An excellent and important read to understand where we are as a country on this subject, and where we could/should be. Big as California is, they can’t get everything right.
In the big picture, successes and failures combined, California tries harder than most, if not all, of the other states in this country, to make their general population’s health and welfare a priority.
The rest of the country could follow that model to the benefit of us all. It needn’t take so long for Federal officials to figure things out.
Why Is America So Far Behind Europe on Digital Privacy?
Legislators should seize the moment to pass meaningful protections for the digital age.
In the past year, Congress has been happy to drag tech C.E.O.s into hearings and question them about how they vacuum up and exploit personal information about their users. But so far those hearings haven’t amounted to much more than talk. Lawmakers have yet to do their job and rewrite the law to ensure that such abuses don’t continue.
Americans have been far too vulnerable for far too long when they venture online. Companies are free today to monitor Americans’ behavior and collect information about them from across the web and the real world to do everything from sell them cars to influence their votes to set their life insurance rates — all usually without users’ knowledge of the collection and manipulation taking place behind the scenes. It’s taken more than a decade of shocking revelations — of data breaches and other privacy abuses — to get to this moment, when there finally seems to be enough momentum to pass a federal law.
Congress is considering several pieces of legislation that would strengthen Americans’ privacy rights, and alongside them, a few bills that would make it easier for tech companies to strip away what few privacy rights we now enjoy.
American lawmakers are late to the party. Europe has already set what amounts to a global privacy standard with its General Data Protection Regulation, which went into effect in 2018. G.D.P.R. establishes several privacy rights that do not exist in the United States — including a requirement for companies to inform users about their data practices and receive explicit permission before collecting any personal information. Although Americans cannot legally avail themselves of specific rights under G.D.P.R., the fact that the biggest global tech companies are complying everywhere with the new European rules means that the technocrats in Brussels are doing more for Americans’ digital privacy rights than their own Congress.
The toughest privacy law in the United States today, is the California Consumer Privacy Act, which is set to go into effect on Jan. 1, 2020. Just like G.D.P.R., it requires companies to take adequate security measures to protect data and also offers consumers the right to request access to the data that has been collected about them. Under the California law, consumers not only have a right to know whether their data is being sold or handed off to third parties, they also have a right to block that sale. And the opt-out can’t be a false choice — Facebook and Google would not be able to refuse service just because a user didn’t want their data sold.
While the California Legislature is still working out the precise details of the law and its implementation, other states — including New York — are hard at work on their own privacy legislation. The prospect of a patchwork of state-level rules explains why tech companies are suddenly eager for Washington to step in to set a national standard.
If a weak federal privacy law pre-empts state law, it would roll back the protections that Californians are supposed to get — and it would make it impossible for other states to set the bar even higher. That’s exactly what’s going on with privacy bills introduced by Senator Marco Rubio (the American Data Dissemination Act) and Senator Marsha Blackburn (the Balancing the Rights of Web Surfers Equally and Responsibly Act). Both offer weak privacy protections bundled with federal pre-emption. If passed, they would gut the California law. In the House, Representative Suzan DelBene’s Information Transparency and Personal Data Control Act also pre-empts state law, while offering a respectable amount of privacy protection, like a requirement for companies to secure opt-in consent before collecting user data. Still, even that bill lacks some rights that the California law provides.
The Senate bills that take privacy seriously do not contain pre-emption clauses. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto’s DATA Privacy Act, for instance, bears similarities to the California law and to the G.D.P.R., as does Senator Ed Markey’s significantly more ambitious Privacy Bill of Rights Act. Although Ms. Cortez Masto’s bill does not create a private right of action — that is, the ability for consumers to sue tech companies for privacy violations — Mr. Markey’s does, and invalidates arbitration clauses that could otherwise shield companies from individual lawsuits. Consumer lawsuits are a hot-button issue — in the California law, the private right of action exists only in a limited form thanks in part to corporate lobbying. Most interestingly, Mr. Markey’s bill requires the creation of a public list of data brokers in the United States — third party companies who buy and sell your data.
Not all bills on the table take an omnibus approach. Some appear to be highly specific swipes at Facebook. For example, a social media privacy bill introduced by Senators Amy Klobuchar and John Kennedy does not add very much to consumer privacy, but each of its provisions — like one that forbids a change to a product that “overrides the privacy preferences of a user” — seems to be a reference to something Facebook has done in the past. Senators Mark Warner and Deb Fischer have introduced a bill circumscribing experimentation on users without their consent. It might seem shocking that any company would do such a thing, but, in fact, Facebook tinkered with its News Feed in 2014 to test whether it could alter its users’ emotions. (The bill also bars designing sites targeted at children under the age of 13 “with the purpose or substantial effect of cultivating compulsive usage, including video auto-play functions initiated without the consent of a user” — a provision aimed at YouTube and its effect on children.)
