Tech Industry Groups Are Watering Down Attempts at Privacy Regulation, One State at a Time (themarkup.org) 38
Coordinated industry lobbying is overwhelming the scattered efforts of consumer groups and privacy-minded lawmakers. From a report: In late 2019, Utah state senator Kirk Cullimore got a phone call from one of his constituents, a lawyer who represented technology companies in California. "He said, 'I think the businesses I represent would like to have some bright lines about what they can do in Utah,'" Cullimore told The Markup. At the time, tech companies in California were struggling with how they could comply with a new state law that gave individual Californians control over the data that corporations routinely gather and sell about their online activities. The lawyer, whom Cullimore and his office wouldn't identify, recounted how burdensome his corporate clients found the rules, Cullimore remembered, and suggested that Utah proactively pass its own, business-friendly consumer privacy law.
"He said, 'I want to make this easy so consumers can make use of their rights and the compliance is also easy for companies.' He actually sent me some suggested language [for a bill] that was not very complex," Cullimore told The Markup. "I introduced the bill as that." What followed over the next two years was a multipronged influence campaign straight out of a playbook Big Tech is deploying around the country in response to consumer privacy legislation. It's common for industries to lobby lawmakers on issues affecting their business. But there is a massive disparity in the state-by-state battle over privacy legislation between well-funded, well-organized tech lobbyists and their opposition of relatively scattered consumer advocates and privacy-minded politicians, The Markup has found. During the 2021 and 2022 Utah legislative sessions -- when Cullimore's bill made its way through the legislature -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft collectively registered 23 active lobbyists in the state, according to their lobbying disclosures. Thirteen of those lobbyists had never previously registered to work in the state, and some of them were influential in shaping Cullimore's legislation.
"He said, 'I want to make this easy so consumers can make use of their rights and the compliance is also easy for companies.' He actually sent me some suggested language [for a bill] that was not very complex," Cullimore told The Markup. "I introduced the bill as that." What followed over the next two years was a multipronged influence campaign straight out of a playbook Big Tech is deploying around the country in response to consumer privacy legislation. It's common for industries to lobby lawmakers on issues affecting their business. But there is a massive disparity in the state-by-state battle over privacy legislation between well-funded, well-organized tech lobbyists and their opposition of relatively scattered consumer advocates and privacy-minded politicians, The Markup has found. During the 2021 and 2022 Utah legislative sessions -- when Cullimore's bill made its way through the legislature -- Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft collectively registered 23 active lobbyists in the state, according to their lobbying disclosures. Thirteen of those lobbyists had never previously registered to work in the state, and some of them were influential in shaping Cullimore's legislation.
Lobbying is legal bribery (Score:5, Insightful)
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It's a bit hard when they lobby against banning lobbying.
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If you don't like it, start demanding better from your representatives.
If they won't play ball, find a new one that will.
Make strong convictions against pay-for-legislation your #1 voting issue.
Start with your local government and work upward from there (even they get plenty of bribes).
Change is slow, but if your convictions are strong enough, you'll eventually make a difference.
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If you don't like it, start demanding better from your representatives.
... and promise an overpaid job.
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The problem is that we have been conditioned to support a political party.
So you may not like the parties stance on a topic, you the sure hell not going to vote for the other party because they stand for everything you hate.
What is worse is how the parties are mostly posturing themselves to be Anti the other other party. Despite how rational the idea is, they feel if they are for it, they are going to give the power to the other party.
Say for a local election, you talk to a guy running for local office, you
Re:Lobbying is legal bribery (Score:4, Insightful)
I have voted for people on both sides of the aisle. As long as they're moderates and aren't looney ideologues. One snag is that primaries tend to select the the most extreme and party loyal, as they're selected by the party faithful, so that in the general election sometimes the choice is between crazy and crazier.
