5 questions for Danielle Citron
The following has been edited for length and clarity.
What's one big, underrated idea?
That data collection is not an imperative and not a given. Since the late 1950s, with the advent of data banks, we have essentially presumed that data collection is a good, almost in some religious way. We have long ignored this important inclination that collection itself is endangering our privacy and civil liberties.
We've had moments of agreement in Congress in the 1970s that we shouldn't be collecting data unless we have congressional authorization and a really good reason. These are Democrats, Republicans — we were really worried that amassing of information was control, and would lead to really dangerous power in the government and private sector
What technology right now do you think is overhyped?
What we overhype is the magical idea that AGI [artificial general intelligence] will synthesize information in a way that's close to thinking. Normatively it is so troubling, because humanity is messy and wonderful. It's the joy and love and grief. There's some things I think are under hyped. The promise for me of all this data is health. Let's cure Type 1 diabetes, let's work on cancer. We're underleveraging where it most matters, and we're over leveraging on fake promises.
What do you think the government could be doing now about tech that it isn't?
[Implementing] the precautionary principle. I thought we'd learned our lessons. We built cars without seat belts, and a lot of people died. And then the car industry faced liability. They then had to internalize the costs.
We have learned time and time and again that when you build things just because you can, you don't think about the risks and the harms that aren't in view, and you don't test for them. We really ought to think hard about regulation that requires, especially when it comes to certain technologies, that we just don't build [things] unless we've got not only a proven use case, but also an assessment of harms.
What has surprised you most this year?
Having worked on trust and safety for the last 20 years voluntarily — pretty much no one paid me to help them on nonconsensual intimate imagery and stalking and threats and harassment — what surprises me is the gutting of both trust and safety staff at these big companies and their ripping apart of their commitments. I really bought into the story that there was some virtue to what we were doing. I feel like I got snookered into thinking this was genuine.
I thought they had seen that people were feeling safer on the platforms. It's just the eyeballs are much more worth it to them, because the salacious sells better.
What book most shaped your conception of the future?
'Databanks in a Free Society' by Alan Westin and Michael Baker. It's a report for the National Academy of Sciences. It's like 600 pages in which they show how many data banks we have. We get a sense for counties, localities, states, the federal government amassing information and sharing it.
If we looked at this book and took it seriously, we would've really in earnest said, 'Hold on, we've got to do something.' This isn't new, this is not unregulable, this isn't something we don't understand. We've been building databases of information effectively since the mid-1960s, and we've been sharing it through network systems since the early 1970s.
Intel cancels chipmaking plans in the EU
Intel is canceling billion-dollar projects in Germany and Poland, which POLITICO's Pieter Haeck reports will have major consequences for the European Union.
During an earnings call late on Thursday, Intel said that it was nixing plans to build a €30 billion chip-manufacturing complex in Magdeburg, Germany, and a €5 billion plant in Wroclaw, Poland. The facilities were set to begin production in 2027, and national governments had pledged to contribute large subsidies to the efforts.
In a note tied to the earnings call, Intel announced that it also expects to cut 15 percent of its employees this year.
Intel's moves are spoiling the EU's ambitions to boost its domestic infrastructure for manufacturing semiconductors. The bloc has pledged to increase its share in the global microchips value chain to 20 percent by 2030. Yet the EU reported last year that it has only raised its share to 10.5 percent.
California's AI rules could set a new national standard
After much dissension, California privacy regulators have finalized rules on automated decisionmaking tools, POLITICO's Tyler Katzenberger reports.
On Thursday, the California Privacy Protection Agency's (CPPA) board passed the regulations in a unanimous vote. The nation-leading protections enable consumers to opt out of some automated systems that make decisions on everything from college admissions to hiring. However, California's Office of Administrative Law still has to approve the policy plan.
