US House Passes 10-Year Moratorium on State AI Laws
Basic Glitch @ AcidicBasicGlitch @lemm.ee Posts 134Comments 367Joined 4 mo. ago
Basic Glitch @ AcidicBasicGlitch @lemm.ee
Posts
134
Comments
367
Joined
4 mo. ago
Until then, his chair on the dais of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee had sat empty all year.
Mr. Fetterman does not enjoy participating in these hearings that he has sat through in recent weeks as he seeks to prove that he is capable of performing the job he was elected to do until 2028. In fact, at a critical moment for the country, he appears to have little interest in the day-to-day work of serving in the United States Senate.
In an interview, Mr. Fetterman, who represents 13 million people, said he felt he had been unfairly shamed into fulfilling senatorial duties, such as participating in committee work and casting procedural votes on the floor, dismissing them as a “performative” waste of time.
Ohhhh this mother....
k...,so this is the committee that determined fitness for Trump's Science Advisor, Michael Kratsios. I literally begged for them to not approve his fitness. I wrote about this here, and fun fact even have a screenshot of me @ing fetterman and others on the committee on bluesky included in the article. Little did I know he wasn't even bothering to show up bc he thinks it's "performative...?!"
Quick summary: Kratsios is a protege of Peter Theil, who actually served as Chief Technology Officer during the first Trump administration. During that time, he helped set up all of the dangerous AI shit we're now dealing with, making sure they wouldn't be restrained by any pesky regulations.
Unregulated surveillance and facial recognition tech use by ICE, the FBI, and other LEOs, you can thank Kratsios.
Access and use of private government data to train AI, you may think that's all on DOGE/Musk but that is actually something Kratsios mentioned back in 2018
Senate Dems knew how dangerous deregulated AI was, particularly facial recognition tech for profiling use. Yet, with a few exceptions, they either approved his fitness or they just didn't show up like Fetterman
I guess it's ok bc Kratsios is now agreeing maybe we should dial it back and start to regulate AI....
Lol jk, of course he's actually saying we need to somehow further deregulate it so we will have even less protection for our privacy, rights and liberty.
Thanks Dems of the committee for taking your job so seriously 👍
And OF COURSE Fetterman showed up for this one. Not because he felt like his depression was being weaponized, it's because he just weaponizes the D next to his name to help force through Republican policy
Here is an article about that May 8, 2025 hearing.
Altman, during the hearing, said that Texas had been “unbelievable” in incentivizing major AI projects. “I think that would be a good thing for other states to study,” Altman said. He predicted that the Abilene site would be the “largest AI training facility in the world.” But Altman also later cautioned against a patchwork regulatory framework for AI.
“It is very difficult to imagine us figuring out how to comply with 50 different sets of regulations,” said Altman. “One federal framework that is light touch, that we can understand, and it lets us move with the speed that this moment calls for, seems important and fine.”
Here is a quote from Kratsios about regulation in 2019
“A patchwork of regulation of technology is not beneficial for the country. We want to avoid that. Facial recognition has important roles—for example, finding lost or displaced children. There are use cases, but they need to be underpinned by values.”
🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕
It's a politico article about Trump budget cuts. Doesn't really fit a science community, not sure where else it would go
Taken from her family just before midnight and thrown into a prison for speaking out against an authoritarian POS.
Lol is this a joke? You're asking if we should RAGE? No.
My memory isn't great but I still know that there are plenty of Trump's political enemies left on the inside. That's who keeps leaking information despite threats from the administration to hook them up to a polygraph.
Ok, I think you found a loophole
I feel like somebody did that when they first came out and they created some kind of ridiculous over the top penalty for doing it.
Its a bigger risk than I'm willing to take, but I would suggest if you're going to go that route, try to get a wealthy and well connected friend to do it for you or have a good lawyer on retainer
Yeah, I am not sure but hopefully somebody has the numbers. That is usually the argument for trampling the constitution.
Hard to say how much has been actually documented bc they've been doing a lot of this stuff off record.
They potentially saved 30000 lives locking up 100 people for crimes committed by somebody else in a states they've never been to and we might not even know about it
Every time I hear that, I picture some guy stopping somebody else mid sentence when it comes on to be like "Wait, wait... you hear that? That's me!" And then blasting it at full volume while he sings along. I feel like that's had to have happened at least once or twice.
TBF it is a very catchy song
Somehow I missed that New Orleans had a secret partnership with Palantir for predictive policing starting around 2012 that was kind of revealed as a big scandal in 2018.
Allegedly this has nothing to do with that... Allegedly... Absolutely nothing.
