Technology is about to accelerate. Because Chevron deference is over
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And although the regulatory interpretation of those laws could also be challenged in court, successfully doing so shouldn't be considered a given. Judges generally do have some sense you know, as a class they decide important matters in boring uncontroversial ways across the country every days. The controversial outcomes that make news cycles are newsworthy specifically because they're unusual.
Which is a lengthy process and relies on Congress actually being effective and free of corruption, which they aren't.
As for corruption, I suspect agencies may be more or less corrupt on an individual basis. I don't have any hard data, but I suspect they're less corrupt on average. The Supreme Court has, repeatedly, given Congress members the go-ahead to be almost as corrupt as they want, while they're harsher on executive branch agencies.
Is 23 And Me supplying you with an analysis of your genome horrendous? Giving medical advice based on that while not being an MD might be a wrong thing, but that's not what's discussed, and it is regulated differently.
Crypto currencies may be a wrong and dangerous thing (paying for stolen goods and hit jobs, etc), but KYC rules are not derived from the Chevron ruling.
Nuclear safety is indeed important, but forcing nuclear power stations to lower their radiation levels below the natural background levels of places like Denver, CO does not seem reasonable, but does seem like an undue burden.
No, but forever storing it, cross-matching it with others, and eventually leaking this data is horrendous.
If 23 And Me was just a genome analysis for preventive healthcare company you wouldn't be citing it because that's not "exciting" enough but it'd be as useful as it can be without the harmful side of collecting this biometric data at such scale.
Also, not that 23 And Me were secretive about all that, they advertised the cross-matching before you order the kit, and data leak risks is something one should automatically consider when sharing any private data with anyone at all.'
If there is any harm done, it's not in telling people how much Neanderthal DNA they have, and not even in cross-matching them when they voluntarily sign up for that.
For cross-matching no, why would they be cataloguing genealogy trees if they didn't provide that service? Or if they did for any necessary further analysis/research (like tracing some evolution of genetic defect) it could be anonymised and discarded after use.
For leaking data, I agree there would be a risk but not providing services that require the genetic data to be available at all times for 23 And Me would lessen the issue. Either simply discard the data when not necessary anymore for the healthcare assessment; or if they wanted to keep it for the convenience of the customer then it could be encrypted with some key only the customer has access to, and which if needed the customer could provide for their service request.
Voluntarily signing up for it shouldn't remove all ethical issues from 23 And Me, a common person as a customer is not an all-knowing being who is informed enough about all the potential risks of giving such data to a company. It's not reasonable to expect that every customer is well informed about that.
Another article trending here is talking about what a great power grab it is by the supreme Court, which is true in a sense, but mostly it is saying to the Congress that you actually have to do your job.
Our congresspeople are a mixture of serious people and clowns who are very good at saying outrageous things to get on television. Even the serious people cannot possibly be well-rounded enough to have the kind of expertise necessary to write perfectly detailed regulations for every possible field.
Could I come up with some regulations related to tech? Sure. But it would be a terrible idea to ask me to write financial, medical, or environmental regulations.
Like I said, Congress did their jobs. Sometimes delegating to experts is the smartest move.
It is not possible except in some simple cases to make those laws completely specify every detail and cover every case when dealing with large complex topics, so there will almost always be cases where those executing the law will need to have some gaps filled in order to carry the law.
That was true long before Chevron, true during Chevron, and is still true.
You kind of can't both say "damn those Chinese for not respecting IP and stealing my hard work" and also "I don't want regulation, I want to be able to do whatever I want". Or do you not consider IP protection laws regulation?
I also don't think most pro-business advocates will say that they want no laws or regulation of any kind. Business need the enforcement of contract laws, trademark laws and, yes, intellectual property laws to function. Most pro-business people aren't defending anarchy. The criticism regarding regulation is about excessive regulation which, more often than not, exists to benefit certain parties (established businesses, compliance equipment and service providers) over others (new and small businesses).
"US culture" simultaneously says that baseball is better than football and football is better than baseball. That's not a contradiction because it's different people saying those things.
Plus, I don't even think it's that hard to find people who dislike regulation but also dislike people copying their intellectual property (for example, every single company ever).
But to challenge regulators in federal court will still require a lot of legal resources, which means small guys will still be effectively bound by the rules but large companies will be relatively untethered. Those large players are simultaneously less likely to innovate anyway due to being large and therefore more ossified in their thinking and a tendency to protect their present products and organization structures. Therefore I think the acceleration will be far less pronounced than the OP post suggests.
You are right that it won’t be the little guys doing this, but they might be represented by very powerful organizations who take down laws professionally and are doing so for their own benefit. And with the way politics has entered everything, who knows which things will be targeted next, or what new cruelties they care to inflict.
At the same time, again due to the current political climate, it doesn’t do us any good to have all the rules thrash back and forth with each new administration. This is what we get as we get more and more polarized and laws aren’t being written with compromise. Congress and elections need serious reform.
My concern with all of this is that a handful of courts will see this as an opportunity to get trigger-happy with issuing stays on executive agencies, causing a complete deadlock with any new law.
This rule gives the power back to congress where a supermajority of senators has to pass everything instead of the regulator.
I once ran a chemical plant and we partnered with the state to reduce emissions to single-digit parts per billion levels (from parts per million). They were completely aware that this was a difficult problem to solve, expensive, and technically challenging. They worked with us to get this done in a space of a couple of years, and we quickly reached a point where we could proudly state that we made a difference to my employees and our surrounding community.
When you don't have to pay for something it is easy to ask for more, and an agency led by a partisan could easily do so. Having the ability to challenge this allows us to push back in a structured way.
And it's also a responsibility you take on in starting a company with a byproduct that (I'm assuming) is toxic.
At the time this chemical was introduced, the hazards were not known to science. Over the decades, scientists began outlining the effects of this chemical on humans and the environment.
Once industry was able to study those findings and convince ourselves that this was a real problem, we adapted our operations to mitigate those harms.
Most industries in the US work pretty hard to keep our employees and environments safe, for self preservation, if for nothing else. I breathe the same air as my employees do, after all.
Most regulatory agencies are aware that dangerous chemicals have legitimate uses. The problem statement is how to balance those uses against the known hazards. They (mostly) find a sensible balance, but sometimes, they get taken over by leaders who push it too far in one direction or another. Overturning Chevron allows adjudication to reset the balance and that should be seen as a good thing.
The idea that Congress could and pass regulations in a timely manner is a nice one. Unfortunately, Congress is almost completely dysfunctional, so there's a near-zero chance of that happening.
Many of the recent Supreme Court rulings seem to hinge on this idea that Congress can and should fulfill its role. And while that would be great, it completely ignores the reality of modern Congress. I fear we're going to suffer some extreme effects because the court is ruling based on how they think things ought to be, rather than what things are.
1: https://hbr.org/2023/02/banning-noncompetes-is-good-for-inno...
…if we’re going along with the logic this court has been working with here.
Theoretically, but in reality there's corruption and partisan gridlock and nothing gets done
Meanwhile the odds of consumers getting anything radically shrinks. Consumer privacy or transparency is much less likely to happen.
Technology probably do a better job paving people over.
Maybe if we just give them _more_ power it will all just work out. Maybe the Supreme Court will rule that the Second Amendment means that Fortune 500 companies have an inalienable right to own nuclear weapons.