The Political Hat

     Twin bills in Michigan, HB 4429 and SB 284, which would have mandated age verification for software, operating systems, and even hardware, have been withdrawn. Sadly, the reason for the withdrawal wasn’t objection to the government being able to control who can and can not use these devices and systems, but that said information wouldn’t be kept “private” enough:

“Critics said the legislation lacked key privacy protections, including limits on data use, restrictions on combining data with other personal information and requirements for deletion.

“‘The infrastructure these bills would have created is a persistent, always-on identity layer baked into the operating system of every device in Michigan, with no accompanying privacy protections,’ said Patrice Johnson, chair and co-founder of the Michigan Fair Elections Institute. ‘These bills would not have improved that standing; they would have deepened the gap and reaped long-term negative effects on fair elections.’”

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     The sudden and seemingly coordinated drive in both Blue and Red states to require age verification in order to use an operating system or an app store claims another state, Michigan.   However, the twin bills introduced in the Legislature, one by a Democrat and one by a Republican, extends this to hardware and requires that device manufacturers. Both HB 4429 and SB 284 describe a “covered manufacturer” as “a manufacturer of a device, an operating system for a device, or an application store.” and requires them to:

Sec. 5. (1) A covered manufacturer shall take commercially reasonable and technically feasible steps to do all of the following:

(a) On activation of a device, determine or estimate the age of the device’s user or users.

(b) Using an application programming interface, provide an application store, website, application, and online service with a digital signal regarding the age of the device’s user or users, […]

     Unsurprisingly, it uses the same exact age brackets as all the other bills. It also has the same convenient safe-harbor protection for those who use “commercially reasonable and technically feasible steps”.

     The bills also allow the Attorney General to “promulgate rules […] to establish the processes covered manufacturers must use to comply with this act” without any check or balance.

     This is the camels nose sticking in the tent; allow that in and soon you’re getting trampled.

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