[HN Gopher] Mind Your Own Business Act of 2021
___________________________________________________________________
Mind Your Own Business Act of 2021
Author : impish9208
Score : 111 points
Date : 2023-01-09 15:01 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.congress.gov)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.congress.gov)
| daveaiello wrote:
| Wouldn't this cover the situation where a lawyer who worked for a
| firm who brought suit on Madison Square Garden Entertainment was
| prohibited from watching a show at Radio City Music Hall because
| she was identified by facial recognition?
|
| https://nypost.com/2022/12/21/radio-city-facial-recognition-...
| jp57 wrote:
| This was a bill in the last (117th) congress, which is now over.
| Presumably it wasn't passed, since the only action under
| "Actions" is "Introduced in Senate" on 4/29/2021.
|
| Is this a thing still? Is someone trying to reintroduce it in the
| new congress?
|
| ps -- FYI unpassed bills in the US Congress die at the end of
| each Congress and must be reintroduced and go through the entire
| passage process anew to become law in a subsequent congress.
| codazoda wrote:
| I noticed, on another bill, that congress.gov was slow in
| updating a bill. There was more up-to-date information on
| Twitter.
|
| Edit: Unfortunately, I can't find my old comment on the thread
| that shows which bill and the specific tweet that was better
| than the official site.
| jp57 wrote:
| Maybe, but the 117th Congress is over. If this is
| reintroduced it would be a new bill with a new number.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| Cynically, we also need to ask if this is merely a feel good
| bill that was introduced knowing full-well the Senate was never
| going to pass it, much less deliberate on it.
| snowwrestler wrote:
| Most bills are introduced to Congress with little expectation
| they will pass.
|
| The "cosponsors" tab is illuminating. Bills on track for
| actual consideration by a committee (the first real step)
| will typically have several to many cosponsors. Bills that
| aren't--like this one--typically have few to zero.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Most bills are introduced to Congress with little
| expectation they will pass_
|
| This is in part a trial balloon. If a draft is floated and
| canned, and nobody hears either way about it, that says
| something. If a vocal minority flips out, on the other
| hand, that makes it a priority: you've found new group to
| engage.
| whatshisface wrote:
| I think every bill that doesn't get passed is like that,
| because most of the deliberation goes on in committees. If
| you look at the history of how the constitution came to exist
| you'd find out that it has worked like that since before
| Congress in its present form existed.
|
| I wouldn't be cynical about it though, because advertising a
| bill to an audience of legislators (and to the public through
| things like posting a link to it on HN) puts the ideas in
| people's heads and has an unquantifiable effect on making it
| happen in the future.
| [deleted]
| PopAlongKid wrote:
| >the Senate was never going to pass it, much less deliberate
| on it.
|
| Deliberation is the easier first step, actually passing it is
| harder and comes later. I think the correct use of the idiom
| here would be "the Senate was never going to deliberate on
| it, much less pass it".
| [deleted]
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| Based on the summary: The bottom line sounds
| interesting/valuable, to increase penalties and make it clear
| noneconomic impacts are important for things like privacy
| violations. The rest of the summary sounds like it's largely
| bull. Assessments and periodic reporting don't do much, anyone
| can spin their data the right way if they want to.
| abeppu wrote:
| While I would love for something like this to move forward, I
| think the focus in this bill takes a weird turn. E.g. the
| definition for "High-Risk Information System" includes as one its
| 4 criteria:
|
| > involves the personal information of a significant number of
| consumers regarding race, color, national origin, political
| opinions, religion, trade union membership, genetic data,
| biometric data, health, gender, gender identity, sexuality,
| sexual orientation, criminal convictions, or arrests;
|
| Systems that allow for discrimination against protected classes
| are certainly high risk, but I think most of us are more
| concerned by the identify theft risk online, and more likely to
| be discriminated against in person.
