Tech Policy Leaders

Hey everybody, I'm Joe Miller and here's what's going on in the world of tech law & policy this week.

White House Proposes Tech 'Bill of Rights'

The White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy proposed a new Tech 'Bill of Rights' Friday targeting harms caused by artificial intelligence and biometric technology. Comments are due on January 15th. The Request for Information seeks details on how companies use these technologies and what interventions the federal government should make to defend the Constitution as things like facial recognition, voice recognition, keystroke analysis, and other tactics that infiltrate every aspect of our lives take hold.

Abortion advocates push back against license plate reader company, Flock

Abortion advocates are fighting against a fast-growing company called Flock, which aims to provide law enforcement with advanced license plate-reader surveillance technology. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, 13 states now criminalize abortion procedures.

Supreme Court to determine limits of Section 230

The Supreme Court will decide whether Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act shields social media companies from liability for content posted by alleged terrorists. The family of one of the victims of the 2015 Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris sued YouTube for aiding and abetting terrorists by recommending the extremist group's content. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act grants websites blanket immunity for content posted by third-party users. Many on both sides of the aisle have been advocating to reform the provision.

Spotify acquires content moderation platform, Kinzen

As Spotify continues to grapple with hateful content and misinformation bypassing the music streaming giant's content moderation protocols, the company has decided to bring more content moderation capacity in house. It announced last week that it has acquired Dublin-based Kinzen to more effectively deal with harmful content in real–time.

Google to pay State of Arizona $85 Million to settle user-tracking suit

Google has settled with State of Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich's office regarding a claim that the tech giant continued to collect users' location data after users indicated they wanted location tracking turned off. Google will pay the state of Arizona $85 million. A separate multi–state lawsuit against Google is pending in the US District of the Southern District of New York which alleges that Google abuses its market dominance in online advertising.

New Democrats push for federal privacy law that's currently stalled in the House

Finally, a centrist coalition of Democrats led by State of Washington Representative Suzan DelBene is pushing for passage of the American Data and Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA), which has been stalled in the House since it passed committee over the summer. The Electronic Frontier Foundation says the bill offers a lower privacy standard than the one adopted by several states.

To go deeper, you can find links to all of these stories in the show notes. Stay safe, stay informed, have a great week. Ciao.

The major societal challenge posed by artificial intelligence (AI) is that its algorithms are often trained on biased data. This fundamental problem has enormous implications in our criminal justice system, workplaces, schools, healthcare industry, and housing sector. The persistence of racism, sexism, ableism, and other forms of discrimination demonstrates the tendency of AI systems to reflect the biases of the people who built them.

Critical deficiencies in algorithmic surveillance technologies reproduce the same inequities that we have seen evolve decade-after-decade. AI systems having the same biases as the people who built them.

Lydia X. Z. Brown of the Center for Democracy & Technology joins to recommend policy and systemic solutions to address these critically important challenges.

Bio

Lydia X. Z. Brown is a Policy Counsel with CDT's Privacy and Data Project, focused on disability rights and algorithmic fairness and justice. Their work has investigated algorithmic harm and injustice in public benefits determinations, hiring algorithms, and algorithmic surveillance that disproportionately impact disabled people, particularly multiply-marginalized disabled people.

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Resources

Ableism And Disability Discrimination In New Surveillance Technologies: How new surveillance technologies in education, policing, health care, and the workplace disproportionately harm disabled people, Center for Democracy and Technology (2022), https://cdt.org/insights/ableism-and-disability-discrimination-in-new-surveillance-technologies-how-new-surveillance-technologies-in-education-policing-health-care-and-the-workplace-disproportionately-harm-disabled-people/ (last visited Sep 30, 2022).

Tech sector asks Fifth Circuit to stop Texas's social media law from taking effect

The State of Texas's social media law which stops tech companies from taking down hate speech and misleading information has reached the Fifth Circuit in a motion that this organization – WashingTech – has participated in amicus filings for. We agree with NetChoice and the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA) that this law impinges on platforms' First Amendment rights and the discretion Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act affords them to moderate content posted by third parties.

It would allow traditional media platforms, like Fox News, to ban progressive voices but require competing online platforms to host politically-motivated harmful content, including election misinformation.

Abortion advocates pushback against "people search" websites

Cyberscoop notes that abortion rights adovocates' privacy rights are put in jeopardy by people search websites, like BeenVerified, which share their personal contact information. Maleeha Aziz, deputy director of the Texas Equal Access Fund, told Cyberscoop that she installed security cameras around her home because she lives in constant fear, because of her abortion advocacy, that anti-abortion extremists or solicitors will come knocking on her front door at any moment.