Labor and privacy advocates, business groups and Big Tech companies such as Apple and Google have been bickering over the scope of the rules. Tyler reports that none of them are happy with the final result, as many of their recommendations didn't make it into the final plan. While companies handling personal data do have to submit to regular audits and risk assessments, the regulations won't apply to generative AI systems and first-party behavioral advertising.
post of the day
THE FUTURE IN 5 LINKS
Stay in touch with the whole team: Aaron Mak (amak@politico.com); Mohar Chatterjee (mchatterjee@politico.com); Steve Heuser (sheuser@politico.com); Nate Robson (nrobson@politico.com); and Daniella Cheslow (dcheslow@politico.com).
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Boston Globe
an hour ago
- Boston Globe
When Trump meets Putin, anything could happen
Top Republicans were horrified. Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., called it a 'disgraceful performance.' Trump's own national security adviser at the time, John Bolton, would later write that 'Putin had to be laughing uproariously at what he had gotten away with in Helsinki.' Trump plans to see Putin on Friday in Alaska for the first time since his return to the White House to discuss the U.S. president's goal of ending the war between Russia and Ukraine. With Putin pressing peace proposals that heavily favor Russia, many analysts and former Trump officials worry that he will once again turn a meeting with Trump to his advantage. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up During Trump's first term, he and Putin met six times in person and had several more phone conversations. (His successor, Joe Biden, met Putin only once, in June 2021, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine.) Advertisement Those interactions alarmed many of Trump's senior aides, who watched as the U.S. president disregarded their advice, excluded them from meetings with the Russian leader and proposed impractical ideas that appeared to have been planted by Putin, like creating a U.S.-Russia 'impenetrable Cyber Security unit.' The idea was dropped as soon as Trump got back to Washington. Advertisement The relationship has grown more complicated in Trump's second term. In recent months Trump, eager to fulfill his promises of settling the war between Russia and Ukraine, has grown irritated by Putin's unwillingness to de-escalate the conflict. Putin will land in Alaska determined to rewind Trump's view of the war to February, when he berated Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy at a contentious White House meeting for not showing more gratitude for U.S. support, while speaking warmly about Putin. 'Since the blowup between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Europeans, Ukrainians and Ukraine's supporters inside the administration have cobbled together a policy of helping Ukraine stay in the fight and preventing the lurch by Trump to embrace Russia's view of the conflict,' said Andrew Weiss, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. 'The real test on Friday will be how much of that policy survives the first in-person contact between Trump and Putin in his second term,' Weiss added. The White House portrays the meeting as an example of Trump's dedication to stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine and defends his unconventional style as a needed break from slow-moving diplomatic customs. But critics worry that the hastily planned conversation will play into the hands of Putin, a former KGB agent known as a master manipulator. 'I think he believes he should reel Trump back in, and believes his KGB skills will do that,' Bolton said in an interview with NewsNation last week. The Russian leader may also benefit from the fact that Trump, in contrast to his first term, has few advisers pushing back against Putin's worldview. For his trip to Helsinki, for instance, Trump was surrounded by such Russia hawks as Bolton, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis. Advertisement Today, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is the lone member of Trump's inner circle with a clear record of criticizing Putin. But even Rubio, who also serves as Trump's national security adviser, has softened his tone since joining Trump's Cabinet. The Alaska meeting was set after Trump's special envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Putin in Moscow last week. Witkoff, a friend of Trump and a fellow real estate mogul, had no diplomatic experience before joining government. He has been criticized for meeting with Putin without other U.S. officials and for echoing his talking points afterward. To be sure, the Russia hawks around Trump in his first term often had little success. When Trump called Putin after the Russian president was reelected in a March 2018 vote widely seen as illegitimate, Trump's aides placed a clear instruction in his briefing papers: 'DO NOT CONGRATULATE.' Trump did so anyway. Not even a federal investigation into 2016 Russian election interference was enough to restrain Trump. When the two leaders last met in person, on the sidelines of a 2019 Group of 20 gathering in Osaka, Japan, Trump joked with Putin about the subject. 