|
| But the bill does _not_ anywhere mention addresses, social
| security numbers, banking information, etc. Maybe those things
| would reasonably be included under one of the other criteria:
|
| > taking into account the novelty of the technology used and the
| nature, scope, context, and purpose of the information system,
| poses a significant risk to the privacy or security of personal
| information of consumers;
|
| Separately they define Personal Information as:
|
| > The term "personal information" means any information,
| regardless of how the information is collected, inferred, or
| obtained that is reasonably linkable to a specific consumer or
| consumer device.
|
| That seems like a reasonable definition, but I think an
| "including but not limited to" list would have been helpful.
| bckygldstn wrote:
| > most of us are more concerned by the identify theft
|
| To give a single datapoint, I am much more concerned about
| automated discrimination than identity theft. (I do agree with
| you though that the bill ought to cover more information).
|
| > addresses
|
| Until recently, everyone's address were printed in a big book
| that was sent to every household for free. I lived for years in
| a country where the government published everyone's address
| online and never experienced or heard about any issues.
|
| > banking information
|
| Many jurisdictions required banks to (eventually) make whole
| anyone impacted by theft of banking information.
|
| Don't get me wrong: I wish I had more privacy around my
| "identity/administrative" data. But we understand pretty well
| the risks involved there and have some legal mitigations in
| place.
|
| I think we're just seeing the tip of the automated
| discrimination iceberg. This data props up almost all of the
| marketing industry these days, and is spreading faster than
| laws can be made or than people can comprehend what's
| occurring.
| marcus_holmes wrote:
| > Until recently, everyone's address were printed in a big
| book that was sent to every household for free. I lived for
| years in a country where the government published everyone's
| address online and never experienced or heard about any
| issues.
|
| Back in those days you had to turn up in person to do things
| like open a bank account, pay a cheque into your bank
| account, draw money from a bank account, etc. You probably
| used the same bank (my first bank account only allowed me to
| draw money from a specific branch, during work hours, and
| only up to a set limit each month). The bank staff probably
| knew who you were on sight.
|
| I'm not saying your address should be secret - I agree with
| you that this is probably OK. I'm saying the attack surface
| for identity theft is so much larger now that we should
| probably be more careful than we were.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| The problem is that we allow information to be a proxy for
| turning up in person. Information that is either public
| record, or very likley to be available in one of the many
| known or unknown data breaches that occur regularly.
|
| Knowing my mother's maiden name, the history of addresses
| I've lived at, any of my various ID numbers, account
| numbers, etc. should not be sufficient to prove identity.
|
| Yeah this is inconvenient for many things but the reality
| today is that all of this "identifying" information is (or
| should be) considered public. Stop accepting this, and most
| of the problems with data breaches and leaks go away.
| Turing_Machine wrote:
| > Knowing my mother's maiden name, the history of
| addresses I've lived at, any of my various ID numbers,
| account numbers, etc. should not be sufficient to prove
| identity.
|
| What should be, then?
|
| I'd like to see a compartmentalized ID that doesn't have
| all the information there in one easily human-readable
| (or scannable) form. For instance, a bar only really
| needs to know if you're of legal drinking age. They
| shouldn't be able to get your exact date of birth, your
| address, a copy of your photo, etc.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| It's not an easy answer; I'm not sure I have an answer.
| I'd say for now, a government photo ID and supporting
| paper documentation. Not foolproof, and there is a
| chicken/egg problem there, but at the same time it's much
| harder to exploit remotely, and its much harder to
| exploit at any kind of scale.
| intrasight wrote:
| Anyone else recall Russell's "And then there were none"?
|
| https://www.abelard.org/e-f-russell.php
|
| ------
|
| 'So it appears,' said the Ambassador dryly. He turned to Grayder.
| 'You've been around a lot and seen many new worlds in your time.
| What do you make of all this twaddle, if anything?'
|
| 'It's a problem in semantics,' diagnosed Grayder, who had been
| compelled by circumstances to study that subject. 'One comes
| across it on many worlds that have been long out of touch, though
| usually it hasn't developed far enough to become tough and
| unsolvable. For instance, the first fellow we met on Basileus
| said, cordially and in what he imagined to be perfect Terran,
| "Joy you unboot now!" '
|
| 'Yes? And what did that mean?'
