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Comment by claytongulick | Hacker News Reader

Is this a case of perfect being the enemy of good?

I don't know anything about the legislation, but the linked article's main complaint seems to be that anti discrimination language was removed from the bill. Ok. I don't understand all the issues involved with that, or what that language was.

Regardless, is it still good without that? Does it increase our privacy rights? Why not move the needle in the right direction and then lobby for additional things?

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Anti-discrimination is the meat of this. We shouldn't allow opaque AI systems to be used as justification for discriminatory actions. Without anti-discrimination they will certainly be used in this way.

While it has some good features (data minimization) it's also got some major weaknesses -- for example state attorneys general say they wouldn't be able to enforce it, it preempts existing stronger privacy laws in states like California and Illinois (and potentially Washington to some extent), EFF's warned about some big loopholes, etc. And that was even before these latest changes.

> Why not move the needle in the right direction and then lobby for additional things?

Two reasons. Preemption not only weakens some existing laws, it keeps states from passing future stronger laws -- so it caps protections. And, politicially, no privacy law in the US has ever been strengthened by Congress (or state legislatures) ... so, it's very unlikely that the lobbying for additional things will have an affect.

I’m not sure about Illinois, but the California privacy laws are laughably weak.

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