Reuters exclusive: child pornography solicitations on Twitter have been showing up next to PBSKids ads

Several brands, as many as 30, to be exact, have had to limit their advertising on Twitter after Reuters found their ads showing up next to solicitations by pedophiles for content depicting child abuse. Disney, Coca Cola, NBCUniversal, PBS – are just some of the companies that were affected.

Privacy advocates want the FTC to tamp down on daycare apps

Privacy advocates are pushing back about daycare apps that let parents and caregivers stream videos of their babies in daycare. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) argues that these platforms host images of kids in unsecure, cloud-based storage apps, and, in one case, an app called Tadpoles for Parents, shared these images on Facebook without notifying parents of their privacy policy.

Mark Brennan: Sephora (Privacy Case Study)

In late August, the California Attorney General's office issued its first public, monetary penalty against cosmetics giant Sephora, for violating the California Privacy and Protection Act (CCPA), which went into effect in 2018 and is one of several state-level privacy laws that have been cropping up across the country.

Mark Brennan joined Joe to talk about what happened in this case and the lessons learned for retailers as U.S. privacy laws become more complex.

Bio

Mark Brennan (@MWBrennanDC) is a Partner at Hogan Lovells and leads their global Technology and Telecommunications industry sector group. He has a truly unique global regulatory and policy practice and advises clients on data protection, artificial intelligence, biometric data and facial recognition, Internet of things, and other technology and consumer protection matters.

LinkedIn

Resources

California Attorney General settles with Sephora in first CCPA fine, Engage.hoganlovells.com (2022)(last visited Sep 26, 2022).

Hey everybody, I'm Joe Miller and here's what's going on in the world of tech law & policy.

ADL Report: Spotify has a white supremacist problem

References to Hitler, Pepe the Frog, Tucker Carlson talking about the "great replacement" anti-immigration theory — it looks like songs that contain them are totally fine for Spotify, which the Anti Defamation League finds in a new report has verified at least 40 bands and musicians with hateful lyrics and imagery on their album covers. Also, it's super-easy to get verified on Spotify, even though the company claims to have a handle on this stuff. The Washington Post has the full report.

Trump appears to nod to QAnon

The Washington Post's Technology 202 newsletter reports that Donald Trump appears to be showing increased support for QAnon, the conspiracy theory movement that accuses high profile democrats are running some kind of a pedophilia ring in which they drink the blood of children. The Post notes that this conspiracy theory has moved from the fringes to the mainstream political discourse and underscores the inefficacy of social media platforms to catch subtle references to disinformation campaigns. At an Ohio rally on Saturday, Trump took the stage to music that sounded a lot like music associated with QAnon, which many see as a "wink and a nod" to QAnon supporters. Trump has subtly endorsed QAnon on social media, but took a more explicit approach on his own social media platform – Truth Social – by including an image of himself wearing a QAnon lapel pin.

Center for Countering Digital Hate: Incel movement is growing online

Another movement that appears to be becoming more mainstream is the so-called incel, or "involuntary celibate" movement is growing online according to a report from the Center for Countering Digital Hate , which also names Google, YouTube and Cloudflare for facilitating the channel, which has 2.6 million monthly site visits and over a million posts. Lots of conversations going on there about mass murder and sexually assaulting pre-pubescent girls.

And the Washington Post also reports that a cop was convicted in Indiana for texting with, what he thought, was a 14-year-old girl, and attempting to meet her at an Olive Garden for sex. It turns out it wasn't a 14-year old girl at all – it was one of a growing number of vigilantes who bait guys like this and then record themselves shaming them, sharing it on the internet. According to the Post, the police had been reluctant to work with these citizen vigilantes to bring alleged pedophiles to trial. But the police are showing increased interest in working with these groups, according to the Post.

BSR: Facebook suppressed Palestian posts during last year's Gaza war

Consulting firm Business for Social Responsibility published a report demonstrating how Facebook suppressed posts made by Palestinians during last year's war between Israel and Hamas – it did so by unfairly removing posts in Arabic at a disproportionate rate – posts that had no apparent connection to Hamas at all – compared to those made in Hebrew.

Florida takes anti-content moderation case to Supreme Court

The state of Florida wants the Supreme Court to decide whether states can pass laws that prevent social media companies from blocking or limiting certain types of speech – such as some of the speech I just mentioned - hate speech, disinformation – you know, things like that. Florida's petition comes on the heels of the Fifth Circuit upholding a similar law in Texas last week. Florida wants to ban companies from doing this. We published a report in late 2020 on the pattern of conservatives, throughout history, seeking to ban liberal speech, starting almost as soon as European immigrants landed in the new world and wanted to control Native Americans, not to mention slaves. America's entire history is one of suppressing the voices of people of color – not the other way around.

