Stopping States From Passing AI Laws for the Next Decade Is a Terrible Idea

5 days 6 hours ago

This week, the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee moved forward with a proposal in its budget reconciliation bill to impose a ten-year preemption of state AI regulation—essentially saying only Congress, not state legislatures, can place safeguards on AI for the next decade.

We strongly oppose this. We’ve talked before about why federal preemption of stronger state privacy laws hurts everyone. Many of the same arguments apply here. For one, this would override existing state laws enacted to mitigate against emerging harms from AI use. It would also keep states, which have been more responsive on AI regulatory issues, from reacting to emerging problems.

Finally, it risks freezing any regulation on the issue for the next decade—a considerable problem given the pace at which companies are developing the technology. Congress does not react quickly and, particularly when addressing harms from emerging technologies, has been far slower to act than states. Or, as a number of state lawmakers who are leading on tech policy issues from across the country said in a recent joint open letter, “If Washington wants to pass a comprehensive privacy or AI law with teeth, more power to them, but we all know this is unlikely.”

Even if Congress does nothing on AI for the next ten years, this would still prevent states from stepping into the breach.

Even if Congress does nothing on AI for the next ten years, this would still prevent states from stepping into the breach. Given how different the AI industry looks now from how it looked just three years ago, it’s hard to even conceptualize how different it may look in ten years. State lawmakers must be able to react to emerging issues.

Many state AI proposals struggle to find the right balance between innovation and speech, on the one hand, and consumer protection and equal opportunity, on the other. EFF supports some bills to regulate AI and opposes others. But stopping states from acting at all puts a heavy thumb on the scale in favor of companies.

Stopping states will stop progress. As the big technology companies have done (and continue to do) with privacy legislation, AI companies are currently going all out to slow or roll back legal protections in states.

For example, Colorado passed a broad bill on AI protections last year. While far from perfect, the bill set down basic requirements to give people visibility into how companies use AI to make consequential decisions about them. This year, several AI companies lobbied to delay and weaken the bill. Meanwhile, POLITICO recently reported that this push in Washington, D.C. is in direct response to proposed California rules.

We oppose the AI preemption language in the reconciliation bill and urge Congress not to move forward with this damaging proposal.

Hayley Tsukayama

Montana Becomes First State to Close the Law Enforcement Data Broker Loophole

5 days 7 hours ago

Montana has done something that many states and the United States Congress have debated but failed to do: it has just enacted the first attempt to close the dreaded, invasive, unconstitutional, but easily fixed “data broker loophole.” This is a very good step in the right direction because right now, across the country, law enforcement routinely purchases information on individuals it would otherwise need a warrant to obtain.

What does that mean? In every state other than Montana, if police want to know where you have been, rather than presenting evidence and sending a warrant signed by a judge to a company like Verizon or Google to get your geolocation data for a particular set of time, they only need to buy that same data from data brokers. In other words, all the location data apps on your phone collect —sometimes recording your exact location every few minutes—is just sitting for sale on the open market. And police routinely take that as an opportunity to skirt your Fourth Amendment rights.

Now, with SB 282, Montana has become the first state to close the data broker loophole. This means the government may not use money to get access to information about electronic communications (presumably metadata), the contents of electronic communications, contents of communications sent by a tracking devices, digital information on electronic funds transfers, pseudonymous information, or “sensitive data”, which is defined in Montana as information about a person’s private life, personal associations, religious affiliation, health status, citizen status, biometric data, and precise geolocation. This does not mean information is now fully off limits to police. There are other ways for law enforcement in Montana to gain access to sensitive information: they can get a warrant signed by a judge, they can get consent of the owner to search a digital device, they can get an “investigative subpoena” which unfortunately requires far less justification than an actual warrant.

Despite the state’s insistence on honoring lower-threshold subpoena usage, SB 282 is not the first time Montana has been ahead of the curve when it comes to passing privacy-protecting legislation. For the better part of a decade, the Big Sky State has seriously limited the use of face recognition, passed consumer privacy protections, added an amendment to their constitution recognizing digital data as something protected from unwarranted searches and seizures, and passed a landmark law protecting against the disclosure or collection of genetic information and DNA. 

SB 282 is similar in approach to  H.R.4639, a federal bill the EFF has endorsed, introduced by Senator Ron Wyden, called the Fourth Amendment is Not for Sale Act. H.R.4639 passed through the House in April 2024 but has not been taken up by the Senate. 

Absent the United States Congress being able to pass important privacy protections into law, states, cities, and towns have taken it upon themselves to pass legislation their residents sorely need in order to protect their civil liberties. Montana, with a population of just over one million people, is showing other states how it’s done. EFF applauds Montana for being the first state to close the data broker loophole and show the country that the Fourth Amendment is not for sale. 

Matthew Guariglia

【フォトアングル番外編】「日本軍の毒ガス展」を見た=5月5日、かながわ県民センター 、伊東良平撮影

5 days 14 hours ago
 今年は戦後80年で化学兵器禁止条約批准から30年にあたる。それを記念して5月2日から6日まで横浜市のかながわ県民センターで「日本軍の毒ガス展」が開催された。 戦時中に日本陸軍は広島県大久野島で海軍は神奈川県寒川で毒ガス製造を行った。今回の展示では毒ガス製造に至る道筋や中国各地の作戦で行った毒ガス戦の具体的な事例をパネル展示して紹介した。会場には旧日本軍のガスマスクも展示されていた=写真=。 また日本軍は敗戦時に毒ガスを中国国内に遺棄したために、戦後に工事現場などで掘り出され..
JCJ