|
| 'Come inside, put on your slippers and be happy. In other words,
| welcome. It wasn't difficult to understand, Your Excellency,
| especially when one expects that sort of thing.' Grayder cast a
| thoughtful glance at Harrison and continued, 'Here, the problem
| seems to have developed to a greater extreme. The language
| remains fluent and retains enough surface similarities to conceal
| underlying changes, but basic meanings have been altered,
| concepts discarded and new ones substituted, thought-forms re-
| angled and, of course, there is the inevitable impact of locally
| created slang.'
|
| 'Such as "myob", ' offered the Ambassador. 'Now there is a queer
| word without recognizable Earth-root. I don't like the sarcastic
| way they use it. They make it sound downright insulting.
| Obviously it has some kind of connection with these obs they keep
| throwing around. It means "my obligation" or something like that,
| but the real significance eludes me.'
|
| 'There is no connection, sir,' put in Harrison. He hesitated, saw
| that they were waiting for him to go on. 'On my way back I met
| the lady who had directed me to Baines' place. She asked whether
| I'd found him and I told her I had. We chatted a short while. I
| asked her what "myob" meant. She said it was initial-slang.' He
| stopped and fidgeted uneasily.
|
| 'Keep going,' urged the Ambassador. 'After some of the sulphurous
| comments I've heard emerging from the Blieder-room ventilation-
| shaft, I can stomach anything. What does it mean?'
|
| 'M-y-o-b,' informed Harrison, slightly embarrassed. 'Mind-your-
| own-business.'
| maerF0x0 wrote:
| I'd like to see the FTC work to stop dynamic pricing that has no
| defensible reason. I get charging more for a bottle of water at a
| concert or other sort of high demand/premium markets.
|
| But using an algorithm to increase the price of a flight due to
| my OS, previous clicks, zipcode, previous CC history (eg do I
| donate?) etc should be illegal.
|
| Things like YieldStar https://futurism.com/rental-prices-
| algorithm-yieldstar also are pretty concerning because they
| create a form of market collusion that should be illegal.
| [deleted]
| jmyeet wrote:
| Let me describe the ways bills die:
|
| 1. They don't get voted out of committee. That's the case with
| this bill.
|
| 2. All bills die at the end of each session. This bill was from
| 2021 so had it been voted out of committee it would've died
| anyway;
|
| 3. After getting out of committee it has to be tabled for a vote
| for the full body (House or Senate). In the House the Speaker
| sets the agenda. In the Senate, it needs to be brought to the
| floor but ther ehas to be a vote to end debate and vote on the
| bill. Current Senate rules require 60 (of 100) votes to end
| debate. The filibuster allows pretty much any Senator to say
| they'll filibuster and that's that (unless you can get 60 votes).
| Note: these rules aren't laid out by the Constintution or
| anything. They're all just completely made up;
|
| 4. If a bill is somehow sponsored, assigned to committee, voted
| out of committee, brought to the floor, debate is ended and the
| bill is voted on and passed then it must pass the other chamber.
| That other chamber gets to amend it however they like. A chamber
| can spike a bill by adding amendments that those who otherwise
| might vote for the bill can't politically support;
|
| 5. If the bill miraculously passes the other chamber it'll
| probably be different than the original. A conference from both
| chambers come together to resolve the differences. They'll agree
| on a bill that'll go to a straight up or down vote in both
| chambers (ie no amendments).
|
| 6. Should that happen and it passes both chambers it goes to the
| president. The president can veto it directly. Alternatively, the
| president can "pocket veto", meaning they just let it expire (in
| 10 days). Or they can sign it;
|
| 7. If it is vetoed including a pocket veto it goes back to
| Congress who can override that veto with a two-thirds vote.
| Generally this never happens because if it's obvious it will
| happen a president would rather sign it.
|
| I poin tthis out to say that a lot of times bills will get
| introduced that have no chance of ever becoming law. Years ago,
| whichever party was in the minority would always put forward
| campaign finance reform bills so they could campaign on the issue
| but they'd almost never be seen again when that same party got
| into the majority.
