Of course, I’m absolutely for this. It is way overdue. But, what’s the group behind this? Who’s pushing it?
I haven’t read through the bill and text yet, but credibility is important in this fight. Plus, this can change at anytime, so knowing who’s behind it amplifies the trust.
We need to be having these conversations yesterday. Our fundamental freedoms are under attack, and a bill like this would go a long way to protecting future generations
The bill bans making access to a service contingent on consent. This would kill Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram and basically every other ad supported service. Making subscriptions the only consumer business model would be bad imo.
I’m too cynical because at this point I can only believe this is to help billionaires and ICE hide their identities/money, or it’s to strip away all privacy (as bills are often named the opposite of their purpose).
Defining a picture of your government id not being a sufficient credential for… well anything would probably be enough to kill all these age verification laws and might get some traction legislatively if you frame it right.
It has the benefit of being literally true, whoever thought the was necessary to have a bunch of hard to forge security measures on IDs which require physical inspection probably wouldn't be okay with easily faked scans being accepted.
You delete the rest of your spam database and replace it with `fn can_send_spam(_: Email) -> bool { false }`. You delete the "can we spam you" checkbox from your checkout page and replace it with "return false".
For legitimate newsletters and similar: you delete any and all forms that allow signing up to receive emails without affirmative consent from that email address that they want to receive mail, and you offer a one-click effective-immediately "unsubscribe" to retract that consent at any time. Then, you can tell if you can send someone mail based on whether they're in your database of people who have explicitly consented to send you mail, and you don't ever send email to anyone else other than one-time consent requests and order-confirmation-style transactional mail.
The only legitimate database of emails is "these people have explicitly confirmed to us that we can email them"; any other database is radioactive waste, delete it.
1. User requests for email alice@example.com to be removed from database
2. Company removes "alice@example.com" from 'emails' table
3. Company adds 00b7d3...eff98f to 'do_not_send' table
Later on, the company buys emails from some other third-party, and Alice's email is on that list. The company can hash all the email addresses they received, and remove the emails with hashes that appear in their 'do_not_send' table.
You'd have to normalize the emails (and salt the hashes), but seems doable?
> Require Social Security Numbers to authenticate preventing fraud.
There's a ton of stuff piled into the agenda on this page but that one in particular stumped me. Is it proposing that people (who?) are required to use their SSN to authenticate (for what?) or that the SSN agency is supposed to authenticate... something before doing something?
> (i) Finance and high-risk identity proofing.—No person shall extend credit, originate a loan, open a high-risk financial account, or provide another high-risk financial service based solely on a Social Security number, static identity information, or an uploaded image or copy of a government-issued identity document. A person engaging in such activity shall use multi-factor identity verification reasonably designed to verify both record consistency and claimant control, using less intrusive reasonably reliable methods where available.
> (j) Social Security number not sufficient identity credential.—A Social Security number, taxpayer identifier, or similar identifier shall not by itself be treated as proof of identity for purposes of this Act.
So, to me at least, it sounds like they actually mean "Providers must not use SSN for authentication (including fraud)".
Haha. This will accomplish nothing, because the surveillance dragnet is built and used by the people themselves, who deliberately (ab)use the very technologies that enable this breach of privacy at scale. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
It will probably accomplish nothing for other reasons. There are secret laws in this country which violate the constitution. I don't think the average person appreciates privacy as much as they should. But saying they are complicit in the making of this mess is going way too far. There are not so many choices in tech as you think. The most private ones require high technical expertise, and involve risks other than those presented by corporate tech. For example, you may have to trust a small number of unpaid individuals (who may even be anonymous) to deliver software.
You are saying exactly, and I mean exactly, what they would want.
Dismissing an avenue of progress outright is to be defeatist or to sow defeat.
AI is going to use all this information against us. Because AI alignment can’t be better than people and corporations deploying the AI.
Lack of privacy is now a gaping security hole, being continually exploited on all our devices, across most sites on the internet.
[EDIT: And the leverage that information enables is being auctioned off to manipulators who we are exposed to continuously. This is just the beginning.]
We need to plug this security hole now, before power centralizes further and we can’t.
> Do you honestly think the lobbying from them would be more or less if this bill gained any traction?
Small communities are thwarting these companies’ datacenter buildouts. The difference is they show up. Defeating privacy in tech is easy because there is no functional opposition.
> too much money on the other side to let this gain traction
This view is unfortunately common among regular privacy advocates. That makes them politically useless.
To have a hope, this bill needs to target support outside tech, where civic laziness and nihilism are normalized. I’m not seeing any indication of that strategy here.
Of course, I’m absolutely for this. It is way overdue. But, what’s the group behind this? Who’s pushing it?
I haven’t read through the bill and text yet, but credibility is important in this fight. Plus, this can change at anytime, so knowing who’s behind it amplifies the trust.
We need to be having these conversations yesterday. Our fundamental freedoms are under attack, and a bill like this would go a long way to protecting future generations
The bill bans making access to a service contingent on consent. This would kill Gmail, Google Maps, Facebook, Instagram and basically every other ad supported service. Making subscriptions the only consumer business model would be bad imo.
How is paying for a product instead of being the product a bad thing?
