New Research Shows Social Media Doesn't Turn People Into Assholes (They Already Were), And Everyone's Wrong About Echo Chambers

from the seems-notable dept

We recently wrote about Joe Bernstein's excellent Harper's cover story, which argues that we're all looking at disinformation/misinformation the wrong way, and that the evidence of disinformation on social media really influencing people is greatly lacking. Instead, as Bernstein notes, this idea is one that many others are heavily invested in spreading, including Facebook (if the disinfo story is true, then you should buy ads on Facebook to influence people in other ways), the traditional media (social media is a competitor), and certain institutions with a history of having authority over "truth" (can't let the riffraff make up their own minds on things).

We've also seen other evidence pop up questioning the supposed malicious impact of social media. Yochai Benkler's work has shown that Fox News has way more of an impact on spreading false information than social media does.

And even with all this evidence regarding disinformation, there are also people who focus on attitude, and insist that social media is responsible for otherwise good people turning awful. Yet, as was covered in an fascinating On the Media interview with Professor Michael Bang Petersen, there really isn't much evidence to support that either! As Petersen explained in a useful Twitter thread, his research has shown that there's no real evidence to support the idea that social media turns people hostile. Instead, it shows that people who are assholes offline are also assholes online.

But in the interview, Petersen makes a really fascinating point regarding echo chambers. I've been skeptical about idea of online echo chambers in the past, but Petersen says that people really have it all backwards -- and that we're actually much more likely to live in echo chambers offline than online, and we're much more likely to come across different viewpoints online.

One way to think about social media in this particular regard is to turn all of our notions about social media upside down. And here I'm thinking about the notion of 'echo chambers.' So we've been talking a lot about echo chambers and how social media creates echo chambers. But, in reality, the biggest echo chamber that we all live in is the one that we live in in our everyday lives.

I'm a university professor. I'm not really exposed to any person who has a radically different world view or radically different life from me in my everyday life. But when I'm online, I can see all sorts of opinions that I may disagree with. And that might trigger me if I'm a hostile person and encourage me to reach out to tell these people that I think they are wrong.

But that's because social media essentially breaks down the echo chambers. I can see the views of other people -- what they are saying behind my back. That's where a lot of the felt hostility of social media comes from. Not because they make us behave differently, but because they are exposing us to a lot of things that we're not exposed in our everyday lives.

And then this upside down view of echo chambers also explains why people feel like the internet is a more hostile place full of assholes and trolls. It's more that it's because we're now being exposed to these points of view and can respond. As he notes, this kind of hostility actually happens all the time, but it's usually just not witnessed by more than a couple people at a time. Now, online, it's witnessed by a much larger audience, and so we overcorrect and think that it's making people worse.

In our offline lives, there is a lot of hostility as well, but that happens behind closed doors, in private. It happens in bars where we cannot hear what is going on. But we're exposed to all that when we enter the online realm.

Another interesting tidbit in the interview (and in his Twitter thread) is the idea that people who tend to share misinformation often know that it's misinformation, but they don't care because they're just so focused on pissing off the people they don't like (see: "owning the libs") that they don't care. It's more important to anger the "other side" than to share legit info. This was based on a detailed study they did of people on Twitter.

The people who are sharing misinformation are not ignorant. They are used to navigating social media and the internet. They know more about politics than the average person. But where they're really different from the average is they have much more negative feelings towards members of the other party. And that's really what's predicting, not only their sharing of fake news, but also their sharing of real news. They want to derogate people that they don't like, and they are actively searching for information that they can use for that purpose.

So it's not that social media turns people into assholes, nor does it put them into echo chambers where their minds are turned to mush by disinformation. The evidence suggests that some people -- who were already predisposed to such kinds of "us/them" bickering, just jump right into the fray online as a kind of status thing to anger the people they don't like. Because those people can actually hear them now.

Later, he notes that it's not that they're purposefully sharing misinformation -- it's just that whether or not something is true or false is "not part of the calculus." All that matters is basically "will this trigger people I dislike."