Where the Warner/Fischer bill looks to alleviate the harmful effects of data collection on consumers, Senator Josh Hawley’s Do Not Track Act seeks to stop the problem much closer to the source, by creating a Do Not Track system administered by the Federal Trade Commission. Commercial websites would be required by law not to harvest unnecessary data from consumers who have Do Not Track turned on.
A similar idea appeared in a more comprehensive draft bill circulated last year by Senator Ron Wyden, but Mr. Wyden has yet to introduce that bill this session. Instead, like Mr. Warner, he seems to have turned his attention to downstream effects — for the time being, at least. This year, he is sponsoring a bill for algorithmic accountability, requiring the largest tech companies to test their artificial intelligence systems for biases, such as racial discrimination, and to fix those biases that are found.
A grand bargain privacy bill is said to be in the works, with a handful of lawmakers from both parties haggling privately over the details. Forward-thinking legislation — and the public hearings that would inform its passage — are urgently needed. Americans deserve a robust discussion of what privacy rights they are entitled to and strong privacy laws to protect them.
Congress’s earliest attempts to regulate computing in the 1980s and 1990s were embarrassing. The Congressional Record shows that the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984, for instance, was prompted by a fantastical Hollywood film about a boy hacker. The Communications Decency Act of 1996 — many sections of which were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the following year — had its origins in a moral panic about internet pornography touched off by questionable research. All this lent support to the received wisdom that the tech industry is best left to its own devices without the interference of a clueless legislature. More recent attempts, like the abortive Stop Online Piracy Act, an overbroad piece of copyright enforcement legislation that was killed in 2012 after furious backlash from internet users, have not instilled much confidence in Capitol Hill’s understanding of technology. But encouragingly, many of the privacy bills introduced this session show a sophisticated understanding of the market for personal information, the nation’s woefully inadequate cybersecurity and the many dangers posed by a sector of the economy that has proved itself incapable of self-regulation. Legislators have stepped up their game.
A single bill is of course not the end of government’s responsibilities to its citizens. Any regulation must evolve alongside technology to safeguard fundamental freedoms. But a strong law would be a welcome start. The California privacy law will go into effect in less than seven months. Congress should seize the moment and the public momentum to enshrine digital privacy rights into federal law.
Overuse of the medicines is not just a problem in rich countries. Throughout the developing world antibiotics are dispensed with no prescription required.
Try your luck at writing a caption for this photograph. Better yet, try an analysis of it.
The story headline is bad. The story is bad. On a smaller scale though, I am struck by the photograph of the man on the cell phone. He’s smiling as we walks across mountains of garbage where (he, and his?) people live, raise children, and go about daily living.
In this staggering story, Kenya is referred to as an emerg-ing economy. A develop-ing country. I’ve added the hyphens because in my eyes, as I have read and witnessed this story play out for decades, it is my conclusion, that too many countries in Africa have not emerged from anything. Media and scholars try to be polite and avoid confrontation by using the “ing” after the country’s name’s, because to label them as un-developed, is a smear. But, I don’t see any other way to put it. It is a smear. It is worse. It is atrocious to witness these realities in the modern age of developed economies all around the planet. Its not just Africa. Its in Asia, South America, and to a lesser extent, small pockets in our own country. But nothing compares with this. What goes on here is astounding, and its been going on as long as I have been alive. There’s no emerging. There’s no developing. Any development or emerging that’s going on is on such a small incremental basis, that its no match to the magnitude of the scourge.
Africa is a complex quagmire of dueling, feuding, conflicted, often rudderless countries, who move in and out of exploitative control of its peoples from one masquerading despot to another. I am not worthy to shine a true scholar’s shoes on this subject, but I do know what I see, or don’t see. I do see serious health consequences bordering on the continent of a nationwide crisis. I don’t see sustained action of several African countries united to work together. Globally, its the same story. Since decolonization, Africa has not been able to rise out of its troubled history of slavery and European exploitation. Yet, they affect us when we stop and take notice when an article like this one lands in front of our eyes. >MB
The above is an article from last October connected to a newer article below this post..
I start with this one because it describes the basic problem: Electric scooters in cities.
After reading several related articles all pretty much focused on recurring themes of injuries, I found myself coming to a fundamental cause of the problem, regardless of its being mentioned in the articles. Government paralysis.
