Latest news with #SB442
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Sex ed bill going to Braun requires students view fetal development videos. Is it anti-abortion?
A controversial bill on its way to Gov. Mike Braun's desk would require Hoosier students in sex education classes to view video of an ultrasound and computer renderings of the stages of fetal development, which one national organization says is a tactic of anti-abortion groups. The video language in Senate Bill 442 was added to the bill in early April by the House Committee on Education and has drawn condemnation from Democrats who have expressed concerns over whether medically accurate materials would be shown to students. The final version of the bill was approved by both the House and Senate April 23 and now heads to Braun. SB 442 specifies that human sexuality courses in Indiana must include presentations on 'human growth and development during pregnancy,' and states they must be a minimum three-minute, 'high-definition' ultrasound video of fetal development and 'high quality' computer renderings or animation of the fertilization of egg and stages of the growth of a fetus. Similar language requiring students in sex education classes to watch fetal development videos has popped up in statehouses around the country this year, including in New Hampshire and Florida. Stateline reported in February that other Republican-led states, including Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska, were passing requirements aimed at having students watch a video anti-abortion group Live Action created titled 'Baby Olivia.' SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, a sex education nonprofit, in a March news release said the movement to show 'medically inaccurate' fetal development videos and ultrasounds in classrooms are a tactic of 'anti-abortion extremists.' Indiana passed a near-total abortion ban in 2022. The language in SB 442 on ultrasound video and fetal development animations does not explicitly describe Live Action's Baby Olivia video. The bill says that the materials must be 'medically accurate and age appropriate.' But Senate Democrats on April 23 questioned the reasoning behind the specificity of the language in the bill, down to the minimum three-minute timeline. The "Baby Olivia" video is just over three minutes long. 'You can say that the House put it in there, but there has to be some reason why you kept it in there,' Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, asked Republican Sen. Gary Byrne, who authored the bill. 'Is it based on some evidence that you have in terms of what is best practices with high-definition ultrasound videos on length of time?' More: Indiana already banned abortions. Now, state lawmakers are eyeing abortion pills. Byrne, of Byrneville, said he received several examples of videos that could apply to the requirement in SB 442. When Sen. JD Ford, D-Indianapolis, asked Byrne specifically if he knew about the Baby Olivia video, Byrne said he couldn't give the specific titles of the videos he watched. Byrne stood firm that individual school boards would have to approve the video shown to students in sex education courses, which is the main focus of SB 442. 'There's plenty of examples of videos,' Byrne said. 'The school boards get to choose what video they would approve, and again, the parent would decide whether they want their child to participate in that, because that would be listed on the materials used.' The video language is not the only controversy that has hit SB 442. During a conference committee meeting on April 21, Byrne said a he removed a requirement to teach consent to sexual activity from the bill. By April 23, Byrne shared in a statement that the language was added back to the bill. Contact IndyStar state government and politics reporter Brittany Carloni at Follow her on Twitter/X @CarloniBrittany. Sign up for our free weekly politics newsletter, Checks & Balances, curated by IndyStar political and government reporters. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Indiana sex ed bill heading to Braun requires fetal development video viewing
Indianapolis Star
24-04-2025
- Politics
- Indianapolis Star
Sex ed bill going to Braun requires students view fetal development videos. Is it anti-abortion?
