Tag: nanny state

These Senators Want the Federal Government To Verify Your Age Online

Despite their many disagreements, Republicans and Democrats have developed a common affinity for social media regulation, largely relying on the disputed assumption that platforms like Instagram and TikTok severely degrade children’s mental health. The latest regulatory proposal in Congress is the Protecting Kids on Social Media Act, sponsored by a bipartisan group of four senators: Sens. Brian Schatz (D–Hawaii), Tom Cotton (R–Ark.), Chris Murphy (D–Conn.), and Katie Britt (R–Ala.).

The bill features several flawed policies, drawing from recent state and federal social media proposals. It would require social media platforms to verify the age of every would-be user. Platforms could allow the unverified to view content, but not to interact with it or with other users. After providing age verification to register an account, underage teens would need proof of parental consent. Those under 13 years old would be completely barred from registering accounts.

The bill does propose one novel—and potentially dangerous—innovation. It would establish a “pilot program” for a federally run verification system. This system would ascertain social media users’ age and, for teen users, confirm parental consent.

Age verification mandates, which invariably entail intrusive data gathering, threaten user data privacy and security. They also violate the individual’s right to speak freely and anonymously online. Although the bill’s authors sought to mitigate the risks their implementation would pose to users, they largely failed. Such risks are inextricable from the process of age verification itself. The bill proposes a legal safe harbor for social media platforms that choose to use the pilot program. To avoid even the appearance of noncompliance, many platforms will do just that.

The proposed pilot program would require would-be social media users to submit documentation to the Department of Commerce in order to verify their age. In return, the pilot program would provide a “credential” to be submitted to social media platforms. Users would verify parental consent by the same process. To administer the program, the government would necessarily obtain and store troves of personal data on American social media users—to prove regulatory compliance, if nothing else.

To protect user privacy, the bill directs Commerce to “keep no records of the social media platforms where users have verified their identity.” It would also forbid the agency from sharing user data with platforms or law enforcement without user consent, a court order, or a program-specific fraud or oversight investigation.

Nonetheless, the bill would require users to register personal information with state authorities simply to speak online. Government agencies, under a legal pretext, could retrieve from social media platforms the records necessary to identify user accounts. Democrats have long been skeptical of the federal government’s data abuses, but both parties—including newly skeptical Republicans—ought to understand these risks.

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NY Gov. Kathy Hochul ‘test-marketing’ a ban on all tobacco sales

The pro-legal weed Hochul administration is quietly trying to fire up support for a complete ban on the sale of tobacco products in New York, The Post has learned.

The state Health Department commissioned a new survey aimed at gauging support for an all-out prohibition — despite Gov. Hochul’s failure to secure support from state legislators to include a ban on menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products in the yet-to-be-approved state budget.

“What is your opinion about a policy that would end the sale of all tobacco products in New York within 10 years?” were among the questions asked last week in the “New York Local Opinion Leaders Survey,” examined by the Post.

Another asks: “What is your opinion about a policy that would ban the sale of all tobacco products to those born after a certain date? For example, those born after the year 2010 or later would never be sold tobacco.”

The poll also solicited input on whether there’s backing for other tobacco-related measures, including capping the number of retailers who can sell “products in a community” and prohibiting its sales near schools.

The survey, conducted by nonprofit research organization RTI International, was distributed to “community leaders” statewide, including “county legislators and county directors of public health,” according to an April 13 memo to prospective participants from Jennifer Lee, director of the Health Department’s Bureau of Tobacco Control. 

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They Must Have A Good Reason

There is a strange idea hovering about that if you don’t know something then it doesn’t exist.

Kind of like the image of the proverbial ostrich with his head in the sand. But it goes beyond denial. Ignorance is when you don’t know something at all, denial is when you know it, but you ignore it.

What I am talking about here is when you know something and do not deny it, but simply rationalize it away with a statement like “they must have a good reason for doing that,” or similarly, “maybe we don’t know all that there is to know about that.” Which is often followed with, “and I don’t have the time, (inclination, care, interest, curiosity, ability, intelligence, etc.) to look into it further.”

This has always bugged me to some extent, but I must admit I have been marginally guilty of this sort of thinking myself. I mean, do we really have the time to check everything? Well, now I think we have to make the time, and, of course, not everything is important enough to require vetting it for truth. That is an awful thing to say, but I am afraid it is the truth.

Part of this “gullibility” that causes many people to just brush things off assuming that all is ok comes from indoctrination from an early age. I grew up in a culture that seemed to be really obsessed with people’s safety—particularly the safety of children. Think of all the recalls of toys and such. If some toy comes out that has the slightest bit of uncertainty about how it might harm your child, it is pulled.

