Regulation
Kamala Harris said Big Tech was her ‘family,’ but wants more regulation of AI, antitrust and privacy
U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris is not yet the Democratic nominee for president this year, but it looks like she will be, following President Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw and the outpouring of support for Harris in recent days.
Harris has extensive ties to the tech industry, which is to be expected for someone who has served as a San Francisco prosecutor and as a California attorney general and senator. She attended the wedding of early Facebook executive Sean Parker and is close to the likes of LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, billionaire Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist John Doerr. “We’re family,” she said. said Google employees in 2010 during the campaign for attorney general.
But what are his technology policies? His past statements provide some clues.
Antitrust and privacy
Harris has expressed openness to breaking up the industry giants, but has not openly called for such a drastic step as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) has.
“I think we should seriously consider [a Facebook breakup]“Yes,” he said in 2019 when Facebook was in the privacy spotlight and both Harris and Warren were running for president. “We need to recognize it for what it is: It’s essentially a utility that’s no longer regulated. And as far as I’m concerned, that needs to stop.”
“I believe that technology companies should be regulated in a way that ensures that the American consumer can be confident that their privacy is not being compromised,” he said that year, calling privacy his “first priority.”
In 2010, when she ran for California attorney general, Harris warned against “shortsighted” enforcement of antitrust laws, arguing that “we cannot hinder the growth and development of businesses.”
Online Security
Also in 2010, Harris weighed on the topic of child safety online, a hot topic today, with multiple bills under discussion in Congress.
“Based on the work I’ve done, I would suggest that the best way to address this is prevention, which is educating parents, teachers, and the community that’s raising that child to understand technology so that they can teach the child what we otherwise teach children when we cross the street,” she said.
Meanwhile, Harris launched a White House task force on online harassment and abuse a couple of years ago. “We still have a lot of work to do to protect people from online harassment and abuse, which is why the work of this task force is so important,” she said at the time. “No one should have to fear that an abuser will use their private personal information, or that a person’s private personal information will be used against them. And all people deserve to use the Internet without fear.”
Artificial intelligence
Harris, whom Biden has named his AI regulatory czar, is certainly a fan of AI regulation. “To define AI safety, I say we must consider and address the full spectrum of AI risk: threats to humanity as a whole, as well as threats to individuals, communities, our institutions, and our most vulnerable populations,” she said. said a UK summit on the topic last year. “We need to manage all these dangers to make sure AI is really safe.”
At the time, he described the AI industry’s voluntary commitments as a “first step” and called for “legislation that strengthens AI safety without stifling innovation.”
TikTok Ban
The United States may now have a law that forces TikTok owner ByteDance to sell the popular platform or see it banned in the country, but Harris He insisted in March that “we have no intention of banning TikTok.”
“It’s a source of income for a lot of people, what it does in terms of sharing information in a free way, in a way that allows people to have a debate, is very important,” he said.
This actually aligns her more or less with former President Donald Trump, who once supported a TikTok ban but changed my mind this year. Trump and his running mate have also made notable statements pro-cryptocurrencybut it’s not a topic on which Harris has yet expressed strong opinions.
Of course, this election is unlikely to hinge on tech politics. But with Silicon Valley heavyweights like Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen backing Trump, those issues could come into play, and if Harris does become Trump’s opponent, her ability to strike a balance between pro-consumer and pro-industry positions could make her a tough target on that front.
More news below.
David Meyer
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NEWS BULLETIN
The aftermath of CrowdStrike. CrowdStrike, the cybersecurity firm whose broken update for Windows computers caused the worst cyber disaster in history last week, says that “a significant number” of devices are working again, BBC reports. Microsoft says 8.5 million computersthat is, less than 1% of all Windows machines in circulation, were crashed in the crash. The catastrophe hit the stock marketsbut this morning there was a clear recovery in the Nasdaq. However, some companies are still struggling to get their systems up and running again, with airlines like Delta still flight cancellations today. The severe impact on electronic payments has also provided a strong argument for those who are fighting against society becoming cashless, according to the Guardian relationships.
Nigerian fine for Meta. Nigeria’s antitrust agency has fined Meta $220 million for various abuses and ordered the company to change its ways, Reuters reports. On a Friday orderThe Federal Competition and Consumer Protection Commission said Meta must allow Nigerian users to withdraw or limit their consent to the processing and sharing of their data, “without losing functionality or deleting the application.” It must also stop tying WhatsApp to Facebook in the country, as well as update its privacy policy “in an intelligible format” so Nigerians can assert their privacy rights.
Cryptocurrency platform suspends trading. Giant Indian cryptocurrency platform WazirX has suspended trading operations following the theft of around $230 million from one of its customer wallets, TechCrunch reports. This is equivalent to almost half of the platform’s reserves, which means WazirX may not be able to fully refund customers. Blockchain analytics experts consider North Korea is likely behind the theft.
ON OUR FEED
“There is a worrying discrepancy between the number of child abuse imagery offences committed in the UK on Apple services and the almost negligible number of global reports of abusive content that are made to the authorities.”
—Richard CollarHead of Child Online Safety at the UK’s National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, accuses Apple of massively underreporting cases of child sexual abuse images stored and transferred to its encrypted services. The NSPCC compared Apple’s public disclosures with UK police data.
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BEFORE YOU GO
Screen scraping dominance. A Delaware jury has unanimously ruled that Booking.com violated the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act by extracting data from the website of low-cost airline Ryanair. As RTÉ reportsThe travel booking platform had used automated tools to find and resell Ryanair tickets. Ryanair’s colourful CEO Michael O’Leary said he hoped European regulators would now ban the practice, which he described as “internet piracy and overpricing”. Booking.com said it would appeal, arguing that “enabling customers to access and compare fares in the travel industry promotes consumer choice”.
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