Montana Becomes First State to Enshrine 'right to Compute' Into Law
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Montana has passed a law enshrining the 'right to compute' into law, sparking debate about its implications for AI regulation and individual rights, with some seeing it as a protection against government overreach and others as a handout to tech corporations.
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Maybe I'm naive, and I am definitely uncertain about how all this AI craziness is going to break -- whether empowering everyone or advancing ultra corporate dystopia. But do we think our government is gearing up to take our laptops away?
So they didn't even think things like the First and Second Amendment were even necessary.
Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
... the 10th amendment is largely ignored.
That's a perspective, but it seems to me that the Federalists didn't believe that government should be limited at all. The Constitution is a genie granting three wishes, and explaining beforehand that one of your wishes can be to wish for three more wishes.
Personally, it's always seemed obvious that the Federalists and their children have been the worst intellectual current in US government. They never had popular support at any time, and relied on the manipulation of power and position to accomplish personal goals (which is really their only ideology.) It began with a betrayal of the French Revolution, setting the US on a dirty path (and leaving the Revolution to be taken over by the insane.) The Bill of Rights is the only worthwhile part of the US Constitution; the rest of it is a bunch of slop meant to placate and protect local warlords and slaveholders. The Bill of Rights is the only part that acknowledges that individual people exist other than the preamble.
The Anti-Federalists were always right.
I agree with you that what we should be working on is specifying, codifying and expanding the Bill of Rights, rather than the courts continually trying to come up with new ways to subvert it. New ways that are never codified firmly, that always exist as vibes and penumbras. Rights shouldn't have anything to do with what a judge knows when he sees. If we want to abridge or expand the Bill of Rights, a new amendment should be written and passed; the Supreme Court is overloaded because 1) Congress has ceased to function and 2) the Senate is still an assembly of local warlords.
Count me in.
US Executive Orders 14110 and 14141 did create fairly onerous regulatory regimes that could have constrained the dynamism of the marketplace. However, my understanding is that both have been rescinded, so they do not currently post a real threat.
It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools that folks like us think everyone already has access to.
As far as government expecting you to interface with them using a computer, I loathe this trend. And of course it's infinitely worse if they require a specific proprietary platform like iOS or Android. But I don't think this is about that.
My taxes shouldn't be spent on putting up walls around the government and juicy contracts with technocrats excluding people from being able to sort things out with government. If I must first pay some technocrat to buy their computing terminal to contact government then government failed me.
also next you will say there's too much email spam so we can't waste taxpayer money making them go through it, so we can only contact them using the approved app on approved hardware with remote atteststion to ensure you didn't root it. if you refuse, it's your problem segregating yourself.
of course later that app will require you to first talk to an LLM. only if LLM decides your problem is important enough you can really contact the government. why waste taxpayer money on supporting various legacy means of talking to taxpayers if it can be spent on billion dollar contracts with tech companies instead
The California laws the article references make OSS AI model makers liable for whatever developers & users do. That chills the enthusiasm for someone like Facebook or a university to release a better llama. So I'm curious if this law removes that liability..
This law is not about them coming for your laptop. It's about some massive corporation is not allowed to cover all the land in data centers. Which one of you has more legal lobby power?
The gov doesn't need to come for your laptop if you are out of the job and can't even afford that laptop because everybody pays an LLM company instead
Think about this like you're openai not an average Joe:
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes
Yes, the threat of mandated computational devices performing mandated computations to do things in regular life. Currently, these come almost exclusively from private companies (at least in the free world), but I think it's a good precedent for a government to recognize the dangers here. To be really helpful, it needs to ban those private companies from doing what they're doing. But this is a good start.