I should not say I “grew up” with this because most of the crap I played with as a kid would be considered a lethal weapon today—Lawn Darts, BB and pellet guns, Vac-U-Forms, chemistry sets, Easy Bake ovens (this was my sister’s toy, she was a little girl, I was a little boy—I tell you this for clarity). The “safety craze” didn’t really start until a decade or so later. I even remember some kid I knew got an “Atomic Energy Lab” toy that had actual uranium ore in the kit.

I would have died (literally) to get my hands on one of these.

Those were the days.

So over the decades, due to these recalls and safety concerns, we have developed a false sense of security. What regulation agency would bother to recall Lawn Darts but at the same time allow an unsafe vaccine to reach the unwilling arms of children? Well, toys are toys, vaccines are medicine. There ‘ya go.

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New Law Mandates Interlocks on All New Cars, but Drunk Driving Tech Isn’t Ready Yet

Buried deep on Page 135 of a $1 trillion spending bill that mainly adds EV charging infrastructure is a small provision that could make a big deal for automakers. Passed last year, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act asks that within three years, new cars would be equipped with drunk-driving deterrents automakers don’t yet know how to comply with. 

As reported by Automotive News, the technology to passively detect if drivers may be drunk could be years away, although efforts are underway to offer the tech as soon as 2026. 

“To be honest, I think it took everybody by surprise, not only in our company, but at all the OEMs and Tier 1’s that this legislation appeared,” Mike Franchy, North American director of supplier Asahi Kasei told Automotive News. 

His company is working on a detector like a breathalyzer to monitor the ethyl alcohol content in the driver’s breath. Similar to an interlock device already on the market, the system could be embedded in a door or steering column. Interlocks on cars have been around for several years and cost thousands to purchase or can be leased for $100 or more per month. Smaller breathalyzer systems are available and can cost as little as $50, although those are portable machines that can’t disable a car’s ignition. Researchers say they may have systems to detect blood-alcohol levels via touch soon, although it’s unclear when that could be available. 

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Why These Popular Chocolate Easter Eggs Are Banned in the US, despite Being Legal Almost Everywhere Else

In January 2011, Manitoba resident Lind Bird was stopped at the US border in northern Minnesota and selected for a random search of her vehicle. During the search, US border officials found and seized a small piece of contraband. Bird was unaware that the item was illegal to bring into the US, but she was informed that she could face a $300 fine if she was caught with it in the country.

Bird was allowed to continue her trip, but a few days later she received a seven-page letter from the US government asking her to formally authorize the destruction of the item that was seized or pay $250 for them to store the item if she wished to contest the seizure.

The item in question was a small chocolate egg with a toy inside, called a Kinder Surprise.

Understandably, Bird found the entire ordeal quite bizarre.

“It’s just a chocolate egg,” Bird said. “And they were making a big deal…It’s ridiculous. It’s so ridiculous.”

When she got the letter, she had trouble taking it seriously. “I thought it was a joke,” she said. “I had to read it twice. But they are serious.”

A similar incident took place in June 2012, when two Seattle men were driving back into the US after a visit to Vancouver. After border officials discovered six Kinder Surprise eggs in their car, the men were detained for two hours and told by a border guard that they could be fined $2,500 per egg.

“I thought [the American border guard] had done his search and hadn’t found anything, and he was joking with us,” said Chris Sweeney, one of the men detained.

“He wasn’t joking.”

“We really didn’t know what was going to happen,” Sweeney continued. “I didn’t know if maybe this was some really important thing that I just wasn’t aware of and they were going to actually give us the fine of $15,000.”

After waiting for 2 hours, the men were allowed to carry on with their trip and take the eggs with them.

“If it was so important that we be stopped and scolded and threatened with thousands of dollars in fines, you’d think it would at least be important enough for them to take [the Kinder eggs], but they didn’t,” Sweeney said.

“Keeping the border secure is obviously important,” he continued, “but somebody needs to take a common sense look at this rule and probably just get rid of it.”

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Massachusetts’ Tobacco Ban Went as Badly as You’d Expect

In November 2019, Massachusetts became the first state in the U.S. to ban the sale of all flavored tobacco and nicotine products, including flavored electronic cigarettes and menthol cigarettes. Four additional states have since imposed flavor bans on some products and similar policies are under consideration in many other jurisdictions. Such bans are popular among legislators and anti-smoking groups, but the latest data from Massachusetts highlight the ban’s unintended consequences. The state’s experiment in prohibition has led to thriving illicit markets, challenges for law enforcement, and prosecution of sellers.