Taken further, it’s about the failure of certain blocs of people to agree on a set of actions to address and correct a serious problem.
We can read articles like this and many others over and over blaming this person or that peeson because we think they’re on the wrong side, but some problems or challenges are just too complicated to reveal an obvious answer. This case about electric scooters in cities (overwhelming?) is one of those problems.
I may personally disagree with the complexity of tackling this situation, but I see obvious issues that should’ve been anticipated the moment one single electric scooter was permitted in one city. Let alone, several now, and growing.
We can not have motorized anything on sidewalks where pedestrians walk. Period. End of story.
Laws have to be in place, and enforced to ticket offenders who break these laws. Period. End of story.
Companies who rent these things should not allow renters to just drop them all over the place with no centralized hub network picking up after them.
Cities should limit the number of scooters it allows on its streets. There’s no limit now. That’s insane.
Special lIcenses should be required to operate these things, and operate the companies. They are not toys. They are not bikes. They are a motorized forms of transportation equipment capable of causing significant injury to its riders, pedestrians, and other vehicle operators.
This and all the other “complicated” problems around us in life need a compromised approach among interests or opinions. But what we need more than any of these things first is swift action and forward movement. That doesn’t happen in cities in this country. That has to change.
Another buzzkill reminder about modern life in a society with a government that seemingly doesn’t care enough to protect its people. Corporations that think nothing about its customers privacy as long as a dollar can be made selling it?
As much as I think the causes are clear, i.e, weak, indecisive, or, corrupt government, that doesn’t pass, nor enforce the laws, I do believe, we as citizens have a responsibility to at least stay as informed as possible, to be equipped to manage our privacy or data with some degree of effort. This is a responsibility with “us,” as users of technology, and seekers of knowledge.
I read a lot of articles such as these. Not just because I’m interested in technology and modern communication, but, because it is part of everyday life. I find that important to recognize and point out. Not everyone else does. Why not?
There is a meaty argument about literacy and educational levels having a direct impact on why, and how, so much apathy and passiveness pervades the masses in this country. Not just about politics, for instance (longstanding), but, modern issues such as this one. Virtually sanctioned invasion of our private lives by big business, or anyone else they sell it off to.
I’m not trying to veer to far afield on this, but, I believe that passiveness, apathy, and cynicism are the triumvirate at the core of what we have wrought on ourselves with technology today. It deserves a whole other essay to discuss.
I know it sounds bad, but, I believe there’s still enough people who are not handicapped by this paralysis to fight back, to make a difference. So why don’t we? Don’t we care…enough? Don’t we believe it…matters? Do we just move on, and conclude that these sorts of things are hopeless struggles against big business and corrupt governments?
It’s such an easy argument. It’s so easy to accept. But its a mistake.
Cynicism is not the foe of big business and bad government. It’s the friend of both. Cynicism does not inhibit and curtail more of the same behavior. It stimulates and grows more of it, because it breeds passivity. This is going to be a big battle, if it ever does come from the “people”. The real war from here on is not about brother against brother. That’s a mere distraction, a diversion to cultural coffee table feuds. The real war is right here in this article, multiplied by a hundred more that are written and acted out every day. Big money, big business, big tech, and a bought and paid for government. At some point, we all have to ask ourselves the famous question. Are we part of the solution, or part of the problem.
Wireless companies sell your location data. Federal regulators should stop them.
By Geoffrey Starks Mr. Starks is a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
April 2, 2019
When you signed up for cellphone service, I bet you didn’t expect that your exact location could be sold to anyone for a few hundred dollars. The truth is, your wireless carrier tracks you everywhere you go, whether you like it or not. When used appropriately, this tracking shouldn’t be a problem: location information allows emergency services to find you when you need them most.
But wireless carriers have been selling our data in ways that allows it to be resold for potentially dangerous purposes. For instance, stalkers and abusive domestic partners have used location data to track, threaten and attack victims. This industrywide practice facilitates “pay to track” schemes that appear to violate the law and Federal Communications Commission rules.
Companies are collecting and profiting from our private data in hidden ways that leave us vulnerable. As you carry your phone, your wireless carrier records its location so calls and texts can reach you. And you can’t opt out of sharing location data with your carrier, as you can with a mobile application. Your carrier needs this data to deliver service. But, according to recent news reports, this real-time phone location data has long been available to entities beyond your wireless carrier, for a price. In one alarming example, reported by Vice, a bounty hunter was able to pay to track a user’s location on a map accurate to within a few feet. In another case, a sheriff in Missouri used location data provided by carriers to inappropriately track a judge.