- right to internet connectivity (along with restrictions against some particularly offensive practices impinging access, including ads and popups when they are intrusive enough to substantially interfere*)
- right to utilize methods that protect personal privacy, like off-cloud computing (which I guess is partly covered here) and encrypted communications
- limit the extent to which online Terms of Service can bind you (i.e. deem unenforceable some of the worst clauses making their way around Silicon Valley, e.g. vague catchall indemnities that don't arise directly out of a user's breach of contract or illegal activity, incorporating third party terms of service by reference without explicitly stating what those terms are)
- identify activities that must be explicitly opt-in instead of opt-out (e.g. newly-introduced settings or features when they reduce a user's privacy, consents to sell user information / behavioral advertising / advertising remarketing / etc.)
---
* Think about it like driving down a road. Imagine if you couldn't even get get down the street or across an intersection without bumper-car-ing into some giant "acknowledge", "agree", "go away" buttons, and having to swerve around billboards that randomly jump into your lane.
Right to bear ARMs.
It is real. People are being blocked. Even if you aren't.
---
Section 3. Right to compute
Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
---
Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by artificial intelligence system -- shutdown.
(1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by an artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall ensure the capability to disable the artificial intelligence system's control over the infrastructure and revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time.
(2) When enacting a full shutdown, the deployer shall consider, as appropriate, disruptions to critical infrastructure that may result from a shutdown.
(3) Deployers shall implement, annually review, and test a risk management policy that includes a fallback mechanism and a redundancy and mitigation plan to ensure the deployer can continue operations and maintain control of the critical infrastructure facility without the use of the artificial intelligence system.
So, public health or safety, in the hands of a tyrant how broad can that get? I imagine that by enshrining this in law, Montana has accidentally given a future leader the ability to confiscate all computing technology.
Law is either rigorous or it's not. When I'm told that the law is against me but gosh darn it the law is the law, I grow resentful of the "discretion" reserved for some but not others.
I'm not a lawyer so I could well be completely off base here. But if my perception is correct, I would much rather they admit that it's fundamentally up to someone's gut feeling. That's more honest than telling me that a bit of reasoning is airtight when it's not.
At some point someone needs to weigh the facts, and they are given great discretion to do so. It is generally a good thing, because we have multiple layers of appeal to prevent obviously horrible outcomes.
So this legislation, like all legislation, provides guidance for the good faith judge to help weigh the facts. There is no guidance that will prevent a bad faith judge from ruling badly: You do not need a clause about public safety to get the ruling you want, but there is an argument that your ruling may perhaps be less scrutinized.
There’s a reason an attorney’s answer is always “it depends” :) No legislation is truly airtight from abuse.
Here's the thing: this is not supposed to be a thing. Not supposed to be how things work at all, but it kind of does now.
So the trust implicit in the broad language of our laws gives - has been giving - a massive advantage to bad faith actors who obtain power.
Almost every part of government is in isolation a single point of failure to someone with a tyrannical streak, it's why most democracies end up with multiple houses/bodies and courts - supposed to act as checks and balances.
So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
Or is it that they have some settling in time before you need to actually pay attention to them?
There was an entire coalition of “Blue Dog Democrats” that came from red states as recently as 30 years ago.
Or did you really forget that even in Trumps first term that Republicans like McCain voted against Trump snd 10 voted to impeach him?
Perhaps it's you who haven't been paying attention? I find older people have a lot of unfounded faith in these failing institutions, but if you try to keep up you'll see this isn't the same America you grew up in.
remember the "sanctuary city" thing? That kind of blind obeisance to the tribe and defiance to the federal government smells awfully like what MAGA does today.But let me guess: it's okay when your tribe does it?
your “tribe” in particular is *all about State rights” unless of course States do what the Tzar doesn’t like, right?!
They were not a reaction to recent ICE moves; you've no history, and have reversed cause and effect.
In the 1980s they were a great moral move originally by the southwestern churches, they've just expanded into electorate jerrymandering and virtue signalling.
To those on the left, why you do things matter. Breaking a law that is widely regarded as unjust is considered to be a moral action as long as it helps people.
The difference is being able to understand that "defying the federal government" is neither an absolute moral good nor is it an evil. Why you're doing it is the more important reason.