A controversial bill on its way to Gov. Mike Braun's desk would require Hoosier students in sex education classes to view video of an ultrasound and computer renderings of the stages of fetal development, which one national organization says is a tactic of anti-abortion groups. The video language in Senate Bill 442 was added to the bill in early April by the House Committee on Education and has drawn condemnation from Democrats who have expressed concerns over whether medically accurate materials would be shown to students. The final version of the bill was approved by both the House and Senate April 23 and now heads to Braun. SB 442 specifies that human sexuality courses in Indiana must include presentations on 'human growth and development during pregnancy,' and states they must be a minimum three-minute, 'high-definition' ultrasound video of fetal development and 'high quality' computer renderings or animation of the fertilization of egg and stages of the growth of a fetus. Similar language requiring students in sex education classes to watch fetal development videos has popped up in statehouses around the country this year, including in New Hampshire and Florida. Stateline reported in February that other Republican-led states, including Arkansas, Iowa and Nebraska, were passing requirements aimed at having students watch a video anti-abortion group Live Action created titled ' Baby Olivia.' SIECUS: Sex Ed for Social Change, a sex education nonprofit, in a March news release said the movement to show 'medically inaccurate' fetal development videos and ultrasounds in classrooms are a tactic of 'anti-abortion extremists.' Indiana passed a near-total abortion ban in 2022. The language in SB 442 on ultrasound video and fetal development animations does not explicitly describe Live Action's Baby Olivia video. The bill says that the materials must be 'medically accurate and age appropriate.' But Senate Democrats on April 23 questioned the reasoning behind the specificity of the language in the bill, down to the minimum three-minute timeline. The "Baby Olivia" video is just over three minutes long. 'You can say that the House put it in there, but there has to be some reason why you kept it in there,' Sen. Shelli Yoder, D-Bloomington, asked Republican Sen. Gary Byrne, who authored the bill. 'Is it based on some evidence that you have in terms of what is best practices with high-definition ultrasound videos on length of time?' Byrne, of Byrneville, said he received several examples of videos that could apply to the requirement in SB 442. When Sen. JD Ford, D-Indianapolis, asked Byrne specifically if he knew about the Baby Olivia video, Byrne said he couldn't give the specific titles of the videos he watched. Byrne stood firm that individual school boards would have to approve the video shown to students in sex education courses, which is the main focus of SB 442. 'There's plenty of examples of videos,' Byrne said. 'The school boards get to choose what video they would approve, and again, the parent would decide whether they want their child to participate in that, because that would be listed on the materials used.' The video language is not the only controversy that has hit SB 442. During a conference committee meeting on April 21, Byrne said a he removed a requirement to teach consent to sexual activity from the bill. By April 23, Byrne shared in a statement that the language was added back to the bill.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Texas Senate passes bills to fight AI-generated sexual images of children, non-consenting adults
AUSTIN (KXAN) — The Texas Legislature is working on several bills that could introduce more protections against AI-generated explicit images used for harassment and the production of child sexual assault materials (CSAM). February: Bill to protect victims of deepfake 'revenge' porn passes US Senate The Texas Senate passed three such bills by unanimous votes on Wednesday. SB 20 and SB 1621 both update the state's statues against the possession of CSAM to include AI-generated content. SB 442 would update state law to consider AI-generated content as potentially unlawful production or distribution of sexually explicit video, if made without the consent of the person it depicts. NewsNation: What state laws protect kids against AI-generated deepfakes? Sen. José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, asked prior to the vote on SB 20 if it could take effect sooner than Sept. 1. 'There are not enough negative adjectives out there to describe people that would use a computer software animation or something to depict the child in some form of pornography or obscene visual material,' Menéndez said. 'I would like to see what we could do to get any material or any people that are possessing or creating this material to understand that they're going to be dealt with severely through the criminal justice system, and that we're not going to tolerate this.' A Texas law can only take immediate effect if more than two-thirds of both chambers vote in favor of the bill's final version. Sen. Tan Parker, R-Dallas, spoke about SB 20 prior to the vote. He is one of the bill's authors. 