And then the interview brings us back around to a similar issue that we noted with Yochai Benkler's research about the problems of Fox News. Petersen notes that his research has shown that Republicans tend to share somewhat more misinformation than Democrats, but it's not because (as some people believe) the relative education levels, but rather that the media ecosystem set up for Republicans (i.e., Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, etc.) is much more designed to feed them the kinds of news that they want to share for this very purpose -- the "own the libs" kind of stories. Though, as he then notes, the fact that these kinds of news sources exist and feed into this is (like the social media panic) more of a symptom, rather than the real problem.

His conclusion?

Misinformation is not, in itself, a big problem. So that's the good news. The bad news is that it's a symptom of a much worse problem. And here we come back to the polarization in society, because that is what's driving the sharing of misinformation. I think we've been focusing a lot on the symptoms -- Fox News, Trump, Facebook -- but I think that there is some evidence that suggests that rising inequality over the last decade has been a fundamental driver of political instability in the US and beyond. It's a problem in many Western Democracies. That's where I would start to look for solutions.

All of this is quite fascinating -- and backed up by his research. And, it does get back to the point that some of us have been making for years. That social media isn't so much "the problem" as it is a mirror that reflects the kinds of societal problems that civilization has been dealing with for centuries. It's just that now it plays out in a way where more people can see it all happen.

Filed Under: echo chambers, michael bang petersen, social media, society, trolls
Companies: facebook

Daily Deal: The 2021 Complete Video Production Super Bundle

from the good-deals-on-cool-stuff dept

The 2021 Complete Video Production Super Bundle has 10 courses to help you learn all about video production. Aspiring filmmakers, YouTubers, bloggers, and business owners alike can find something to love about this in-depth video production bundle. Video content is fast changing from the future marketing tool to the present, and here you'll learn how to make professional videos on any budget. From the absolute basics, to screenwrighting to the advanced shooting and lighting techniques of the pros, you'll be ready to start making high quality video content. You'll learn how to make amazing videos, whether you use a smartphone, webcam, DSLR, mirrorless, or professional camera. It's on sale for $35.

Note: The Techdirt Deals Store is powered and curated by StackCommerce. A portion of all sales from Techdirt Deals helps support Techdirt. The products featured do not reflect endorsements by our editorial team.

Filed Under: daily deal

Apple Gives Chinese Government What It Wants (Again); Pulls Quran App From Chinese App Store

from the consequences-of-heavy-buy-in dept

Apple has generally been pretty good about protecting users from government overreach, its recent voluntary (and misguided) foray into client-side scanning of users' images notwithstanding. But that seemingly only applies here in the United States, which is going to continue to pose problems for Apple if it chooses to combat local overreach while giving foreign, far more censorial governments greater and greater control.

Like many other tech companies, Apple has no desire to lose access to one of the largest groups of potential customers in the world. Hence its deference to China, which has seen the company do things like pull the New York Times app in China following the government's obviously bullshit claim that the paper was a purveyor of "fake news."

Since then, Apple has developed an even closer relationship with the Chinese government, which culminated in the company opening data centers in China to comply with the government's mandate that all foreign companies store Chinese citizens' data locally where it's much easier for the government to demand access.

On a smaller scale, Apple pulled another app -- one that encrypted text messages on platforms that don't provide their own encryption -- in response to government demands. Once again, Apple left Chinese citizens at the mercy of their government, apparently in exchange for the privilege of selling them devices that promised them security and privacy while actually offering very little of either.

The latest acquiescence by Apple will help the Chinese government continue its oppression of the country's Uighur minority -- Muslim adherents that have been subjected to religious persecution for years. Whoever the government doesn't cage, disappear, or genocide into nonexistence will see nothing but the bottom of a jackboot for years to come. Apple is aiding and abetting the jackboot, according to this report by the BBC.

Apple has taken down one of the world's most popular Quran apps in China, following a request from officials.

Quran Majeed is available across the world on the App Store - and has nearly 150,000 reviews. It is used by millions of Muslims.