'Don't meddle in the election!' Trump said, with a smirk and a finger wag. Putin grinned in delight. The investigation, and the presence of Putin critics at high levels of his administration, may have led Trump to conduct his conversations with unusual secrecy, however. When the men first sat down together, at a G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, Trump was joined only by his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, and an interpreter. After the meeting, Trump took the interpreter's notes and ordered him not to disclose what he heard. Advertisement That evening, Trump and Putin had an impromptu conversation, initiated by Trump, at a group dinner. No other Americans were present, and the White House confirmed the meeting only after surprised witnesses spoke to reporters. Asked by reporters what he had told Trump in Hamburg about the 2016 election, Putin replied, 'I got the impression that my answers satisfied him.' For his part, Trump called a New York Times reporter in Hamburg just as he was departing from the summit and said Putin had told him that Russia could not have been involved in the 2016 election because its operations were so sophisticated they never would have been detected. Trump said he was 'very impressed' by that argument, a case he went on to make in public. Analysts said they have low expectations for the sort of breakthrough on Ukraine that Trump is hoping to achieve in Alaska. Putin has shown every sign that he believes he can gain more on the battlefield than in negotiations -- at least on the terms Trump has so far required. Maria Snegovaya, a senior fellow for Russia and Eurasia with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, noted that in his first term Trump tried to strike major deals with the authoritarian leaders of such nations as China and North Korea, with limited results. 'In general, Trump's history of meetings with strong men from Xi Jinping to Kim Jong Un does not lead to a successful deal that follows,' she said. Advertisement Fiona Hill, who was senior director for Europe and Russia on the National Security Council in the first Trump White House, agreed that any breakthrough appeared unlikely. Putin and his aides have been frustrated at a lack of diplomatic progress with the Trump administration, and Hill said she sees little fresh ground for a deal, even one favorable to Putin. The Russians 'always want something they can take to the bank, an agreement they can hold the U.S. to,' she said. 'They were excited by Witkoff at first, since he's a direct channel to Trump, but they're frustrated there's no structure around it.' While Putin might welcome a leader-to-leader meeting, she said, 'he wants the details to be worked out later. And Trump isn't a details guy.' This article originally appeared in
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
MSNBC's Joe Scarborough reveals DC journalist privately shared concerns about crime while publicly denouncing Trump's plan
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough suggested that some liberal media figures blasting President Donald Trump's federal takeover of Washington, DC were not being entirely honest about their concerns over crime in the nation's capital, on Tuesday's 'Morning Joe.' Scarborough said he found it 'interesting' that some reporters critically covering the Trump takeover have privately expressed concerns about their own safety. Advertisement 'This is interesting,' Scarborough said. 'I actually heard from a reporter when this happened, going, 'Well, you know, if he doesn't overreach, this could actually be a good thing for quality of life,' etc, because in DC right now, I had this happen to my family and I had that, and they go down the list. And then I saw him tweet something completely different.' Scarborough, who said he's lived in DC for more than three decades, added that crime isn't as bad as it was two or three years ago, but it still was not a safe city. 'It's certainly not as safe as the nation's capital should be.' Advertisement Trump announced Monday that he would place the city's police department under direct federal control and deploy National Guard troops to 'reestablish law, order and public safety.' Top Democrats, including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, criticized the move as unnecessary, pointing to a reported decline in homicides. Liberal media personalities such as CNN's Dana Bash and NBC's Jonathan Allen argued that the most violent day in recent DC history was January 6, 2021, during the Capitol riot. 3 MSNBC host Joe Scarborough suggests liberal media figures calling out President Trump's federal takeover of Washington, D.C., are not being truthful when it comes to crime occurring in the nation's capital. Getty Images for Global Citizen Advertisement 3 President Trump has considered deploying the National Guard to the nation's capital to 'reestablish law, order and public safety.' Kyle Mazza/NurPhoto/Shutterstock During the 'Morning Joe' segment, MSNBC host Symone Sanders Townsend pushed back, saying she has lived in DC for the past decade and believes rising crime fears are largely about perception, not reality. 'The way I've heard DC being described this morning, is like it's a city under siege. Like it's a dangerous place, clutching your pearls, got to keep your bag under your dress when you leave the house and that is just not true,' she argued, while acknowledging 'instances of juvenile crime.' She argued that more police on the streets would not address the root causes of juvenile crime and accused Trump of amplifying public fears. Advertisement 3 Multiple liberal media figures, including CNN's Dana Bash and NBC's Jonathan Allen, still say the violence in D.C. is nothing compared to what happened during the Capitol Riot on January 6, 2021. Jemal Countess – CNP 'We need to rethink what makes cities safe in America,' she added. Scarborough countered that even lifelong Democrats are worried about their safety in Washington. He read a message from a liberal resident who refused to walk outside past 8 p.m. and whose friends had been carjacked or shot at, calling it 'a change from a decade ago.' 'I guarantee you that's a person that has never voted for a Republican in their life,' Scarborough said. 'This isn't imagined. People you know, that I know, that they love, they and their friends don't feel safe in Washington, DC.' During a press conference on Monday, Trump challenged liberal journalists to be honest about crime concerns in the city. 'I understand a lot of you tend to be on the liberal side, but you don't want to get — you don't want to get mugged and raped and shot and killed,' Trump said. 'And you all know people and friends of yours that that happened. And so you can be anything you want, but you want to have safety in the streets. You want to be able to leave your apartment or your house where you live and feel safe and go into a store to buy a newspaper or buy something. And you don't have that now.'
