The Patent Eligibility Restoration Act (PERA) would throw out Supreme Court rules that limit patents on abstract ideas. If PERA passes, it will open the floodgates for far more vague and overbroad software patents. It will even allow for patents on human genes.
No one should be allowed to take an abstract idea, add generic computer language, and get a patent. And we should never see patents on human genetic material itself. But if PERA passes, that’s exactly what will happen.
The Senate Commerce Committee is considering a bill that, in the name of children’s privacy, creates a system of private surveillance that would force platforms to collect more information on every user, further invading their privacy in the process. The “Kids Online Safety Act” (KOSA) would make platforms the arbiter of what children see online and could hand over significant power, and private data, to third-party identity verification companies like Clear or ID.me.
Lawmakers should be providing real privacy protections for everyone online. KOSA doesn’t do that. Instead, KOSA would likely require everything from Apple’s iMessage, Signal, web browsers, email applications, VPN software, and platforms like Facebook and TikTok to collect more user data. Perhaps even worse, the bill would allow individual state attorneys general to decide what topics pose a risk to the physical and mental health of a minor, and allow them to force online services to remove and block access to that material everywhere, by default. This isn’t safety—it’s censorship.
San Francisco is considering a dangerous proposal that would increase surveillance and threaten our privacy and civil liberties. The San Francisco Police Department (SFPD) has proposed a piece of legislation that would drastically expand police access to thousands of private surveillance cameras across the city–including for live surveillance to investigate misdemeanor crimes and to monitor any broadly-defined “significant event.” The vagueness and breadth of the legislation would give police vast new powers to spy on San Franciscans while they commute to work or drop their kids off at school, visit healthcare providers, and attend religious services.
This proposal would make it easier for the SFPD to do what they’ve done before—violate the civil liberties of San Franciscans by live monitoring First-Amendment protected activities like protests, public celebrations, and religious gatherings.
We need your help! Tell the Mayor and your Supervisor that the police must not receive these vague, overreaching, and invasive surveillance powers.