The BBC understands that the app was removed for hosting illegal religious texts.

The app is developed by Pakistan Data Management Services, a software company that dates back nearly 50 years. China pretty much owns Pakistan at this point, but this has nothing to do with Pakistan's purchased allegiance to the Chinese government, and everything to do with punishing religious beliefs (and believers) the Chinese government doesn't like.

Apple's compliance cuts off access to nearly 1 million Chinese users of the app, as the BBC reports. This is happening despite the fact the Chinese government pays lip service to a limited form of religious freedom.

The Chinese Communist Party officially recognises Islam as a religion in the country.

And yet, it claims the primary religious text of the faith is "illegal.

Apple is also at least partly owned by China, albeit not in any formal sense. It relies heavily on Chinese manufacturing to produce its devices. This means Apple faces both upline and downline issues if it refuses to comply with the Chinese government's demands. The company is in a difficult position, what with shareholders in the US (and all over the world) expecting continued growth and profitability. But it's not as though it's an impossible situation. Sometimes you have to sacrifice profits for principle.

Apple -- with its reliance on Chinese manufacturing -- may be in too deep to make a principled stand. China has the upper hand for now. If Apple wants to continue to be seen as a world leader in device security and personal privacy protections, it needs to start figuring out how to end its abusive relationship with the Chinese government.

Filed Under: app store, china, content moderation, ios, quran, religion
Companies: apple

Many Digital Divide 'Solutions' Make Privacy And Trust A Luxury Option

from the First-do-no-harm dept

We've noted a few times how privacy is slowly but surely becoming a luxury good. Take low-cost cellular phones, for example. They may now be available for dirt cheap, but the devices are among the very first to treat consumer privacy and security as effectively unworthy of consideration at that price point. So at the same time we're patting ourselves on the back for "bridging the digital divide," we're creating a new paradigm whereby privacy and security are something placed out of reach for those who can't afford it.

A similar scenario is playing out on the borrowed school laptop front. Lower income students who need to borrow a school laptop to do their homework routinely find that bargain comes with some monumental trade offs; namely zero expectation of privacy. Many of the laptops being used by lower-income students come with Securly, student-monitoring software that lets teachers see a student’s laptop screen in real time and even close tabs if they discover a student is "off-task."

But again, it creates a dichotomy between students with the money for a laptop (innately trusted) and lower income students who are inherently tracked and surveilled:

"Hootman says she and other parents wouldn’t have chosen school-issued devices if they knew the extent of the monitoring. (“I’m lucky that’s an option for us,” she says.) She also worried that when monitoring software automatically closes tabs or otherwise penalizes multitasking, it makes it harder for students to cultivate their own ability to focus and build discipline."

Teachers and school administrators may be well intentioned, but they're not thinking particularly large picture. But the creation of this bifurcated treatment of privacy wasn't lost on the Center for Democracy and Technology, which issued a report last month that found, unsurprisingly, wealthier kids that can afford their own devices are subject to less surveillance and are inherently trusted more overall. Sometimes just by nature of the laptop surveillance systems, but also thanks to school district concerns about liability:

"LEAs (local education agencies) with wealthier student populations reported that their students are more likely to have access to personal devices, which are subject to less monitoring than school-issued devices...LEAs feel compelled to monitor student activity to satisfy perceived legal requirements and protect student safety."

So in trying to "help" kids, by not thinking broadly enough you're teaching them that they're inherently inferior and less deserving of overall trust. Combine that with the overarching problem that less expensive computer and phone hardware is often inherently less private and secure, and it's not particularly hard to see how efforts to "bridge the digital divide" could make some aspects of it worse if they're not particularly well thought out.

Filed Under: digital divide, luxury, privacy, school laptops, schools, security, students, surveillance, tracking

Funniest/Most Insightful Comments Of The Week At Techdirt

from the thus-spake dept

This week, our first place winner on the insightful side is PaulT with a response to a complaint about vaccinations:

You're free to avoid doing something you dislike, as you are free to avoid wearing clothes, or paying taxes. It's just that you might get rejected by the rest of the society you wish to participate in if you don't want to abide by the rules of doing so.