'The rapid advancement of artificial intelligence has created powerful tools that, while being beneficial in many areas, are being exploited to produce AI-generated and virtual [CSAM],' Parker said, 'Unlike traditional CSAM, which is already illegal, AI-generated images, videos and deep fakes depicting child exploitation exist in a legal gray area, allowing offenders to create and share disturbing content with impunity. This loophole must be closed immediately.' In addition to those two bills, the Texas House of Representatives is working on its own legislation to protect against AI misuse. On Wednesday, the House Judiciary and Civil Jurisprudence committee heard testimony about House Bills 421 and 581. Both bills were authored by Rep. Mary González, D-El Paso, who chairs the Texas House LGBTQ Caucus. HB 421 would allow for victims of AI-generated explicit images to sue the creators of such images. If the lawsuit succeeds, the plaintiff could be rewarded exemplary damages. Rep. Armando Walle, D-Houston, also authored the bill. HB 581 also creates grounds for lawsuits; this time, against a commercial entity who creates an AI program that can create sexual material harmful to minors, which covers explicit images of adults. Businesses providing explicit AI-generation tools would need to comply with Texas' age verification law and have consent from the person whose likeness is used in the produced image. González told the committee that the House has 'a responsibility to do something' to combat the use of AI-generated CSAM. She said that her solutions, aimed at companies that create AI tools for explicit image creation, would likely inconvenience some in the tech sector. 'Here's what's happening — a kid, a 12-year-old girl, her picture is taken, and another student uses her picture and creates sexually explicit content. The kid goes to school, it's traumatic,' González said. 'If it stops a 12-year-old girl from being bullied because [someone] had created sexual content about her, then yeah, let's inconvenience some people, because the long term effects are completely harmful and traumatic.' Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Politico
04-03-2025
- Business
- Politico
Labor channels George Orwell on AI
Presented by Available free through April 11, POLITICO Pro's Technology: California Decoded newsletter will explore how the Golden State is defining tech policy within its borders and beyond. QUICK FIX — Top labor leader explains her push for first-in-nation workplace tech rules in exclusive interview. — Why Melania Trump's deepfake porn crusade feels awfully familiar. — A California Republican notches a first win for looser crypto laws. Welcome to California Decoded! Happy Tuesday. Welcome to Day Two of our shiny new newsletter. As promised yesterday, we have an exciting announcement about the final member of our team: Christine Mui from our federal tech reporting team is moving west this spring to cover everything Silicon Valley politics and will be a regular contributor to California Decoded. Send feedback, tips and story ideas to tkatzenberger@ chasedf@ and cmui@ Driving the day FIRST IN DECODED: CAMERAS OFF — California's powerful Labor Federation is channeling George Orwell in its latest fight to influence how and where surveillance tools are deployed in the workplace. The goal: keep big bosses (and Big Tech) from becoming Big Brother. In an exclusive interview with California Decoded, Labor Fed President Lorena Gonzalez said the group is sponsoring three first-in-the-nation bills in Sacramento this year aimed at limiting how companies can use AI-powered monitoring systems to manage their employees. 'We need guardrails and we need regulation that applies to everybody,' Gonzalez told us. 'It doesn't matter where you work. You should have that right to privacy.' It's a notable strategy shift for the Labor Fed. The group of more than 1,300 unions representing over 2.3 million workers has previously thrown its weight behind AI bills on issues within a specific sector like call centers or trucking. That approach was mostly a dud last year: Only one of the five bills in the Federation's tech and AI package became law. Two of those measures — Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry's AB 33 on autonomous trucks and Sen. Lola Smallwood-Cuevas' SB 442 on self-checkouts — are back this year to round out the Labor Fed's broader, five-bill package on AI and automation, though both are scaled back compared to their 2024 counterparts. The labor group is hoping the new approach could improve its odds with Gov. Gavin Newsom after he rejected the autonomous trucks bill and a handful of other ambitious AI measures last year, citing a need to balance safety concerns with the state's emphasis on bolstering innovation. 'I don't think anyone can argue innovation should outweigh the right to be able to use the restroom or eat your lunch in private without being watched and surveilled by your boss,' Gonzalez said. 'I don't think the governor is going to have that argument, but if somebody wants to, we're happy to have that. That's a winning issue.' She cited tools like Cisco's Spaces, which can enable managers to track workers' location in an office space. And Walmart has considered using facial recognition to identify unhappy customers, according to Business Insider. Gonzalez acknowledged Newsom could still foil this year's efforts, citing the trucking bill and others that have breezed through the Legislature only for the governor to tank them. But she's optimistic that privacy is a salient issue that could galvanize workers and capitalize on Democrats' growing mistrust of Big Tech as high-profile leaders cozy up to President Donald Trump. A Pew Research poll from 2023 found voters overwhelmingly opposed employers using AI to track employees' movements while at work. 