That's what they're saying now, but apparently, an app was developed that allowed police to create a watch list of suspects, upload their picture, and use the cameras to constantly scan for the images. When they got a hit, police received a direct notification via the app
Apparently much of this wasn't documented, but for whatever reason, the police captain decided in April to end it for the time being, so now it's back to the company notifying police, but they want city council to pass an ordinance so they can go back to police being directly notified
https://wp.api.aclu.org/press-releases/208236
After the Washington Post began investigating this time around, city officials acknowledged the program and said they had “paused” it and that they “are in discussions with the city council” to change the city’s facial recognition technology law to permit this pervasive monitoring.
The ACLU is now urging the New Orleans City Council to launch a full investigation and reimpose a moratorium on facial recognition use until robust privacy protections, due process safeguards, and accountability measures are in place.
“Until now, no American police department has been willing to risk the massive public blowback from using such a brazen face recognition surveillance system,” said Nathan Freed Wessler, deputy director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By adopting this system–in secret, without safeguards, and at tremendous threat to our privacy and security–the City of New Orleans has crossed a thick red line. This is the stuff of authoritarian surveillance states, and has no place in American policing.”
Yeah there's already at least one well known case. This article mentions it https://wp.api.aclu.org/press-releases/208236
The use of facial recognition technology by Project NOLA and New Orleans police raises serious concerns regarding misidentifications and the targeting of marginalized communities. Consider Randal Reid, for example. He was wrongfully arrested based on faulty Louisiana facial recognition technology, despite never having set foot in the state. The false match cost him his freedom, his dignity, and thousands of dollars in legal fees. That misidentification happened based on a still image run through a facial recognition search in an investigation; the Project NOLA real-time surveillance system supercharges the risks.
“We cannot ignore the real possibility of this tool being weaponized against marginalized communities, especially immigrants, activists, and others whose only crime is speaking out or challenging government policies. These individuals could be added to Project NOLA's watchlist without the public’s knowledge, and with no accountability or transparency on the part of the police departments
Police use to justify stops and arrests: Alerts are sent directly to a phone app used by officers, enabling immediate stops and detentions based on unverified purported facial recognition matches.
My immediate thought was that I'm sure they would just start weaponizing them to fight back so cameras could stand their ground.
The WaPo article goes into a lot more detail: https://archive.ph/2fmW1
It seems that the cops were basically uploading images of suspects so that the cameras in the city were constantly scanning for people who were wanted (like a mug shot or an image of somebody stealing something) and then if a camera picked up a match it would send police the location of the suspect on a map.
Apparently Palantir was working with NOPD to secretly test predictive policing since 2012
The program began in 2012 as a partnership between New Orleans Police and Palantir Technologies, a data-mining firm founded with seed money from the CIA’s venture capital firm. According to interviews and documents obtained by The Verge, the initiative was essentially a predictive policing program, similar to the “heat list” in Chicago that purports to predict which people are likely drivers or victims of violence.
The partnership has been extended three times, with the third extension scheduled to expire on February 21st, 2018. The city of New Orleans and Palantir have not responded to questions about the program’s current status.
Not sure that it actually did ever expire
Or just wear a mask, saw a dude ride by me on a bike yesterday at like 11am in a skeleton zip up mask covering his whole head. Smart man.
So did they ever stop?
A few weeks ago, I realized that the person that filed a recount for the vote to continue the millage for funding for the jail was actually using an alias to file for a recount. I figured he was just some asshole that owned an str and didn't want to pay property tax, but it's some guy that's run for office in Louisiana multiple times and allegedly worked with city council to expose an Entergy astroturfing event.
The guy also ran all of his failed campaigns from the bar where Project Nola seems to have first established its cameras??
Project NOLA Executive Director Bryan LaGarde said, “We’re very thankful to Tim Blake, owner of the Three Legged Dog, for hosting the Project NOLA Crime Cameras that helped the Ricou family and the DA’s Office find justice for Russell. Over the past ten years, Project NOLA Crime Cameras on the Three Legged Dog have helped the NOPD investigate a large number of major crimes that regrettably occurred in the French Quarter, leading to a large number of arrests, which has very significantly benefited public safety.”
This is part of a bunch of very insane fuckery that has been going on.
Your comment is misleading. Everyone knew Police would use project Nola cams to look for suspects after the fact. This is saying that they were actually constantly scanning for suspects, once they got a match, it would ping an officers phone so they could then have that suspects exact location.
Yeah I have my suspicions about that and who was involved in that inside job.
The governor released an EO the day before saying ICE would be using aggressive identification policies to search for individuals which I assumed meant facial recognition technology bc I have been worried about for a while without knowing the full extent of how it was being used. I actually posted a comment about the tech and the EO in the New Orleans subreddit that morning before anyone knew they escaped.
Almost like this emergency gave the governor's state police the perfect excuse to have to partner with NOPD and start using that technology...
It's part of a very long series of crazy shit involving the New Orleans Mayor, the DA, the Sheriff the New Orleans sanctuary city policy and the Louisiana Governor
When the governor was still state AG, he began targeting New Orleans for its sanctuary city policy, which is really the result of a federal consent decree.