|
| You're going to see a lot of this in the current Congress. The
| narrowly-controlled House is going to vote on a lot of bills for
| political reasons that they know are going to die on the Senate
| floor (ie never come to a vote). And that's why people will vote
| for it: because it has no chance of becoming law.
|
| You also see this in votes. Any vote will largely be (almost)
| unanimous for, (almost) unanimous against (these rarely come to a
| vote but it applies to amendments too), narrowly for or narrowly
| against. Part of this is the propensity for voting on party lines
| but that's not all of it.
|
| If a given Senator or Congressmen is vulnerable in a coming
| election, they may get the silent nod from leadership to vote for
| or against it when it doesn't change the outcome. So instead of a
| 58-42 Senator vote, you'll see 51-49 as certain Senators will get
| political cover to "defect" but it's not really defecting at all.
|
| Introducing a bill is almost never news of consequence.
| jfengel wrote:
| This is all correct.
|
| One other thing I'd note about this bill: no cosponsors.
| Cosponsors play no formal role, but cosponsors get to take
| credit if a bill passes. No cosponsors suggests nobody wants to
| take credit.
|
| If you can get a cosponsor from the opposite party, it means
| there's at least some interest on the opposite side. And if you
| can't even get a cosponsor on your own side, it implies that
| nobody really cares.
|
| That doesn't mean it's a bad thing to do. It's a statement by
| that legislator of what they believe in. It's a stake in the
| ground -- one that somebody could use against you if many of
| your constituents don't like it.
|
| So it's not hypocritical or valueless. But it helps to know
| more of the context of the actual legislative process, which is
| a lot more than you learned on Schoolhouse Rock.
| kodyo wrote:
| The bill with a catchy name doesn't appear to apply to the
| government itself.
| tetrahedr0n wrote:
| True, it doesn't seem likely to apply to the government itself.
|
| I'm not a lawyer, but my interpretation is that it _may_ apply
| to credit bureaus and data brokers. As well, for better or
| worse, pretty directly affect FinTech.
|
| But I digress, the implications of this bill could result in
| more unknown unknowns than I realize.
| thedougd wrote:
| I hope this is broad enough to include the three major credit
| bureaus and their ilk.
| manimino wrote:
| It calls out AI / ML specifically.
|
| Guess our regression models will have to go back to being
| "statistics". Shame, it felt so much cooler to call them "Machine
| Learning".
| ausbah wrote:
| "such as", it's any automated decision making process which
| includes regression down to a nested tree of if statements
| politician wrote:
| Just thinking out loud: Do people following a checklist count
| as an automated decision making process?
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Legally? I imagine if the checklist was specific and
| precise enough, and if the people following it were
| prevented from deviating or circumventing it in any way, or
| otherwise exercise their own agency, then I think you'd
| have a chance arguing in court that this process is
| effectively automated.
| SoftwareMaven wrote:
| I doubt it. A human should be able to tell whether they
| are breaking the law or doing something that is dangerous
| and, thus, stop. If a human moved forward with something
| they should have known was dangerous or illegal, it would
| be grounds for negligence or worse.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _A human should be able to tell whether they are
| breaking the law or doing something that is dangerous
| and, thus, stop._
|
| Yes, but:
|
| - When determining whether or not a process is automated
| is legally important, it's usually because _it is fine
| (legally) if done by humans_ - it 's doing it
| automatically, at scale, that is the issues.
|
| - White-collar workers generally _don 't do_ things that
| are obviously dangerous. They're crunching numbers and
| typing data into forms, and their input is usually a
| small component of any danger materializing.
|
| The way I see it, the difference here is whether a human
| worker is able to override their checklist in cases where
| the action is neither illegal nor dangerous, but they
| realize it's obviously wrong or unfair.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| "Automation" _by definition_ involves the elimination or
| reduction of human labor, so I don 't see how.
| p0pcult wrote:
| I got the joke, even if others didn't.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2023-01-09 23:02 UTC)