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Comment by loteck | Hacker News Reader

Despite the day to day situation in congress, it seems inevitable that in the short to mid term, the US will have to stand up new privacy legislation in order to maintain participation in the digital economy.

The question will be how they define privacy, and who will write the law.

If activism doesn't interest you and you're looking for a reasonable shortcut, follow the work/proposals of Sen. Ron Wyden. He employs actual expert technologists who advise him on policy, and their expertise frequently shows up in the legislation he proposes.

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> The question will be how they define privacy, and who will write the law.

Just like in Germany. The rich will define the legislation and will write the law. Privacy means "If i am rich you have no right to look at my personal belongings". "If you are poor we need your credit score and some account ballance at least".

Fully half of Congress these last few decades has been violently opposed to basic privacy rights (with some of their supporters literally violent). I'm not sure we can expect any progress on this front until we see the congressional makeup shift substantially.

I'm curious how you expect the random people on HN to affect change by "following" someone's proposals sans activism?

It seems like a "reasonable shortcut" around activism would involve... actually accomplishing things? Otherwise I can just say staying at home is a "reasonable shortcut" to getting to work. It's certainly much shorter, but it doesn't really accomplish the task at hand, no?

I'm suggesting that folks not interested in following the developing activism around privacy instead follow Wyden's work on this as their primary source of information, so that they can be aware of the best work going on and have a higher signal-to-noise ratio on this topic.

When it comes time to actually accomplish things, there is no shortcut around action.

Fair enough - I misinterpreted the meaning behind your comment.

Wyden is the single best tech-related legislator in Congress, in my opinion. A great all around senator as well.

> In May 2017, Wyden co-sponsored the Israel Anti-Boycott Act, Senate Bill 720, which made it a federal crime, punishable by a maximum sentence of 20 years imprisonment,[55] for Americans to encourage or participate in boycotts against Israel and Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories if protesting actions by the Israeli government. The bill would make it legal for U.S. states to refuse to do business with contractors that engage in boycotts against Israel.[56]

It amazes me how otherwise sensible legislators look like goons when it's AIPAC calling, approving bills that make free speech a crime.

While I am not in favor of the bill, his description of it is far different from the one presumably on his Wikipedia page.

He said it adds to an existing law, one that has never sent a person to prison, that forbids people from following a boycott organized by a foreign state. You'd be free to form your own boycott.

Again, not something I support. But on the "bullshit Representatives support" scale, not a huge deal

https://pamplinmedia.com/pt/9-news/368374-250754-wyden-defen...

> The bill would make it legal for U.S. states to refuse to do business with contractors that engage in boycotts against Israel.

I fail to see the problem in the government not indirectly funding entities supporting agitation against a close military and political ally of the US.

I do not think the government should police my views on Israel just so I can be allowed to be a teacher or a municipal worker. I shouldn't be required to sign a pledge supporting Israel.

Doing that is a problem. Contractors are a lot more broad than you think.

> Contractors are a lot more broad than you think.

If you are a teacher or municipal worker, you should not be a contractor in the first place, but an actual employee of the government.

https://theintercept.com/2018/12/17/israel-texas-anti-bds-la...

He says the right things sometimes but is often ineffective - why didn't he call out Clapper when he was lying to him in congress? It is up to the legislature to control the government.

I believe either he wasn't sure he was lying, or announcing that he was lying would have broken the Official Secrets Act.

> maintain participation in the digital economy.

I think your logic is reverse. There is an asymmetrical advantage for companies like Google and Facebook.

I think you've expressed a US-centric perspective, where the US leads the world and the world reacts.

The rest of the world is advancing privacy legislation and making it difficult to do business in jurisdictions that don't enforce similar privacy concepts. This will increasingly become untenable for US businesses.

I think he is pointing out the lack of legislation in the US is a positive for these US based multinationals : they extract valueable info from it, which they can use in other markets too.

An upcoming EU startup which might want to target these multinationals markets is at a disadvantage because they can't.

We already have a de-facto national privacy law. It's the CPRA and it takes effect 1 Jan 2023.

Am I missing something? This is a California law, no?

Who is this "we" you speak of? Defacto-laws degrade my concept of structure in society.

It is a California regulation, yes. I suspect that OP is making reference to the fact that as California goes, often so goes the national policy. Or, at least that's how it's played out with regularity in the past.

CA is 14.6 of US GDP and 12% of the population. It's hard to have a large business in the US that doesn't have $25m revenue or handle the information of 100k CA residents, so there is very broad applicability.

So right: "This is now the classic Big Tech move: deploy money and armies of lobbyists to fight meaningful reforms in the shadows but claim to support them publicly."

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