I’m too cynical because at this point I can only believe this is to help billionaires and ICE hide their identities/money, or it’s to strip away all privacy (as bills are often named the opposite of their purpose).
We have to try.
Privacy advocates, UNITE!
Just leave your name and email on this contact form on github, so privacy can be solved once and for all!
(/s, but an interesting paradox for pro-privacy initiatives soliciting identifiable public support)
Defining a picture of your government id not being a sufficient credential for… well anything would probably be enough to kill all these age verification laws and might get some traction legislatively if you frame it right.
It has the benefit of being literally true, whoever thought the was necessary to have a bunch of hard to forge security measures on IDs which require physical inspection probably wouldn't be okay with easily faked scans being accepted.
>Update CAN-SPAM for one-click deletion of email addresses from databases.
Then how can I know not to send you another email if I don't have your email flagged in my database to do-not-send?
You delete the rest of your spam database and replace it with `fn can_send_spam(_: Email) -> bool { false }`. You delete the "can we spam you" checkbox from your checkout page and replace it with "return false".
For legitimate newsletters and similar: you delete any and all forms that allow signing up to receive emails without affirmative consent from that email address that they want to receive mail, and you offer a one-click effective-immediately "unsubscribe" to retract that consent at any time. Then, you can tell if you can send someone mail based on whether they're in your database of people who have explicitly consented to send you mail, and you don't ever send email to anyone else other than one-time consent requests and order-confirmation-style transactional mail.
The only legitimate database of emails is "these people have explicitly confirmed to us that we can email them"; any other database is radioactive waste, delete it.
Wouldn't a hash work great for this purpose? I.e.
1. User requests for email alice@example.com to be removed from database
2. Company removes "alice@example.com" from 'emails' table
3. Company adds 00b7d3...eff98f to 'do_not_send' table
Later on, the company buys emails from some other third-party, and Alice's email is on that list. The company can hash all the email addresses they received, and remove the emails with hashes that appear in their 'do_not_send' table.
You'd have to normalize the emails (and salt the hashes), but seems doable?
Does anyone know what this part means?
> Require Social Security Numbers to authenticate preventing fraud.
There's a ton of stuff piled into the agenda on this page but that one in particular stumped me. Is it proposing that people (who?) are required to use their SSN to authenticate (for what?) or that the SSN agency is supposed to authenticate... something before doing something?
The bill text is at https://github.com/righttoprivacyact/bill/blob/main/bill/rig...
It contains following:
> (i) Finance and high-risk identity proofing.—No person shall extend credit, originate a loan, open a high-risk financial account, or provide another high-risk financial service based solely on a Social Security number, static identity information, or an uploaded image or copy of a government-issued identity document. A person engaging in such activity shall use multi-factor identity verification reasonably designed to verify both record consistency and claimant control, using less intrusive reasonably reliable methods where available.
> (j) Social Security number not sufficient identity credential.—A Social Security number, taxpayer identifier, or similar identifier shall not by itself be treated as proof of identity for purposes of this Act.
So, to me at least, it sounds like they actually mean "Providers must not use SSN for authentication (including fraud)".
Haha. This will accomplish nothing, because the surveillance dragnet is built and used by the people themselves, who deliberately (ab)use the very technologies that enable this breach of privacy at scale. Can't have your cake and eat it too.
It will probably accomplish nothing for other reasons. There are secret laws in this country which violate the constitution. I don't think the average person appreciates privacy as much as they should. But saying they are complicit in the making of this mess is going way too far. There are not so many choices in tech as you think. The most private ones require high technical expertise, and involve risks other than those presented by corporate tech. For example, you may have to trust a small number of unpaid individuals (who may even be anonymous) to deliver software.
Bold idea but too much money on the other side to let this gain traction
You are saying exactly, and I mean exactly, what they would want.
Dismissing an avenue of progress outright is to be defeatist or to sow defeat.
AI is going to use all this information against us. Because AI alignment can’t be better than people and corporations deploying the AI.
Lack of privacy is now a gaping security hole, being continually exploited on all our devices, across most sites on the internet.
[EDIT: And the leverage that information enables is being auctioned off to manipulators who we are exposed to continuously. This is just the beginning.]
We need to plug this security hole now, before power centralizes further and we can’t.
Google, TTD, Applovin, Magnite, Roku, Freewheel, + 100 more adtech and martech companies.
Lets add Facebook, twitter, openai, claude + all the others.
then lets add Flock, Palantir.
Do you honestly think the lobbying from them would be more or less if this bill gained any traction?
Of course they are going to resist. That is the terrain.
That doesn’t change the critical need to make progress.
Surrendering power, even when apparently outgunned, is a far more insidious enemy than opposition.
Amen! And, in fact, the harder they fight, the harder our resolve.
> Do you honestly think the lobbying from them would be more or less if this bill gained any traction?
Small communities are thwarting these companies’ datacenter buildouts. The difference is they show up. Defeating privacy in tech is easy because there is no functional opposition.
> too much money on the other side to let this gain traction
This view is unfortunately common among regular privacy advocates. That makes them politically useless.
To have a hope, this bill needs to target support outside tech, where civic laziness and nihilism are normalized. I’m not seeing any indication of that strategy here.