Though oddly, sometimes if a state leans decidedly one direction, and has open primaries or ranked choice voting, the primaries can elect a more moderate candidate. Ie, in several California districts the primaries do want a more moderate candidate because there are enough Republicans willing to vote D just to have someone more sympathetic to their views end up in the general election.
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I have voted for people on both sides of the aisle.
Ideally there would be many sides and many aisles.
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Agreed here. Every legislator should be taught at some point, that if a lobbyist has a pre-written bill for you that you should throw it out immediately. Even if the legislators already agree with the goals in principle, the bill is already too tainted and too corrupt. Legislators should write the bills themselves, with their staff, and with committees.
So that's not nearly enough (Score:2)
The first step is voting in your primary election and googling the candidates and reading up on their backgrounds
Re:Lobbying is legal bribery (Score:4, Insightful)
Except for those lobby groups that lobby for the things you stand for.
I am not denying how the US has implemented the lobby system has a lot of major flaws and issues. However, they are lobby groups for a wide range of topics, including many who oppose other lobbies.
You may think that Tough Privacy laws are a good thing, and those who are against you are just corporate shills or have a nefarious plan for your data. As free speech and privacy are tied together, as without it public interest groups will bully anyone they find with a opposing opinion. For example say you are Pro-Choice but also an Evangelical Christian. Knowledge of your political believes may get you kicked out that religious community, and for some areas of the US, that also may the overall local community in where you live.
However you may be on the idea that Privacy laws are too strict. Where freedom of speech doesn't absolve one from the consequences of your speech. Where those who peddle misinformation, slander, libel or try to push towards violence, having their speech create a lot of harm to go without consequences or even the people who do such harm be anonymous, and free of consequences for such dangerous actions (that are not protected free speech by the US Constitution)
Perhaps you want privacy, unless it is a criminal charge, in which companies will need to keep track on who said what and when when there is a legal warrant. However we also had cases where the government had overreached in the past and abused the system to get blanket data.
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suggested that Utah proactively pass its own, business-friendly consumer privacy law.
Or what it really means:
told Utah to proactively pass its own, consumer-hostile "privacy" law.
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Yes, that is obviously what business-friendly means in the context, there's no "gotcha" translation here.
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It's the inevitable result of voters voting the way television and Facebook tell them to. The problem isn't money, it's disengaged, ignorant, lazy, and frankly, stupid voters. Addressing the money side of it is nothing more than an attempt to change who controls the message. It isn't even an attempt to change the system.
They figured this out (Score:2, Insightful)
States get picked apart by mega corporations. It's why so many right wingers and pro-corporate types bang on so much about state's rights. The phrase is "small enough to drown in a bathtub".
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This is exactly what the current make-up of the Supreme Court is doing. Finding ways to say the federal government cannot provide protections for it's people, only states can to that, including what is a close opposite of protection, discrimination/repression/oppression etc.
Could you imaging the holy hell if the government said states couldn't mint their own money or create their own regular army? /s
https://constitution.congress.... [congress.gov]
https://constitution.congress.... [congress.gov]
There are many things that should be decid
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They shout My Body My Choice when it comes to vaccines but when asked about abortion or Cannabis it's suddenly not my body nor my choice.
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They shout states rights when it comes to gerrymandering or institutionalized racism but then they shout institutional overreach when states want to exercise rights they don't approve of, like California setting its own emissions laws. As such, states rights is a fairly reliable dog whistle for racism.
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I copy and pasted the last four words of your sentence into google and this was my second hit [theatlantic.com], you lazy incompetent noob. Learn to internet.
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Plenty of people do the exact opposite: saying "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion, but also wanting to make vaccines mandatory (or at least really punish those who don't get them). Many in that crowd are also staunch supporters of infant genital mutilation when the infant is a boy (since boys don't deserve choices related to their bodies like girls do).
In fact, it is actually quite hard to be truly consistent on such issues, as it often turns out that there are factors other than it being "my bo
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A slogan simple enough to chant at a rally is never going to be nuanced enough to be a functional government policy.