Also, https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2016/09/how_vaccination_helped_win_the_revolutionary_war.html

In second place, it's James Burkhardt with a response to an... imperfect comparison of Charter's false debt collection practices to other debt collectors:

I feel like a Credit Card company offering to allow you to pay off your balance and regain access to credit (and possibly clearing your credit report of the genuine delinquency) is a very different story than an internet company trying to drum up business by committing mail fraud.

For editor's choice on the insightful side, we start out with another comment from James Burkhardt rebutting a bad comparison — this time between Section 230 reform and other kinds of liability:

Vehicle manufacturers are not liable for the use a car is put to. Nor are they required to sell cars to anyone who walks on the lot. They are only responsible for failures caused by their own actions. Section 230 replicates that level of liability.

Credit cards banks are not liable for the misuse of the credit card, only their own malfeasance. Section 230 Replicates this level of liability

Thank you for higlighting that section 230 does not provide special immunity.

Next, That One Guy with a comment about the Missouri governor's absurd response to exposing private information in HTML:

'That took care of them, now why does my foot hurt so much?'

'If you aren't made aware of the problem it doesn't exist' seems to be the motto for far too many people in positions of authority, with the corollary of 'If you shoot the current messenger giving you bad news that reduces the odds that another one will show up'.

The state was caught with it's pants down and rather than admit they screwed up they decided on the absolute worst response, to punish the people who notified them of the problem and desperately try to shift the blame to them.

Not only is this stupid in the short term as it leaves the governor and state looking all sorts of boneheaded and pathetic but it just massively screwed them over long-term as no sane white-hat, security researcher or journalist is likely make use of the 'official channels' from this point on such that the first the Missouri government is likely to know about future hacks or security breaches/holes is after they've either been exploited or made public anonymously, leaving the affected agencies to do damage control after the fact.

Probably the only silver lining of this whole mess is the response to the governor's statements as my oh my is that idiot getting roasted for his stupidity on twitter, with just so many people pointing out what an idiot he is and how the 'we got hacked!' claim is nothing more than CYOA garbage.

Over on the funny side, our first place winner is yet another comment from James Burkhardt, this time responding to some tiresome complaints from a tiresome commenter:

I can't imagine why a spam filter would deem the guy posting 9 times in 6 minutes "spam".

In second place, it's an anonymous comment (quoting a classic) along similar lines:

Sir, this is an Arby's.

For editor's choice on the funny side, we start out with nasch responding to the suggestion that "Section 230 could use a lemon law":

You are already free to return your social media accounts for a full refund of the entire purchase price.

And finally, it's an anonymous comment responding to our astonishment at the Missouri governor calling in the Highway Patrol:

Highway Patrol is clearly appropriate in this case as the offense took place on the information superhighway!

That's all for this week, folks!

This Week In Techdirt History: October 10th - 16th

from the total-recall dept

Five Years Ago

This week in 2016, everyone was abuzz about the infamous Trump Access Hollywood recording that had dropped the previous Friday, and we learned about how NBC had delayed a story about it for fear of getting sued — after all, Trump was tossing around the legal threats to newspapers with wild abandon. At the same time, Charles Harder said he was no longer monitoring Gawker (though he was still sending takedown demands), but he was sending out a threat letter on behalf of Melania Trump. We also got some more details on the recent spate of bogus defamation lawsuits being used to block negative reviews.

Ten Years Ago

This week in 2011, German collection society GEMA was demanding fees for music it didn't hold the rights to while the Pirate Party was continuing to build support, taking 9% of the vote nationwide in Germany. A Belgian court ordered the blocking of the wrong PirateBay domain, the UK government was admitting it had no evidence for its plans for draconian copyright law, and we wondered why PROTECT IP supporters couldn't just admit the bill was about censorship (while Yahoo was quietly dumping the US Chamber of Commerce over its extremist position on PROTECT IP).

