Feb 11, 2023
<p>Hey everybody, I’m Joe Miller and
here’s what’s going on in the world of tech law
& policy this week. </p>
<p> </p>
<p><br>So the White House confirmed earlier this
afternoon that it had shot down another object floating 40,000 ft.
above Alaska. No word yet on whether it’s part of
China’s balloon festival, but this one was much smaller
than the one they shot down last week. Feds are
investigating.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Americans want privacy legislation but – as
Colorado Attorney General Phill Weiser noted to the Washington Post
with quite a bit of frustration – there doesn’t
really seem to be a lot of governance coming from Congress. A new
study from the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg
School found most Americans simply do not understand how companies
use their data. I’d venture to guess that many tech
companies want to keep it that way.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>For example, eighty-two percent of those Americans
surveyed reported that they had no idea that the Health Insurance
Privacy and Portability Act (HIPPA). I didn’t even know
that, if I’m being honest with you.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>And TSA is collecting facial data at more and more
airports – with the Washington Post reporting that some
16 major U.S. airports collect facial recognition
data. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>At Tuesday’s State of the Union, President Biden
ardently called for action from Congress to do more to protect kids
online, as the current minimum age to advertise to kids is
currently just 13. And the U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said
that 13 is too young. Republican Senator Josh Hawley is calling for
16 to become the minimum age for kids to be allowed to join social
media networks. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>Meanwhile, over at Twitter, Elon Musk says cleaning up the
platform of child abuse content is his top priority. But plenty of
that material is still showing up, according to a New York Times
exposé. This coincides with these repulsive individuals
who were once banned, now being reinstated. And the Center for
Digital Hate released a report saying these accounts spreading vile
hate speech make millions for the company. And major
brands’ advertisements are still showing up next to hate
speech – with Fiverr, NFL, Amazon, & Apple TV
among them. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>The University of Exeter reports an Eight-fold increase of
misogynistic, dehumanizing content posted by incels on Twitter.
Incels, as you may recall, are men who are “involuntarily
celibate” and are furious at women for not genuflecting
before them. Ofcom, the communications oversight agency in the UK
is calling for amending the online safety bill to further protect
women by putting a code of practice in place. This is happening as
women struggle with defending themselves against all sorts of
monsters on the internet creating deepfake porn using their
likenesses. And a new Pew report on online dating found that some
38% of online daters, mostly women, reported receiving unwanted,
sexually explicit material. </p>
<p>And the New York Times reports that a District Court in
Louisiana is now considering whether the government should have any
discretion at all when it comes to putting any measures in place to
combat disinformation. It is Republicans who primarily oppose any
government intervention to combat harmful information, even though
former Twitter employees reported that that company kept
Republicans’ requests to remove progressive speech,
including requests from former President Trump, whom Meta
reinstated to Facebook and Instagram last
week. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>In Turkey, victims of the horrifying earthquake that
killed10s of thousands of people weren’t able to get on
Twitter at all to ask for help. That’s because the
Turkish government has a long history of blocking access to
Twitter.</p>
<p> </p>
<p><br>So that’s what’s going on!
It is astonishing how much has changed in only the last
few weeks. </p>
<p> </p>
<p>To go deeper, you can find links to all of these stories
in the show notes. Stay safe, stay informed, and have a great week.
Ciao.</p>