Meanwhile, Microsoft has decided it won't flag disinformation and TikTok apparently enforces its content moderation policies more leniently in favor of users with millions of followers.

Senate confirms new OSTP director, Arati Prabhakar

In a 56-40 vote with 10 Republicans on board, the Senate has for the first time confirmed a woman, immigrant, and person of color to lead the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). Previously, Arati Prabhakar led the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. Dr. Alondra Nelson, a prominent scholar who appeared on this podcast back on Episode 70, had been performing the duties of the OSTP Director role since previous diretor Eric Lander stepped down in February amid accusations that he mistreated subordinates. Dr. Nelson will continue in her role as Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for Science and Society.

Virginia's Spanish-language election site is out-of-date

Mozilla report on potential anticompetitive behavior by leading browsers

Washington Post: Health Apps sharing data with advertisers

City of New York to provide free internet/cable for 300K public housing residents

To go deeper, you can find links to all of these stories, plus additional ones, in the show notes. Stay safe, stay informed, have a great week. Ciao.

Spandana Singh: Content Moderation Beyond the US

Social media platforms have played a central role in recent crises in the U.S., such as the Capitol Hill insurrection of 2021, and in Europe, such as Russia's invasion of Ukraine. These developments underscore the power that unelected, big technology companies wield on the geopolitical landscape.

But the discussion around how social media companies function in the global south, such as their impact on the proliferation of Hindu nationalism in India or state violence against the Rohingya people of Myanmar, remains largely absent from policy discussions in the west.

New America's Spandi Singh joined Joe Miller this week to discuss her current work – not just to prevent the spread of mis- and disinformation regarding upcoming elections in the U.S. – but also to foster a tech policy discussion that includes the unique perspectives of marginalized voices abroad.

Bio

Spandi Singh works at New America's Open Technology Institute where she leads a portfolio of work focused on content moderation, disinformation, algorithmic accountability, and transparency. Singh is also currently a Non-Resident Fellow at the Esya Centre in New Delhi and a member of the World Economic Forum's Expert Network.

Linked In

Resources

Open Technology Institute at New America

Judging Platform Responses to Election Mis- and Disinformation, New America (2022), https://www.newamerica.org/oti/in-the-news/judging-platform-responses-to-election-mis-and-disinformation/ (last visited Sep 19, 2022).

Hey everybody, I'm Joe Miller and here's what's going on in the world of online safety and free speech this week.

Sen. Wyden: CBP has massive trove of American's cellphone data

Senator Ron Wyden sent a letter to Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus on Thursday revealing that CBP has a massive amount of Americans' data from millions of drivers' license photos, license plate readers, mobile devices, and who knows what else. Some 3,000 CBP operations employees apparently have access to the data, and CBP doesn't need probable cause to obtain warrants to search the data – they only need reasonable suspicion. Brennan Center scholar Faiza Patel told the Washington Post that the database goes far beyond reasonableness. Patel joined me on this podcast back in 2017 to discuss how the government's surveillance of Muslims negatively impacts innocent civilians.

New York City's Metro Transit Authority's switch to tap-to-enter system raises surveillance alarms

The City of New York will be moving away from Metro Cards and towards a new tap-to-enter system called OMNY. Surveillance and privacy experts are concerned that the new system will be able to track anyone wherever they go within the nation's largest public transportation system. The system will also be a public-private partnership between the City and a company called Cubic Corp. even though the State of New York has not yet updated its 1984 privacy law. No one knows what the government will do with that data, much less what Cubic Corp will do with it, since nondisclosure agreements often govern these types of partnerships.

California becomes first state to pass Children's Online Privacy law

The California legislature has passed a landmark Children's Online Privacy law that directs tech companies to follow age-appropriate design principles to protect children online. The bill, modeled after a bill in the UK, passed the California Senate unanimously and is the first in the US to address children's online safety directly, beyond the weaker standards imposed by the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act, which Congress passed back in 1998 before it had any idea what the internet would become. California Governor Gavin Newsom hasn't yet indicated whether he plans to sign the new legislation.

California enacts new social media moderation disclosure law

The state of California is also leading the way when it comes to state-based efforts to establish content moderation standards. California governor Gavin Newsom signed into law on Tuesday a new bill requiring social media companies to file semiannual reports on how they moderate hate speech, disinformation, and extremism. The California law differs from Republican-led efforts, particularly in Texas and Florida, to tamp down on social media companies' content moderation in general, and instead requires social media companies to report on what they're actually doing. The new law is expected to face resistance from the tech industry.