The city's mayor and DA have both been involved in their own political scandals, and both seem to have made a lot of concessions to allow Landry way too much authority in the city, including bringing in his own state police force, Troop Nola, last year.
The only person who hasn't backed down or tried to offer concessions is the Sheriff of the jail, Susan Hutson.
The following has all seriously happened in New Orleans over the last 3 weeks:
•Sanctuary city trial: The current Louisiana AG filed charges against Hutson to force her to lift what the state argues is a sanctuary city policy, relating to a federal decree placed on NOPD by the DOJ.
The AG, a long time friend of Governor Landry, argued that New Orleans was in violation of state law created last year.
That law was written by Blake Miguez, a different long time friend of Landry and member of his Louisiana DOGE taskforce. Miguez has also been helping the Governor restructure the Louisiana board of ethics following claims of ethics board violation, which have allowed Landry the ability to appoint the majority of the members of the ethics board directly, with less oversight.
Ultimately, the federal judge still ruled that she did not believe AG Murrill had the authority to make those claims against Hutson.
It just barely passed by 2 votes. A request for a recount was filed early the next week.
•The recount request was filed under an alias by somebody who had previously run for elected office in Louisiana, and was previously involved in revealing an astroturfing scandal against the city The recount ultimately increased the number of yes votes so the millage passed by 4 votes.
The most bizarre part that I don't know how to explain, is that the guy that revealed the astroturfing revealed it with the help of the current DA, who was a city council member at the time. He ran all of his failed campaigns from a bar where Project Nola seems to have first established its cameras??
•Thursday Governor Landry released an EO urging Louisiana law enforcement to partner with ICE
From the Office of the Governor news release Governor Jeff Landry Partners with President Donald Trump to Launch “Operation GEAUX”
•Late Thursday night/early Friday morning, 11 prisoners escape from Orleans Parish jail
•Hutson is up for re-election soon. Candidates running against her are now speaking to the press, claiming this should make her ineligible to run for re-election.
As of late yesterday, it seemed that Landry was trying to shift the blame for overcrowding in the jail and the escape to DA Jason Williams
Even though it seems pretty obvious the overcrowding was due to Troop Nola suddenly arresting a ton of people and filling the jails
Everyone knows they are potentially being monitored, this is not the same.
These were constantly scanning for faces of individuals using AI so that when they got a match, it would ping police with the exact location.
Now the Trumpian governor wants to partner with NOPD on immigration to use the cameras all over the city to constantly scan for immigrants (and probably eventually any political enemies)
It's no picture standing next to seashells that spell out a common slang term to indicate harmlessly cutting or getting rid of something.
However, in the context of it following a terrorist attack in the same state a few months earlier where a truck was used to do the same thing, and in combination with the other comments in the post, and the user's account history, it was definitely out of line. It says a lot it took that long for the mods or reddit to do anything, considering Reddit's overreaction to so many other comments and posts that are clearly non-threatening.
This still has to go to the Senate so please for the love of god if you care about your rights and privacy tell your senator to vote NO!
My city is currently in the midst of an AI facial recognition/predictive policing thanks to a secret city partnership with Palantir, dystopian nightmare
Frankly I would be happy to see my state ban facial recognition completely, but they definitely aren't going to, but please take this as a warning of what is definitely coming for you next!
We should have federal regulations and state regulations! There is absolutely no need for them to ban regulation at the state level other than the argument it will halt progress.
In reality they are invading your privacy and generating valuable data for these stupid AI data centers and they don't want you to be able to decide this sucks and I want it to stop in my state!
Not only would it ban laws for the next 10 years, it would remove existing laws. Some places already have a facial recognition ban, and this would repeal it!
It's nuts this seems to actually have some bipartisan support in the Senate, bc everyone is "so concerned" about America winning the AI race.
News flash, we probably won't win it. It was a dumb fucking idea in the first place, and yeah they put all of our eggs into the AI basket and it's probably going to tank the economy even more, but why TF should we be giving them even more control of our lives in the hopes that just maybe they can make a lot of money by further invading our privacy and doing some really evil shit with our data that will make the world an even worse place?
Here is an article about the May 8, 2025 hearing.
Here is a quote from Peter Thiel protege, Michael Kratsios regarding AI regulation in 2019
They have no values, I support a federal regulation too, but in case you haven't noticed, the people who want you to vote to remove state regulations in favor of a "light touch" federal regulation are also in charge deciding what that "light touch" federal regulation will be and if it gets enforced at all.
Most of what we attribute to Elon Musk/DOGE including using protected government data banks full of our private data to train AI, can actually be traced back to Thiel and Kratsios, as early as 2018!
I cannot believe I actually agree with Marsha Blackburn on something, but she's right! Why TF would you believe you don't need state regulations bc there is the possibility the same party that just tried to sneak in this nightmare, might enact some federal protections.
Government deregulation has been in the works for a very long time. Do not let them keep taking our protections away!