More recently, the difference between leaning on tech companies during an epidemic and a President leaning on companies to personally give him money.
What you're talking about, which the left can certainly be said to have been guilty of, is selective enforcement, where people who purport the right motivations (read: politics) are fine to do things that others are not.
The distinction is the left cares about why, as you said, while the right cares about who. If the Right People are breaking the law (Trump, ICE, the youth pastor), it's okay.
If every accusation is an admission, GP admits it plainly: "it's okay when your tribe does it?"
https://www.cliniclegal.org/resources/removal-proceedings/pr...
That's not the "why" for so-called "sanctuary city" practices. The answer is more pragmatic: local law enforcement needs all local residents to cooperate with them to be able to do their jobs.
If undocumented people are afraid to report crimes or be a witness, that hinders investigations and prosecutions of more serious crimes.
Even where the Constitution grants the federal government authority to make laws and to provide for their enforcement, it generally does not have the power to direct states to use their resources to enforce those laws. Sanctuary laws simply restrict the conditions in which state or local resources will be used to enforce certain federal laws.
The FBI, CBP, ICE, US Postal Service, USDA, the Park Service, the Secret Service, the US Marshalls, the Marine Fisheries Service, USACID, US Department of Transportation National Highway Traffic Safety Administration Office of Odometer Fraud Investigation, Administrative Office of the United States Courts Office of Probation and Pretrial Services, Tennessee Valley Authority Police and Emergency Management, DEA, ATF, all the departmental offices of Inspectors General, and a whole bunch more account for over 130,000 officers with powers of arrest (and usually armed, or will otherwise partner with armed agents from somewhere else).
Cities and counties should be enforcing city, county, and state laws. They are not political subdivisions directly of the federal government, and their taxes and resources should be spent on their own jurisdictions.
Lowering themselves to be federal snitches, they reduce compliance with state and local laws which actually impact the public, and create a variety of other problems that hurt the community. Where does it end? Should states investigate purchases that may enable the violation of federal law? You realize that there’s almost no limit to what can be technically constructed to be a federal felony. Why is immigration so special?
To conservative thinkers, sitting behind their keyboards in the cushy suburbs, the concept of states’ rights ends with the oppression of minority voting and pillaging of the environment. Anyone, regardless of politics, who is comparing that legal concept to support of the lawlessness the regime is carrying out should really look within.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/22/politics/trump-fascist-john-k...
Those people have all been purged. Any instinct you have for what Republicans will do which is older than 2021 is now actively misleading your judgement.
Read all the words in a comment before replying to it.
If an unchecked tyrant exists, do they really need the paper-thin facade provided by manhandling the English language to pretend that some law supports their actions?
The point of all laws and thus the courts is that each new action provides an opportunity to debate and decide on whether an action is lawful, and thus determine whether it should proceed.
You are arguing that all such decisions would always be decided in favor of the tyrant because they're a tyrant ala a slippery slope: the law exists, all things will be declared lawful, ergo all things are allowed with no further challenge.
This can certainly be true, but it doesn't naturally follow.
Hell, even in medieval England the king didn’t have absolute authority and had to worry about political alliances abcs political support of the other nobles.
You should go read the dictator’s handbook. Think about it from the perspective is the tyrant - there’s one of you. How do you establish control over groups of other people? Just ordering people around doesn’t work. You need to create a power base. You can go broad and give riches back to the people or narrow and give riches to people who have power and influence already. Dictator’s generally go the latter route because you’re not at the whim of changes in political mood and individual problems can be managed easily. But you still need to tap into symbolism and other institutions to lend yourself legitimacy to avoid uprisings.
Sure, but legislators should generally avoid explicitly building the on-ramp to such behavior.
But that is not how tyrants actually operate, at least most of the time.
The most tyrannical country possible would be a "free democratic union of independent people's republics". Democracy has been so successful that most tyrannies operate under its veneer. This is in stark contrast to how monarchies have operated historically.