'For a long time in California, Democrats were lulled into believing that the Silicon Valley, venture capitalist tech bros were their friends, and I think it's very clear now that they're not,' Gonzalez said. 'They care about becoming billionaires at the expense of working people. Nobody's privacy is ensured.' The Labor Fed could also face pushback from business groups it's battled before, with companies like Cisco arguing its tech already offers privacy protections in compliance with state and national laws, as well as Europe's more stringent data security rules. And there are still plenty of unknowns on the table. Just one of the three bills in the Labor Fed's privacy package is public so far: Assemblymember Sade Elhawary's AB 1331. The freshman Los Angeles Democrat's measure would bar employers from using AI or other tools, such as devices that record workers' biometric data, to monitor employees while they are off the clock or in off-duty spaces like break rooms and cafeterias. The other two — Assemblymember Isaac Bryan's AB 1221 and state Sen. Jerry McNerney's SB 7 — are still placeholder bills with scant details. Gonzalez declined to share specifics before the full texts drop but said Bryan's legislation will seek to restrict companies' use of employee data gathered through AI surveillance tools. Bryan, a Los Angeles Democrat, told California Decoded his bill reflects worker concerns that employers are using personal data collected without consent to 'unfairly put decision-making outside of the hands of managers and real people.' McNerney spokesperson Bob Gammon said the Stockton Democrat was 'still working on language' for SB 7 and declined to share details. Deepfakes ANALYSIS: DEJA VU — It was déjà vu of a sort when first lady Melania Trump appeared on Capitol Hill Monday to ballyhoo a bill to outlaw deepfake revenge porn that closely resembled a state law Newsom signed last year. The Melania-backed TAKE IT DOWN Act has bipartisan support just like many similar bills out of Sacramento do. California legislators are going even further this year, with Democratic Assemblymember Rebecca Bauer-Kahan holding a hearing on online violence against women last week and carrying a bill this session that would make it a crime even to share deepfaked porn. It's not just the bills that share commonalities: Melania Trump's audience with lawmakers and Bauer-Kahan's hearing both included some partisan and intra-party finger-pointing. The first lady, for her part, took the opportunity to criticize Democratic lawmakers for their lack of attendance at the event. Silicon Valley Rep. Ro Khanna was the only Democrat reportedly in attendance, while Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.) didn't show, though both support a version of the measure the first lady is pushing in the Senate and House respectively. That felt familiar after Bauer-Kahan's hearing in the Assembly's Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee last week where she took the panel's male members to task for their attendance, or lack thereof. Asked about where they were instead, some of the men on the committee said they had briefly checked into the hearing, or sent staffers because of a scheduling conflict, our colleagues at California Playbook reported. Crypto THAT WAS EASY — Republican Assemblymember Phillip Chen's bid to keep California cryptocurrency traders from coughing up five-figure licensing fees breezed through its first hearing yesterday, passing the Assembly Banking and Finance Committee with unanimous, bipartisan support. It's a solid win for the Orange County lawmaker in an overwhelmingly Democratic statehouse. It's also a potential signal that lawmakers from either side of the aisle aren't itching to pick a fight with crypto companies after the industry flexed its campaign finance muscles by spending big in the 2024 elections. There's no registered opposition to Chen's AB 236 so far — even from California's Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, which proposed the $20,000 licensing fee Chen seeks to thwart. Chen's bill still has to clear the Assembly Appropriations Committee before making it to the Assembly floor. Byte Sized — Nvidia shares fell 9 percent yesterday amid a marketwide tumble sparked by Trump's tariffs (CNBC) — Republican California Rep. Jay Obernolte faced fierce public backlash, shouts of 'Nazi' over supporting Elon Musk's DOGE (Los Angeles Times) — Texas is gunning for California's tech capital crown as a budget-friendly alternative to Silicon Valley (TechSpot) — Meanwhile, Waymo launches today in Austin, Texas (AP) — Rival tech giants want Australia to include YouTube in its ban on social media for kids (Reuters) Have a tip, event or memecoin idea to send us? Do reach out: Emma Anderson, California tech editor; Chase DiFeliciantonio, AI and automation reporter; and Tyler Katzenberger, Sacramento tech reporter.