In other words, an ability that seems to come right out of a spy movie is now apparently available to just about anybody with your phone number and some cash. The pay-to-track industry has grown in the shadows, outside of the public eye and away from the watch of regulators.
Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, first raised the alarm last year, sending a letter to the F.C.C. on May 8 demanding an investigation into abuses by the pay-to-track industry. The Times reported on the issue the same week. Senator Wyden also demanded answers from the major wireless carriers. After that, the top wireless companies said that bounty hunters and others would no longer have access to their customers’ locations.
But months later the reports continue. Other recent articles suggest that highly accurate GPS location information from our phones — which, according to F.C.C. rules, should be used to send help to 911 callers — is still available on a location-data black market. Since then, wireless companies have said they’ll stop selling our location information completely — eventually.
The misuse of this data is downright dangerous. The harms fall disproportionately upon people of color. According to the Pew Research Center, people of color rely more heavily on smartphones for internet access, so they create more of this data, which makes them more vulnerable to tracking. Researchers also know that location data can be used to target them with misinformation or voter suppression tactics. It can also lead to assumptions about a person’s race or income level, assumptions that can feed into discriminatory automated decision making.
What is the government doing to protect us? Congress passed laws years ago protecting this kind of information and entrusted the F.C.C. with the responsibility of enforcing them.
It is unquestionably the F.C.C.’s job to protect consumers and address risks to public safety. Our location information isn’t supposed to be used without our knowledge and consent and no chain of handoffs or contracts can eliminate the wireless company’s obligations. This is particularly true for the misuse and disclosure of GPS-based 911 location data — which is squarely against F.C.C. rules.
The F.C.C. says it is investigating. But nearly a year after the news first broke, the commission has yet to issue an enforcement action or fine those responsible. This passage of time is significant, as the agency usually has only one year to bring action to hold any wrongdoers accountable before the statute of limitations runs out. Some may argue that the F.C.C.’s authority to take action against wireless carriers for this activity has gotten weaker in recent years, with the repeal of consumer-focused privacy and net neutrality rules during the current administration. But I believe that the commission still has ample authority to address these egregious pay-to-track practices.
Federal action is long overdue. As a Democratic commissioner at the Republican-led agency, I can call for action, but the chairman sets the agenda, including deciding whether and how quickly to respond to pay-to-track schemes. The agency’s inaction despite these increasingly troubling reports speaks volumes and leaves our duty to the public unfulfilled. The F.C.C. must use its authority to protect consumers and promote public safety, and act swiftly and decisively to stop illegal and dangerous pay-to-track practices once and for all.
“Adolescents don’t think they will get addicted to nicotine, but when they do want to stop, they find it’s very difficult,” says Yale neuroscientist Marina Picciotto, PhD. Recent and past studies show that nicotine can cause physical changes in the teenage brain. – Credit: Getty Image
Yet another “Duh” piece of news that should’ve, could’ve, been addressed properly, the moment big tobacco and vape manufacturers embraced plunged in to the market, and played down its dangers.
Government regulators failed, and are still failing, to protect the public, and especially young people, from the absurdly obvious dangers of nicotine addiction. Corporate lobbyists, from tobacco, and the newly minted “Big Vape,” combined with ignorance, gullibility, and denial, by the users, who think there’s no harm enough to regulate, as they cite industry funded research, are the usual causes. Furthermore, the clueless argument about e-cigarettes helping conventional smokers actually quit tobacco, makes even less sense than giving Methadone to junkies for the last half century. Here’s a great piece on that: Methadone: The Good, Bad, and the Ugly.
As per usual, the U.S. FDA has dragged at a snail’s pace to catch up with the reality, despite warnings by the American Academy of Pediatricians, the American Lung Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and numerous qualified studies. While the FDA will be forced to face this issue, the question remains will it be enough, or will it be more of the usual PR half steps like banning only a segment of its sales, and having schools put signs in its bathrooms. The FDA needs to step up and do its job.
For a good background on how we got here, check out the link from The Verge below from 11/16/17, The three links below it are more recent news.
I don’t wonder too much why this is the case. The U.S is famous for getting tied up by corporate lobbyists, stifling bureaucracy, and a wholly inefficient, meek FDA. Further insult to public health is the plain greed of sellouts to corporations rich enough to pay for whatever they want.
This small list is a trifle of the much larger list of banned foods, chemical, and agri products that are banned, not only in Europe, but here in our own California, stateside.