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Analysis: Trump gets what he wants in DC crackdown as Democrats fumble response
Donald Trump FacebookTweetLink President Donald Trump's militarized crime crackdown in Washington, DC, is a clarifying political moment. It's again exposed Democrats' struggles to combat Trump's hardline law-and-order rhetoric and splits within their party that the president exploited to win two elections. Party leaders who keep citing statistics showing crime coming down are hardly consoling residents of a relatively small city that has seen 100 homicides this year. Trump might be better at recognizing fears of violent crime. But as usual, he's adopted an extreme position, declaring a state of emergency when one doesn't exist. He has few ideas to tackle the underlying causes of crime. He demonizes the homeless, but his economic policies could make the problem worse. Like his peace deals and trade agreements, his crime purge may be mostly for show. Residents of the District of Columbia, meanwhile, have a right to feel unsafe. Trump's surge of federal officers and soldiers onto the streets might fill personnel shortages in the police department. But the move is likely temporary, and the same dangers will return once the city is no longer Trump's prop. This all points to a big problem with the vicious politics of the Trump era. Every issue gets boiled down to partisan fights that forestall solutions and good governance. The fight against crime is nuanced. Three things can be true at once. Namely, that Democrats are hopeless at coining winning messaging; Trump's drastic measures do fit into an increasingly chilling turn toward authoritarianism; and while crime may be down, DC can be dangerous. The city in many ways falls short of what Americans might want for the capital of a great nation. Trump's bombastic White House press conference on Monday, when he announced his takeover of DC's Metropolitan Police Department, was characteristic demagoguery designed to appeal to his hard-core voters. It also underscored how Democrats are hampered by the lack of their own powerful figurehead. Nine months after the last election and 14 before the next one, the party has no one with the skill to parry Trump's flood-the-zone presidency. Once-in-a-generation communicators like presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had the capacity to shape language and positions appealing to multiple constituencies at once. Party lawmakers and candidates then adopted the messaging as their own. Great politicians are teachers; they intuit the electorate's emotions and fears and shape persuasive arguments and policy. But such linguistic dexterity was missing in initial Democratic reactions to the Trump crime surge. Most party leaders raced to proclaim yet another power grab by a wannabe dictator rather than touching on the perils of violent crime. 'For all the talk Republicans give about giving their localities their rights, where are they now?' Senate House Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote on X, saying the crackdown was merely an attempt to detract from Trump scandals. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries wrote on the same site that 'the crime scene in D.C. most damaging to everyday Americans is at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.' Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin told CNN's Kasie Hunt on Monday that Trump wasn't reacting to a 'real emergency' but was instead trying to deflect from his past ties to accused sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. 'He doesn't want to release the Epstein files. So, he wants everybody to look in another direction,' Raskin said. And a group of Democratic lawmakers from Maryland and Virginia warned of the 'soft launch of authoritarianism.' They noted that crime was still too high for those victimized in the final sentence of a long statement. None of these arguments are necessarily wrong. But by focusing first on Trump's repressive motives, they do not immediately address voter concerns over safety. This recalls the last election. When Democrats failed to meet Americans' worries about high immigration rates and high prices, they opened a lane for Trump and his extreme solutions. Saving democracy is great. But people need to feel secure first. Some Democratic strategists want their party to do better. 