Fifteen Years Ago

This week in 2006, the big rumors of the previous week became official when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65-billion in Google stock, which of course led to all kinds of varied opinions on the news and a renewed interest from entertainment companies in threatening to sue... and/or negotiate. Anti-video-game crusader Jack Thompson somehow convinced a judge that he should get to see the entirety of the game Bully before it was released, only to have his hopes of declaring it a public nuisance quickly dashed. We were shocked to see a Disney executive actually admit that piracy is competition, baffled to hear a Sony Pictures UK executive claim that getting rid of release windows was "not technically possible", and amused to see the Christian music industry start making a fuss about piracy as a moral issue.

Filed Under: history, look back

Trader Joe's Threatens Man Over Parody 'Traitor Joe' Political T-Shirt

from the parody-to-a-tee dept

The last time we found niche grocery chain Trader Joe's playing intellectual property bully, it was over one enterprising Canadian man who drove across the border, bought a bunch of good stuff from Trader Joe's, and then resold it at his Canadian store called "Pirate Joe's". While that whole setup is entertaining, Trader Joe's sued for trademark infringement in the United States, which made zero sense. The store was in Canada, not the States, reselling purchased items is not trademark infringement, and Trader Joe's was free to open up Canadian stores if it chose.

Fast forward to the present and Trader Joe's is trying to stretch trademark law yet again, this time to go after one man's website that is selling parody t-shirts with a picture of Joe Biden and the moniker "Traitor Joe", all mocked up to look like the store logo. Trader Joe's sent a threat letter to the man, Dan McCall, who was represented by friend of the site Paul Alan Levy.

I recently had the pleasure of representing Dan McCall again — author of such wicked parodies as NSA – the Only Part of Government That Actually Listens (we got to sue the NSA for a declaratory judgment of noninfringement); Ready for Oligarchy (over which we came with hours of filing suit against Hillary Clinton’s exploratory committee); and Bernie Is My Comrade (Sanders’ committee had the smarts to retract quickly). Last week, I sent a response to a demand letter sent on behalf of Trader Joe's from a BigLaw attorney lawyer who, considering his claim to be a "seasoned intellectual property litigator," really should have known better than to subject his client to the Streisand Effect.

You can see the image in question below.

I've included Levy's response embedded below so that you can read it in full. Now, if McCall sounds at all familiar to you, it's because he's made a habit out of annoying large institutions by creating parody logos of their branding. Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, the NSA, and DHS have all come calling for him at some point. This is part of the context of Levy's note that competent counsel really should know better than to send this threat letter: McCall and Levy have been through this before and they'll get through it again.

As to the merits of supposed trademark infringement, well, the response letter does a fairly thorough takedown of any such arguments. Levy starts off by pointing out to Trader Joe's that literally nobody is going to think it endorsed or produced this t-shirt. In fact, the company's own threat letter notes how this puts the company in a bad light, so why would it also think the public would think the shirt came from Trader Joe's?

But the real trump card in all of this is that the t-shirt is protected speech as parody.

Trademark law aside, McCall's use of the image to comment on the President of the United States, while playing on the name of a leading grocery store chain, is speech squarely protected by the First Amendment. Consequently, any application of trademark law to quash such uses would be highly suspect. Although McCall's products are sold, their contents are noncommercial speech, which qualifies for full First Amendment protection.

There's a bit more in there, including an odd copyright claim over some of the imagery and the fact that Trader Joe's invoked the DMCA against McCall even though his company, Liberty Maniacs, is not an interactive website allowing user input, but that's more icing on the cake type stuff. What is made clear in all of this is that Trader Joe's has a legal team that is making quite spurious threats that would be highly likely to be defeated in court.

Filed Under: dan mccall, parody, paul levy, t-shirts, trademark, traitor joe's
Companies: trader joe's

Study Says Official Count Of Police Killings Is More Than 50% Lower Than The Actual Number

from the but-the-real-numbers-make-us-look-even-worse! dept

In 2019, the FBI claimed to be compiling the first-ever database of police use of force, including killings of citizens by officers. It was, of course, not the first-ever database of police killings. Multiple databases have been created (some abandoned) prior to this self-congratulatory announcement to track killings by police officers.