Want to know what’s likely safe for public health, and what’s likely not? Don’t look at our federal regulations. Look at Europe, and then look at California.
The European Union prohibits many food additives and various drugs that are widely used in American foods.
By Roni Caryn Rabin, NYTimes
Q. What foods are banned in Europe that are not banned in the United States, and what are the implications of eating those foods?
A. The European Union prohibits or severely restricts many food additives that have been linked to cancer that are still used in American-made bread, cookies, soft drinks and other processed foods. Europe also bars the use of several drugs that are used in farm animals in the United States, and many European countries limit the cultivation and import of genetically modified foods.
“In some cases, food-processing companies will reformulate a food product for sale in Europe” but continue to sell the product with the additives in the United States, said Lisa Y. Lefferts, senior scientist at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a food safety advocacy organization.
A 1958 amendment to the Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act prohibits the Food and Drug Administration from approving food additives that are linked to cancer, but an agency spokeswoman said that many substances that were in use before passage of the amendment, known as the Delaney amendment, are considered to have had prior approval and “therefore are not regulated as food additives.”
In October, the F.D.A. agreed to ban six artificial flavoring substances shown to cause cancer in animals, following petitions and a lawsuit filed by the Center for Science in the Public Interest and other organizations. The F.D.A. insists the six artificial flavors “do not pose a risk to public health,” but concedes that the law requires it not approve the food additives. Food companies will have at least two years to remove them from their products.
Here’s a short list of some of the food additives restricted by the European Union but allowed in American foods. Most must be listed as ingredients on the labels, though information about drugs used to increase the yield in farm animals is generally not provided.
Potassium bromate and azodicarbonamide (ADA)
These additives are commonly added to baked goods, but neither is required, and both are banned in Europe because they may cause cancer. In recent years, some American restaurant chains have responded to consumer pressure and removed them from their food.
Potassium bromate is often added to flour used in bread, rolls, cookies, buns, pastry dough, pizza dough and other items to make the dough rise higher and give it a white glow. The International Agency for Research on Cancer considers it a possible human carcinogen, and the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the F.D.A. to ban it nearly 20 years ago. The F.D.A. says potassium bromate has been in use since before the Delaney amendment on carcinogenic food additives was passed.
Azodicarbonamide, or ADA, which is used as a whitening agent in cereal flour and as a dough conditioner, breaks down during baking into chemicals that cause cancer in lab animals. It is used by many chain restaurants that serve sandwiches and buns. The Center for Science in the Public Interest has urged the F.D.A. to bar its use. The F.D.A. says it is safe in limited amounts.
BHA and BHT
The flavor enhancers and preservatives BHA and BHT are subject to severe restrictions in Europe but are widely used in American food products. While evidence on BHT is mixed, BHA is listed in a United States government report on carcinogens as “reasonably anticipated” to be a human carcinogen.
Brominated Vegetable Oil (BVO)
BVO is used in some citrus-flavored soft drinks like Mountain Dew and in some sports drinks to prevent separation of ingredients, but it is banned in Europe. It contains bromine, the element found in brominated flame retardants, and studies suggest it can build up in the body and can potentially lead to memory loss and skin and nerve problems. An F.D.A. spokeswoman said it is safe in limited amounts, and that the agency would take action “should new safety studies become available that raise questions about the safety of BVO.”
Yellow food dyes No. 5 and No. 6, and Red Dye No. 40
These dyes can be used in foods sold in Europe, but the products must carry a warning saying the coloring agents “may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children.” No such warning is required in the United States, though the Center for Science in the Public Interest petitioned the F.D.A. in 2008 to ban the dyes. Consumers can try to avoid the dyes by reading lists of ingredients on labels, “but they’re used in so many things you wouldn’t even think of, not just candy and icing and cereal, but things like mustard and ketchup,” marshmallows, chocolate, and breakfast bars that appear to contain fruit, Ms. Lefferts, the food safety scientist, said.
The F.D.A.’s website says reactions to food coloring are rare, but acknowledges that yellow dye No. 5, used widely in drinks, desserts, processed vegetables and drugs, may cause itching and hives.
Farm Animal Drugs
The European Union also bans some drugs that are used on farm animals in the United States, citing health concerns. These drugs include bovine growth hormone, which the United States dairy industry uses to increase milk production. The European Union also does not allow the drug ractopamine, used in the United States to increase weight gain in pigs, cattle and turkeys before slaughter, saying that “risks to human health cannot be ruled out.” An F.D.A. spokeswoman said the drugs are safe.
and other privacy abuses — to get to this moment, when there finally seems to be enough momentum to pass a federal law.
