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Category Archives: Congress

House Committee Approves Bill Restricting Sales of Sensitive Data to Foreign Adversaries

EPIC: “March 7, 2024 the House Energy & Commerce Committee approved H.R. 7520, the Protecting Americans’ Data from Foreign Adversaries Act of 2024, sponsored by Representative Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ) and Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA). The bill prohibits data brokers from selling, transferring, or providing access to Americans’ sensitive data to certain foreign adversaries or entities controlled by foreign adversaries. Under the bill, sensitive data includes identifiers such as social security numbers, geolocation data, data about minors, biometric information, and private communications. “Information identifying an individual’s online activities over time and across websites or online services” is also considered sensitive data. A report by the Irish Council for Civil Liberties last year found that sensitive information about U.S. political figures, members of our military, and other high profile targets can be obtained by China and other foreign advertising through the ‘real time bidding’ system used by data brokers to target online ads. “There is an urgent need to rein in data brokers, who are profiting off the sale of our most sensitive data and putting Americans at risk,” said EPIC Executive Director Alan Butler. “This bill is an important step in the right direction in providing specific protections for sensitive data. But EPIC believes it is long past time for Congress to enact comprehensive privacy protections that include a strong data minimization standard, protect civil rights online, and provide for robust enforcement to stop harmful commercial surveillance practices.” EPIC has long supported heightened protections for sensitive personal data, including in congressional testimony supporting the proposed American Data Privacy and Protection Act, in EPIC’s proposed State Data Privacy and Protection Act, and in comments on the Federal Trade Commission’s commercial surveillance rulemaking. EPIC has also backed strict prohibitions on the sale of personal information by data brokers, including in comments on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Fair Credit Reporting Act rulemaking.”

Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry?

Bunting, William and Stein, Tomer, Amicus Lobbying: Friends of the Court or Friends of the Industry? (January 29, 2024). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=4708986 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4708986  – “This Article reveals that lobbying has a vast and outsized impact on the development of judge-made business law. Lobby groups have taken control of the amicus curiae filing process… Continue Reading

Wyden’s Gets FTC To Protect Data Of 1.6 B People Tracked By Now-Bankrupt Data Broker

TechDirt: “There are two major reasons that the U.S. doesn’t pass an internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers despite a parade of dangerous scandals. One, lobbied by a vast web of interconnected industries with unlimited budgets, Congress is too corrupt to do its job. Two, the U.S. government is disincentivized to do anything because it exploits… Continue Reading

Fetal personhood laws, explained

Vox: “The Alabama Supreme Court touched off a nationwide furor in February when it ruled that frozen, fertilized embryos legally count as “children.” The ruling upended the lives of patients undergoing IVF in Alabama and opened up a new front in the post-Dobbs battle over abortion rights. It also revived interest in — and concern… Continue Reading

Supreme Court Inadvertently Reveals Confounding Late Change in Trump Ballot Ruling

Slate: “The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday to keep Donald Trump on Colorado’s ballot was styled as a unanimous one without any dissents. But the metadata tells a different story. On the page, a separate opinion by the liberal justices is styled as a concurrence in the judgment, authored jointly by the trio. In the… Continue Reading

State of the Union

USA Facts: In Numbers – A nonpartisan, data-driven snapshot of the state of our union​. “Article II of the US Constitution mandates that the president periodically inform Congress about the “state of the union,” including budget reports and legislative proposals. It is also a chance for the president to review their achievements, with not just… Continue Reading

Generative AI Might Finally Bend Copyright Past the Breaking Point

The Atlantic [unpaywalled] – For more than 200 years, copyright law has promoted a creative society. The chatbots could change everything. “It took Ralph Ellison seven years to write Invisible Man. It took J. D. Salinger about 10 to write The Catcher in the Rye. J. K. Rowling spent at least five years on the… Continue Reading

With elections looming worldwide here’s how to identify and investigate AI audio deepfakes

Nieman Lab: “…Media manipulation investigators told GIJN that fake AI-generated audio simulations — in which a real voice is cloned by a machine learning tool to state a fake message — could emerge as an even bigger threat to elections in 2024 and 2025 than fabricated videos. One reason is that, like so-called cheapfakes, audio… Continue Reading

Where democracy is most at risk

The Economist: Four lessons from EIU’s new ranking of democracies – “In theory this year should be a triumphant one for democracy. More people are expected to vote in national elections in 2024 than ever before. But many elections will be problematic. This year’s democracy index published by EIU, our sister company, shows that only… Continue Reading

Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated February 2024

Violence Against Women and International Law – Updated February 2024 – Sabrina I. Pacifici is identifying and documenting pertinent sources for researchers on the October 7, 2023 terrorist attack and violence against women and girls. The guide was originally published on November 23, 2023 – link here, and had 8 pertinent sources on this topic comprising… Continue Reading

DOJ funding pipeline subsidizes questionable big data surveillance technologies

Via LLRX – DOJ funding pipeline subsidizes questionable big data surveillance technologies – Professor Andrew Guthrie Ferguson discusses how predictive policing has been shown to be an ineffective and biased policing tool. Yet, the Department of Justice has been funding the crime surveillance and analysis technology for years and continues to do so despite criticism from researchers, privacy… Continue Reading