Separately, the Wall Street Journal's editorial board seems to believe that the federal government and Facebook collude on content moderation.

Color of Change launches 'Black Tech Agenda'

Color of Change has launched a Black Tech Agenda that centers racial justice in technology policymaking. The agenda includes a vision for robust antitrust policy, better privacy protections and an end to surveillance, preventing algorithmic discrimination, expanding broadband access, protecting net neutrality, and addressing misinformation and disinformation. The agenda is supported by Senators Cory Booker and Elizabeth Warren, as well as Representatives Robin Kelly and Pramila Jayapal.

Facebook reverses ban on Holocaust film

Facebook reversed a ban on an holocaust film starring Roy Schneider, who played the police chief in Jaws. The filmmaker, Joshua Newton, based the movie on his father's life after he survived the holocaust. Facebook pulled the movie because its name is Beautiful Blue Eyes, which Facebook's moderators found contained a racist connotation that violated its community standards.

The movie Newton wants to advertise on Facebook is actually a re-release of a 2009 version of the film which now includes previously lost footage. It was Schneider's final film.

White House issues new digital assets development framework

Following President Biden's March Executive Order to streamline regulation of digital assets, the White House on Friday released a fact sheet laying out a framework for interagency coordination to protect consumers and larger stakeholders, make financial services safe and affordable, encourage responsible innovation, ensure financial stability and protect America's financial competitiveness globally, fight illicit financial activities, and develop a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC). Part of the list of to-dos is a call for federal agencies to consider the environmental implications of digital finances.

To go deeper, you can find links to all of these stories in the show notes. Stay safe, stay informed, have a great week. Ciao.

Jon Roozenbeek: How to Pre-Bunk Misinformation and Disinformation

Misinformation and disinformation are two of propagandists' most important weapons in today's "information war." From the war in Ukraine to civil rights violations in the United States, political operatives leverage false information to engender support and suppress votes.

Misinformation is false information or information that is not true. Disinformation is false information created with a specific intent to deceive. Political elites use misinformation and disinformation as part of a strategy to influence public perception about a person, organization, or public policy.

Jon Roozenbeek joined Joe this week to discuss his work on how advertising can help inoculate the public against false information.

Bio

Jon Roozenbeek is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Psychology at the University of Cambridge. His research focuses on building resilience against misinformation and extremism. He is currently writing two books with Cambridge University Press: The Psychology of Misinformation, and Influence, Information and War in Ukraine.

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LinkedIn

Resources

Inoculation Science - Home, Inoculation Science (2022), https://www.inoculation.science (last visited Sep 12, 2022).

Hey everybody, I'm Joe Miller and here's how tech law & policy is affecting you this week.

En banc Fifth Circuit ruling solidifies police officers' authority to expand cell phone searches

The Fifth Circuit, which is in Texas, decided that pictures of child pornography found on three cellphones in the van the defendant was driving when he was arrested couldn't be suppressed even though the original warrants for the phones weren't related to the federal crime of receiving child pornography.

They arrested the defendant because they smelled marijuana and found an Advil bottle with ecstasy in it.

But when the officers searched the defendant's van on the night of the arrest, they also found creepy stuff in the defendant's car, like a child's backpack filled with school supplies, sex toys, 100 pairs of women's underwear, and a lollipop in the cup holder.

So the officers suspected that the defendant was a child predator. However, these items, in and of themselves, didn't rise to the level of probable cause that would have allowed them to search the phones for evidence of child pornography.

So they limited the warrant affidavit they submitted to the judge only to drug trafficking and possession – because of the weed and ecstasy. But the warrant affidavit from the officers was super detailed, and the judge granted it.

The officers searched the three phones ostensibly only looking for evidence of drug trafficking and possession.But in the process, when they were looking at pictures on the phone, they found child pornography. So the cops stopped searching and went back to the judge for separate warrants to search for additional evidence of receiving child pornography. The judge granted the additional warrants, conducted a forensic search of the phone, and found 19,270 images of child pornography on the 3 phones.

The grand jury charged the defendant with receiving child pornography.

So the defendant tried to suppress all of this evidence. First, he argued that they didn't have probable cause to search for drug trafficking evidence in the first place, I guess because he felt like he didn't have that many drugs in his car. But he also tried to argue that the police didn't have probable cause for the charge of receiving child pornography either, because the officers didn't say anything about child pornography in the warrant affidavit. So he argued that the police just wanted to get him for child porn, and that they used what he considered a trumped-up drug trafficking warrant to get the evidence they really wanted so they could charge him with receiving child porn.