What this database would have, however, is information on use of force, which most private databases didn't track. Whether or not it actually does contain this info is difficult to assess, since the FBI's effort does not compile these reports in any easily-accessible manner, nor does it provide readable breakdowns of the data -- something it does for other things, like crimes against police officers.

It also does not have the participation of every law enforcement agency in the nation, which prevents the FBI from collecting all relevant information. It's also voluntary, so even participating agencies are free to withhold incident reports, keeping their own official use-of-force/killing numbers lower than what they actually may be.

The problem with underreporting traces back decades, though. The official count of police killings has always been lower than data compiled by non-government databases, which rely almost solely on open-source information like news reports. It would seem the numbers reported by the FBI would be higher, since it theoretically has access to more info, but the FBI's count has repeatedly been lower than outside reporting.

A recent study published by The Lancet says the official numbers are wrong. And they're off by a lot. Utilizing outside databases compiled by private citizens/entities and data obtained from the USA National Vital Statistics System (NVSS), the researchers have reached the conclusion that law enforcement self-reporting has resulted in undercounting the number of killings by officers by thousands over the past four decades.

We found that more than half of all deaths due to police violence that we estimated in the USA from 1980 to 2018 were unreported in the NVSS. Compounding this, we found substantial differences in the age-standardised mortality rate due to police violence over time and by racial and ethnic groups within the USA.

According to this study [PDF], the NVSS did not report 55% of deaths attributable to police violence, resulting in an undercount of ~17,000 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers. There are a lot of contributing factors, not the least of which is law enforcement's hesitancy to report or provide data on their own possible wrongdoing.

But there are other contributors. Misclassification of deaths often starts in the coroner's office. Some coroners and forensic examiners work hand-in-hand with local law enforcement, resulting in pressure to define cause of death as something unrelated to force applied by officers. One way to fix this ongoing contributor to underreporting is to protect coroners and examiners from other government agencies.

Coroners and forensic medical experts also propose that to avoid incorrect assignment of cause of death due to pressure from the police, politicians, or the deceased family members, forensic pathologists should work independently from law enforcement. Additionally, forensic pathologists often must investigate and testify in cases of police violence. To ensure that pathologists are free from pressures that could influence these cases, pathologists should be awarded whistleblower protections under the law.

The study also notes there is one proven way to reduce killings by police officers. It involves changing policies and laws.

Evidence suggests that there have been some successful reforms to reduce police violence from 1970 to 1985; 50 cities with populations larger than 250 000 residents halved their fatal police violence from 353 to 172 per year, primarily through banning shooting of non-violent fleeing suspects.

The things that don't work are the surface-level reform efforts cops actually agree to.

However, more recent reform efforts to prevent police violence in the USA, including body cameras, implicit bias training, de-escalation, and diversifying police forces, have all failed to further meaningfully reduce police violence rates.

To meaningfully reduce incidents of police violence, you first have to confront the problem. Bad data that downplays the number of violent acts committed by police officers allows agencies to pretend the problem isn't as bad as critics say it is. It also allows them to minimize their contribution to these deaths by relying on cause of death reports that skew towards law enforcement's narrative, rather than independent conclusions by medical experts. Bogus stats are a luxury we can't afford in this nation, not if we ever hope to return America to a place where the police serve the public, rather than behaving like warlords overseeing a never ending conflict.