The trick isn't to ignore laws, but to make them so broad, meaningless and impossible to follow that you have to commit crimes to survive. You can then be selective in which of these crimes you choose to prosecute.
You don't charge the human rights activist for the human rights activism. You charge them with engaging in illegal speculation for the food they bought on the black market, even though that was the only way to avoid starvation, and everybody else did it too. In the worst case scenario, you charge them with "endangering national peace", "spreading misinformation" or "delivering correspondence without possessing a government license to do so" (for giving out pamflets).
"must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest" is exactly the shenanigans tyrants love. You can get away with absolutely anything with a law like that.
Democracy is largely following norms and tradition of respecting the people and laws, but it can also be ignored when those in power shift.
Their fundamental promise is a gatekeeper that restricts a lot of things that are not only legal but many customers want to do, including trivial things like writing their own software.
If the government tried to block you from installing certain apps on your phone, that would fall under this law. Apple as a private company can still block whatever they want.
Which in turn would put it in conflict with the DMCA.
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...
This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does nothing to address the actual rights of citizens, it just limits some ways government can't further restrict the citizens' right. The government should be protecting the citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.
If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been infringed.
You should explain how you'd see the majority of the population not buying a smartphone from a major brand.
But it's a comparatively huge pain in the ass to use a lot of government services where I live without a smartphone.
We are mostly saved by the part of the 70+ crowd who is completely computer illiterate and own significant investment resources. But that will only last 10-20 more years.
Banking apps, delivery apps, public transport apps, utilities apps, insurance - so many services have been captured by the big two phone oligopoly that modern life revolves around your phone. The assumption is that you will have one.
Sure, you could decide not to, but you are instantly a societal pariah as every business finds it s so much harder to deal with you - and you don't have enough time in the day to deal with the secondary processes these businesses employ, for every aspect of your life.
But I don't see the vast majority of people to be able to ditch their smartphone, that's just not a reasonable proposition.
But most people including myself just don't care about side loading. For those who do, there are options like a Fairphone, various Linux phones, etc.
1. Many people use a virtual text number, like google voice 2. Maybe even more folks use one or more app based texting services. I bet many users here have several on their phone:
Signal What's app telegram
There are probably 50 texting type apps in this category
These are dangerous attack vectors for people trying to remotely control your phone, but also important to talk to your friends.
I think we need a solution for these types of apps for a popular usable solution. I don't know how to solve the safety issue when running these apps, and I can't just "forward" text messages to my dumb phone.
I was called a luddite for not wanting to follow the "official" schoool Whatsapp group. Online banking is practicably unusable without the bank's own 2FA app.
Many things can still be done in a web browser, but the rest of society is going the smartphone route and it's increasingly difficult to avoid it.
Any non-digital options are aimed at elderly and handicapped individuals; not people who don't want smartphones.
Whereas in Europe our concept of rights include restrictions on the state, but also also might restrict non-state actors. We also have a broader concept of rights that create obligations on the state and private actors to do things for individuals to their benefit.
And the discussion above is about a different kind of surveillance. Notifying Google (or state) that I'm sitting in front of my PC is one thing. Sending photos of videos of me jerking off is different.
Companies too.
The EU approach seems to want to insert government in to contracts between private individual and those they do business with, and the US approach seems to want to maybe allow too much power to accumulate in those who wield the mercantile powers.
The optimal approach probably lies in the tension between multiple loci.
As for domain specificity:
I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.
I don't know any European technology companies that hold a candle to the sheer breadth and depth of capabilities brought into the world by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, OpenAI, or Anthropic.
Yes, Mistral, Nokia, OVH, and SAP exist, but compared to the alternarives, they exist in the way the American healthcare system exists compared to its alternatives.
As for granularity:
Perhaps we want American style governance for building the tech, but then European style governance for running it?
Some 50-100k Europeans fly to the US to get American healthcare every year.
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