A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit suppressed the evidence. But the full court held this week that the warrants had plenty of details in them and that the officers acted in good faith. They weren't willful or negligent when they found the images – actually they obtained a separate warrant for the forensic search.

So, what do you think? Should the officer have said in the warrants that he suspected the defendant of receiving child porn? Go to techpolicypodcast.org, click the mic in the lower-right hand corner and let us know what you think.

One-thousand schools in the U.S. now remotely monitor how much time kids spend in the bathroom

Motherboard reports that some 1,000 schools in the U.S. use a technology called "e-Hallpass" to monitor student locations. It's like the app Amazon uses to track how long their employees take breaks, i.e. "time off task." It tells whoever has access to the data how long the child has been in the bathroom. The schools implementing the technology are located in California, New York, Virginia and North Carolina. The app developer, EduSpire, promises "hall omniscience" in its marketing materials and purports to be designed to prevent things like students from meeting up in the hallways and TikTok challenges.

Remote test proctoring "room scans" are unconstitutional: federal judge

So a lot of us haven't been in school for a while, so we haven't had the ability, really, to take exams from home, something that's now a thing, since COVID basically changed what seems like every aspect of our lives.

Well part of taking exams from home is remote proctoring, with schools figuring out ways to monitor and make sure students aren't cheating. One of the ways they do this, which Cleveland State University did to the student in this case, is to require test-takers to participate in "room scans," where the student sends back a 360-degree view of the room they're taking the test in.

Well, a federal judge in the Northern District of Ohio has now found that such remote scans are unconstitutional, at least with respect to state schools. The Electronic Frontier Foundation noted in a post that, although the district court's ruling doesn't bind other federal courts, it's still persuasive. The judge who issued the ruling is a Republican appointee.

Twitter whistleblower to testify before Congress

The Twitter whistleblower who filed an 84-page complaint with the Securities and Exchange and Federal Trade Commissions, claiming Twitter lied about its security policies and put its 238 million daily users at risk,will testify before the Senate at a September 13th hearing. Peiter Zatko, a respected security analyst whom Twitter fired after just 15-months with the company, alleges egregious errors by Twitter. According to Zatko's accusations, Twitter has apparently taken a day-by-day, hope-for-the-best approach to protecting its users, putting forth a smiley image to the public, while executives implement lax internal security measures, measures that haven't prevented hackers from taking over high-profile accounts such as those belonging to Barack Obama and Elon Musk.

Zatko finds a potential ally in Musk who has been trying to rescind his $44 billion takeover bid of the company.

Facebook/Twitter dismantle U.S. influence campaign about the war in Ukraine

Finally, Naomi Nix reports for the Washington Post that while most efforts by social media platforms to curtail disinformation about the war in Ukraine focus on propaganda spread by Russia and her allies on social media, Facebook and Twitter have removed accounts pushing a pro-U.S. perspective about the war.

And Issie Lapowsky reports for Protocol that Google will launch an initiative through its anti-extremism unit, Jigsaw, and YouTube, which, along with other social media platforms, will broadcast to 55 million users, a series of videos designed to educate – inoculate – the European public against disinformation about Ukrainian refugees.

That's it for this week. You can find links to all of these stories in the show notes.

Stay safe, stay informed, have a great weekend. Ciao.

Fatou Sankare: The Social Media and Law Enforcement Connection

Social media has become one of the most common ways to connect with people. Many use it as an outlet to share personal information and interests, while others use it as a way to interact with friends and family online. As social media usage continues to rise, there is also an increasing number of ways law enforcement agencies are using these platforms for investigations and crime-fighting efforts.

Bio

With origins from The Gambia, Fatou Sankare is a Doctoral Student in Cybersecurity at Marymount University. She graduated Summa Cum Laude with a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Howard University. She continued her education at Fordham University where she received her Master of Science in Cybersecurity. Her research area of focus is on privacy with an emphasis on policy and data in cybersecurity.

Fatou is the founder of Datacation LLC, Data Scientist at a consulting firm and an assistant professor.

Website

Twitter

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Resources

Datacation, Datacation (2022), https://www.mydatacation.com/ (last visited Aug 22, 2022).

Think Like A Hacker: The Importance of Secure Coding For Today's Developers, Medium (2022), https://fatousankare.medium.com/think-like-a-hacker-the-importance-of-secure-coding-for-todays-developers-89f0c0d356c2 (last visited Aug 22, 2022).

(2022), https://banthescan.amnesty.org/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRACqv1gFmA (last visited Aug 22, 2022).