'Democrats, listen to me, please. Talk about wanting a safe street and lean into wanting safe neighborhoods, while at the same time saying we shouldn't have federal officers in our streets,' Chuck Rocha, one Democratic consultant, told Audie Cornish on 'CNN This Morning.' Democrats have long struggled to make convincing arguments on crime and justice — issues that tease out divisions between the party's right and left flanks and societal and racial themes that are central to its heritage and ideology. The most recent example was over the murder of Minnesota man George Floyd in 2020 by a police officer. Nationwide protests pushed the party to the left amid outrage at police brutality and a justice system that often fails Black Americans. But when some progressive activists demanded the defunding of the police, they handed a priceless political weapon to Republicans and alienated many moderates and independents. This is not a new problem. President Bill Clinton and then-Sen. Joe Biden seemed to have found the answer to the left's vulnerability on law and order in the 1990s by writing crime bills that boosted law enforcement funding, expanded the death penalty and mandated life in prison for criminals with three or more felony convictions. This insulated Democrats from conservative claims that they were weak on crime. But the bills had unintended consequences. They ushered in an era of mass incarceration in which Black Americans were disproportionately condemned to life in overcrowded prisons for comparatively minor offenses. The political impact was corrosive, haunting then-candidate Hillary Clinton in her 2016 primary campaign and Biden in his 2020 White House bid. This week is a reminder that Democrats are still vulnerable to the classic GOP law-and-order gambit deployed by Presidents Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan, and most ruthlessly by Trump. It's far easier to demonize criminals than to produce real solutions. But Democrats need to come up with something before 2028. Their position is similar to that of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, a political communicator on the same plane as Bill Clinton. As opposition leader, Blair needed to win over Britons who wanted more law enforcement while reassuring core Labour Party voters concerned with the socioeconomic origins of crime. He became known for a slogan — 'tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime' — that positioned him as a new kind of progressive politician with a strong appeal to the critical center. It stole the Conservative Party's tough-on-crime mantra and helped win the 1997 election. The Democrats' best hope of a similar act of triangulation might lie with its governors, some of whom may run for president in 2028, and who are already experienced at the executive level of the nuances of addressing crime. One of their number, Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, told CNN's Anderson Cooper on Tuesday that Trump was using the military 'as a cudgel and as a tool to be able to advance his political purposes.' Moore said Trump should emulate methods which he said had reduced homicides and other violent crimes in Baltimore. 'I did it without ever having to once operationalize our National Guard to do municipal policing,' Moore said. While Democratic responses to Trump were politically ineffective, they were often based in truth. Raskin, for instance, pointed out that the Trump's claim to be a champion of the law was absurd. The largest mass crime event in recent years in Washington, DC, was precipitated by the president — the mob assault by supporters he incited against the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Maryland Democrat argued that if Trump were serious about law and order, 'he would not have pardoned 1,600 insurrectionists and violent cop beaters.' By sending National Guard soldiers into the streets in the absence of a crisis, Trump really is adopting the intimidatory tactics of strongman leaders. Some critics worry that his federalization of the capital police force is a test run for a later authoritarian takeover of the city. And the president may also foment lawlessness with his warning that cops could 'do whatever they hell they want.' If Trump really wanted to improve conditions in Washington, he might reverse the GOP-led Congress's $1 billion budget cut to the city that local officials warn will hit public schools, public safety and an overstretched police department. And does the White House have any long-term plans beyond window dressing and shows of force? White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt on Tuesday said that homeless people in the city had a choice of shelters, addiction and mental health services, 'or jail.' She had no specifics on any new administration housing or social services options or long-term care and solutions. But Trump already has what he wants. Military vehicles lined up Wednesday night near the Washington Monument in a striking image that captured his obsession with military projection and the challenges to US founding values his actions represent.