Yahoo
03-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Indiana legislature goes all in on its big government era
State lawmakers focus on taking away local control (Niki Kelly/Indiana Capital Chronicle) The core message coming from this year's legislative session so far: state legislators know best. They know better than local police, sheriffs, athletic directors, teachers, school board members, and on and on. Looking at the bills that will be picked back up this week, it's hard not to conclude that the legislature is in their 'big government solutions' era (with apologies to Swifties). Bill after bill usurping local control and imposing Statehouse-created one-size-fits-all mandates have passed committees. In many cases, the bill's author has little to no data – and few, if any, anecdotes – to support their moves to usurp local control and restrict professional judgment. And a shocking number of these bills passed without a single local official or community member testifying in support. This inclination toward expanding state power has been obvious for years on big ticket items like reproductive freedom, parental rights on health care, school curriculum, and free speech. But, over time, it has crept into almost every facet of Hoosiers' lives. And few local officials or subject matter experts are off-limits, it would seem. For instance, HB 1393 and HB 1531 both passed, doubling down on existing requirements that local police and sheriffs cooperate with federal immigration officials. In testimony on HB 1531, legislators heard concerns from the Indiana Sheriffss Association about immigration detainers. These are requests from the federal government to hold someone in jail past the time they can be held there under state law. ISA shared that sheriffs sometimes receive faulty detainers, including ones that require them to detain U.S. citizens. Nonetheless, the bill passed the committee by a large margin. SB 289 and SB 442 both include extensive annual mandates for local school districts regarding posting information online about staff anti-discrimination trainings and human sexuality curriculum, respectively. SB 442 goes further by requiring that every school board in Indiana also annually approve all human sexuality curriculum. In advocating for his bill, the author commiserated with how overworked school board members are before mandating more work for them without any additional funding or support. SB 143 makes every employee of every county and local government a 'mandated informer' who is required to turn over 'information' (undefined in the bill) broadly relating the minor's well-being if the parent requests it. Local government agencies are then subject to a lawsuit if they do not disclose 'information,' even if disclosing it to a parent may put the minor's safety at risk. And HB 1041 substitutes the opinions of legislators for the expertise of coaches, athletic directors, and national governing bodies for sports when it comes to inclusion of transgender women in women's college sports. And beyond the bills that are still moving, at least two others came very close to passage. HB 1662 would have required local police to arrest and prosecutors to prosecute some people sleeping on public sidewalks or spaces. Not only would the bill have usurped the expertise of local officials when it comes to how to respond to homelessness, it would have also required those local officials to spend scarce local taxpayer dollars on increased nights in jail and transportation and storage of the belongings of the people they are forced to arrest. Finally, SB 143 would have required all counties in the state to cut early voting days from 28 to 14 regardless of the judgement of local elections officials about the value of those additional two weeks. Taken alongside similar bills from previous sessions, many of which are now law, it's clear that state legislators are not only comfortable with usurping decision-making from local officials and subject matter experts, but are eager to do it. And, unfortunately, their actions are having real consequences. The state rarely, if ever, allocates funds to pay for the additional mandates they put on local officials. Just like it doesn't take responsibility when mandates based on their opinions cause harm to Hoosiers that could have been prevented if experts were allowed to do their jobs. State legislation is supposed to focus on the big picture. In their zeal to control more and more aspects of Hoosiers' lives, state legislators are ignoring this; and we're all worse off for it. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