Filed Under: fbi, police, police brutality, police killings, tracking

The Surveillance And Privacy Concerns Of The Infrastructure Bill's Impaired Driving Sensors

from the good-intentions... dept

There is no doubt that many folks trying to come up with ways to reduce impaired driving and making the roads safer have the best of intentions. And yet, hidden within those intentions can linger some pretty dangerous consequences. For reasons that are not entirely clear to me, the giant infrastructure bill (that will apparently be negotiated forever) includes a mandate that automakers would eventually need to build in technology that monitors whether or not drivers are impaired. It's buried deep in the bill (see page 1066), but the key bit is:

to ensure the prevention of alcohol-impaired driving fatalities, advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology must be standard equipment in all new passenger motor vehicles

The details note that the new technology should "passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired." This isn't the kind of keylock breathalyzer test things that some people have been required to install to operate a car. This is "passive" monitoring. That means sensors and cameras. And, as Julian Sanchez highlights, that raises a ton of surveillance and privacy concerns:

This amounts to mandating a sophisticated set of sensors be installed in a space where many Americans spend huge amounts of time. (And not just commuting—many people live in vehicles, whether out of choice or necessity, at least part of the time.) A narrowly-tailored sensor that only detects blood alcohol content, if designed to immediately discard any readings below the legal threshold, might not sound worryingly invasive. But the mandate extends to monitoring for other forms of "impairment," which can require more intrusive types of sensors. One such system being developed by Nissan includes a "camera atop the instrument cluster" which "looks for facial cues signaling the driver is inebriated" while "the vehicle itself looks for driving patterns suggesting an impaired driver." In other words, one form this mandatory technology is likely to take involves pre-installed video surveillance with facial recognition capabilities. (Law enforcement, no doubt, will eagerly think of many other applications for a ubiquitous system of cameras installed in private spaces—cameras which, by design, the vehicle owner will necessarily be unable to deactivate.)

It's possible that there are versions of anti–impaired driving technology that could address these practical and privacy concerns. But that only underscores how little sense it makes for Congress to delegate authority for a regulatory mandate at a point when the technology being mandated remains largely hypothetical. Even in the absence of a mandate, there's likely to be some market for these technologies: Some drivers would embrace as a safety feature a system that warns them if they've imbibed more than they realize, or are starting to swerve on the road. They'd doubtless also be popular in contexts where the owner of a vehicle is entrusting it to another driver: Rental cars, corporate cars, commercial cab or trucking fleets. This is not, in other words, technology that will go undeveloped and untested unless it is made universally mandatory.

That makes it seem wildly premature to empower an executive branch official to mandate what is, essentially, surveillance technology in all automobiles when the precise form of the technology remains uncertain, and it's impossible to concretely debate the merits of specific systems. This sort of delegation lets legislators take credit for Doing Something to promote automotive safety and reduce the unacceptable annual death toll that results from drunk and impaired driving, without having to defend or be held accountable for any of the details of what Something entails. The bill doesn't, after all, say "we're requiring a camera that you can't shut off be installed in everyone's automobile"—that's just one possible way to "passively monitor the performance of a driver." They can reap the accolades now, and insist "that's not what we intended" if the result is a mandatory surveillance network, or cars that stop working because you've used too much hand sanitizer or a pinhole aperture in the dash got blocked.

But, let's take this even further. Sanchez notes in a parenthetical aside that law enforcement will come up with "many other applications" of this technology, but that deserves to be called out, because knowing what we know about how law enforcement embraces and "extends" every bit of surveillance technology they can get their hands on, this isn't some pie in the sky hypothetical. We all know exactly how this will play out.

Police are going to demand access to the facial recognition and other data collected by these systems, and they'll claim they need to have access to it for "public safety" reasons. Others are also likely to seek access to it as well. It's going to be an insurance goldmine.

And that's leaving aside the question of whether or not the technology will even work. The "passive" nature of it raises questions about how the system will know whether it's the driver or passengers who may be impaired. The potential to use facial recognition may raise questions about people who have facial tics or other features that the system might deem to be a sign of impairment. And, as Sanchez also notes, there's simply no clear reason why this technology needs to be government mandated and standard in every new vehicle.

Yes, preventing impaired driving is a worthy goal. But it shouldn't come at the cost of installing massive new surveillance infrastructure in every new car.

Filed Under: driving, drunk driving, facial recognition, impaired driving, infrastructure, law enforcement, privacy, sensors, surveillance