar here. The EU is considering a five-year moratorium; Google’s CEO endorses a moratorium; so do many of the top AI researchers.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span>The proposed statewide moratorium in Massachusetts is a good starting point for how ours might look; Portland’s proposed legislation is also worth looking at.\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But is there <\/span><\/span>the political will to do this?\u00a0 <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n On SB 6281, the outstanding House debate offers a lot of directions for further improvements.\u00a0 Some examples:<\/p>\n For me, one of the many highlights of the debate was when Rep. Walsh pointed out that the supposed “tradeoff” between privacy and innovation that people kept talking about isn’t real. \u00a0 Yeah, really!<\/p>\n It’s certainly true that some kinds of innovation are more complicated if you have to take potential harms to consumers and citizens into account.\u00a0 Then again, there’s plenty of room for innovation in technologies that actually do <\/em>protect privacy.\u00a0 Companies large and small have spent billions of dollars over the years on tracking our behavior and figure out what ads to show us as a result, but very little on privacy technology.\u00a0 While that’s starting to change in Europe as a result of the GDPR, Washington has a chance to be a world leader here.<\/p>\n During the debate, I heard a lot of concern about businesses having to deal with a “patchwork” of regulations.\u00a0 This is already a very real challenge with federal regulations, the CCPA, and GDPR.\u00a0 Still, companies know how to live with this, and even turn it to a competitive advantage by designing their offerings for the strongest regulations out there. The Washington Privacy Act can help improve the situation (and give Washington-based businesses an advantage) if its regulations are stronger than other jurisdictions — strong enough that they cities and counties\u00a0 in the state don’t feel the need to do more.\u00a0\u00a0 By contrast, weak or no regulation will make the situation worse.<\/p>\n Similarly, in terms of the private right of action,\u00a0 I certainly hear the concerns from companies large and small about frivolous lawsuits.\u00a0 I just wish that instead of desperate efforts to block any <\/em>private right of action, the same amount of energy went to drafting a good <\/em>private right of action.\u00a0 Joe Jerome’s Private right of action shouldn\u2019t be a yes-no proposition in federal US privacy legislation<\/a> on the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP) site has a very solid framework for thinking about this that applies to state legislation as well.<\/p>\n Even though there are good paths forward, the tech industry and law enforcement will be lobbying fiercely to go back to the bad bills the Senate passed.\u00a0 We may well be on track for a replay of last year, where the legislation collapsed in concurrence.<\/p>\n Then again, politics is the art of the possible, and I’m a lot more optimistic than I was two short weeks ago.\u00a0 Thanks to everybody who’s helped get us here!<\/p>\n And now, on to the next battle.<\/p>\n If you’d like to help, please please please let your state legislators know that you want legislation that protects our rights.\u00a0\u00a0 As well as thanking the House for their hard work, ask the Senate to PRESERVE the improvements in the House bill, and work to further STRENGTHEN the legislation.\u00a0 Demand good privacy legislation here in Washington State<\/a> has details about different ways to contact your legislators.\u00a0\u00a0 And please help get the word out, by sharing this post!<\/p>\n \t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" After a dramatic debate on the floor, the Washington House voted to send improved versions of two key bills back to the Senate.\u00a0 Now, the lobbying will get even more intense, as the tech industry and law enfocement try to convince legislators to return to the really bad versions of the bills the Senate passed […]<\/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-1318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-drafts"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318","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=1318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1318\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2024.thenexus.today\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Kudos to the House!<\/h2>\n
\n
\n
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nBack to the Senate<\/h2>\n
\n
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\nSB 6280: Is there the political will?<\/h2>\n
SB 6281: The House debate highlights the path forward<\/h2>\n
\n
Time for the next battle<\/h2>\n