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Plenty of people do the exact opposite: saying "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion, but also wanting to make vaccines mandatory (or at least really punish those who don't get them). Many in that crowd are also staunch supporters of infant genital mutilation when the infant is a boy (since boys don't deserve choices related to their bodies like girls do).
In fact, it is actually quite hard to be truly consistent on such issues, as it often turns out that there are factors other than it being "my body" that can influence whether or not it should exclusively be "my choice."
Let me know when abortions are contagious.
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You have just given an example of what I was talking about when I said "there are factors other than it being "my body" that can influence whether or not it should exclusively be "my choice.""
In this post I am not arguing about whether or not abortion should be legal, nor whether or not vaccinations should be mandatory, but I am showing precisely why it is not automatically hypocritical to say yes to one and no to the other, because in both cases there is room for argument that something more than "my body"
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Oh like determining who is legally allowed to enter the country? As opposed to being decided at the municipality level? Spoiler alert hypocrisy exists on both sides of the aisle. Also google laboratories of democracy as to why a one size fits all may not be the best answer for everything.
Re:They figured this out (Score:4, Insightful)
Well keep in mind during the Trump administration a lot of the Left wingers living in blue states were so happy about the state rights, because the states were protecting their interests from a lot of Federal mandates that they had disagreed with.
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Yep. I think abortion is a good one to leave up to the states because it gives people more options when hunting for a place to live that makes them feel like they fit in.
So if abortion becomes a state issue again, those who disapprove of women having reproductive freedoms will easily be able to find states of like-minded people to go live in, and conversely those who approve of the mass murdering of babies will find states to live in where this is common and even celebrated.
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It is part of the nature of law to limit some freedoms in order to protect other freedoms. There will always be disagreement as to which limits are the right ones.
Your logic about individual liberty somehow being the exclusive property of federal law doesn't really make sense. It makes PERFECT sense from the perspective of someone who wants to impose their beliefs upon millions of people who disagree, of course, but not so much sense from the perspective of the nature of law or freedom.
Politicians in general (Score:1)
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"I always voted at my party's call and I never thought of thinking for myself at all."
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Do NOT represent the people who elected them. They represent the lobbying groops the dish out the most money to them.
More accurately, politicians represent people who get them elected. Whether that's voters, contributors, party heads or whoever. That's why for issues that voters are well-informed and motivated to vote on, politicians tend to go with the popular opinion. Whereas on issues such as privacy where most people simply don't care, the lobbyists can have their way.
Get rid of money in politics, or better yet, the politicians themselves, and you wouldn't have this problem. Yes, money can still change opinions, but i
States are bad actors that need to be reined in (Score:1)
Fuck states rights, they have shown that they cannot be trusted with the amount of power they have. States are running amok and it will take federal intervention to stop
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This is a joke, right? The feds are worse than the states, and not by a little amount. There it's even more unelected bureaucrats making laws.
All you have to look at is the 737Max debacle and the FBI being behind the Whitmer kidnapping to know the US federal government is corrupt to the gills.
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Give the federal government more power to keep states in check. We need federal oversight. We've just learned that the cops in TX who are supposed to protect citizens are completely inept
So instead you want to put the feds who try to assassinate and then when that fails frame environmental activists [sfgate.com] in charge of deciding which cops are the good guys? The same feds who withhold information on vulnerabilities when their alleged mission is securing the nation's communications? The same feds tasked with squeezing your balls and throwing away your bottled water before you can get on a plane?
In theory yes, in practice fuck no, we have to unfuck the feds before we put them in charge of states beca
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Give the federal government more power to keep states in check. We need federal oversight. . . . the compromised SCOTUS is gutting reproductive rights,
Son, you need to keep the talking point cards sorted properly, or your masters will stop paying you for your posts.
I'm not clear why anyone is shocked by this. (Score:2)