Massachusetts’ Multi-Agency Illegal Tobacco Task Force publishes an annual report providing insight into how the state’s high taxes and flavor prohibitions affect the illicit market. As opponents of the flavor ban predicted, the law has incentivized black market sales of menthol cigarettes and flavored e-cigarettes (“ENDS,” or “electronic nicotine delivery systems,” in the parlance of regulators). “The Task Force identifies the cross-border smuggling of untaxed flavored ENDS products, cigars, and menthol cigarettes as the primary challenge for tobacco enforcement in the Commonwealth,” according to the report. “Inspectors and investigators are routinely encountering or seizing menthol cigarettes, originally purchased in surrounding states, and flavored ENDS products and cigars purchased from unlicensed distributors operating both within and outside the Commonwealth.”

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue reports conducting more than 300 seizures in FY 2022, compared to 170 in 2021 and just 10 in 2020. Many of these involve substantial amounts of products and missed tax revenue. For example, a single search warrant yielded “a large quantity of untaxed ENDS products, [other tobacco products], and Newport Menthol cigarettes affixed with New Hampshire excise tax stamps” representing an estimated $940,000 in unpaid excise taxes.

Revenue officials are seizing so many illicit products, in fact, that they are running out of room to store them. The “Task Force’s increased investigative and enforcement activities during the past year have led to the seizure of large quantities of illegal tobacco products, resulting in a strain on the Task Force’s storage capacity,” says the report. But fear not, they are working on leasing additional space “that will significantly increase storage capacity and allow for continued increased enforcement.”

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What is the US “Gas Stove Ban” REALLY about?

The Biden administration is apparently looking to ban gas stoves, calling them a “hidden danger”. But while that sounds bad enough, a deeper dive shows – as usual – it’s not really about what they say it’s about.

Talk of banning gas stoves and “unregulated indoor air quality” could be a Trojan horse designed to get even more “smart” monitoring technology into your home.

Let’s jump in.

ARE GAS STOVES DANGEROUS?

Well, according to Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the New Scientist and million other outlets and pundits who started talking about it in the last two days, yes.

Earlier this week near-identical articles from the National Review, Bloomberg and CNN detail how the US Consumer Product Safety Commission will be opening “public comment on the dangers of gas stoves sometime this winter”.

The articles claim:

The emissions have been linked to illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions. More than 12 percent of current childhood asthma cases are linked to gas stove use, according to peer-reviewed research published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health last month.

Now would be a good time to talk about the phrase “linked to”. It’s always a good one to look out for in any mainstream publication. Journalists love it because it implies causation without stating it.

Consider, one hundred per cent of serial killers have been linked to the ingestion of water and the wearing of shoes.

If this manipulative use of language were not evidence enough of an agenda, the rather premature deployment of the race card proves it:

Senator Cory Booker (D., N.J.) and Representative Don Beyer (D., Va.) wrote a letter to the agency last month urging the commission to address the issue and calling the harmful emissions a “cumulative burden” on black, Latino and low-income households.

SO, WILL THEY BAN THEM?

Actually, probably not.

Considering that, according to Bloomberg, some 40% of US homes use gas stoves to cook, an outright ban would be impractical to the point of madness. You can’t criminalise 40% of the country. It would be almost unenforceable.

Perhaps they might try a “phasing out”, as they plan for petrol cars in California.

But most likely of all is that this was never really about banning stoves in the first place.

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Kathy Hochul moves to ban gas stoves in New York

On Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul gave her State of the State address which included detailing “The New York Housing Compact,” which she described as a “strategy to address New York’s housing crisis,” and part of the compact involves a ban on gas stoves, oil furnaces, and hot water heaters in commercial construction and new homes. Gas stoves are used in roughly 40 percent of American households.

In her remarks, Hochul said, the compact would mandate “all new construction to be zero-emission, starting in 2025 for small buildings and 2028 for large buildings,” and she said that her plan to use more electric appliances would help “residents struggling with high electric bills.” 

Hochul’s spokeswoman Hazel Crampton-Hays said, “Governor Hochul has been clear that we have to take bold steps on climate to protect the health and safety of our children, and 30 percent of state greenhouse gas emissions come from buildings.” 

A report from Bloomberg earlier in the week claimed that the Biden administration was looking into banning gas stoves to “reduce climate-warming emissions (such as from methane) that exacerbate climate change.” US Consumer Product Safety Commission Commissioner Richard Trumka Jr said, “This is a hidden hazard” and “Any option is on the table. Products that can’t be made safe can be banned.” 

According to Bloomberg, “peer-reviewed research published last month” connected 12 percent of asthma cases in American children to emissions from gas stoves, and the US Consumer Product Safety Commission was considering regulating gas stoves as a response.

The Environmental Protection Agency and the World Health Organization have claimed that gas stoves emit gasses such as carbon monoxide and nitrogen dioxide at levels that are “unsafe and linked to respiratory illness, cardiovascular problems, cancer, and other health conditions.”

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New Zealand Imposes World’s First Ban on Smoking for Next Generation

New Zealand on Tuesday passed into law a unique plan to phase out tobacco smoking by imposing a lifetime ban on young people buying cigarettes.

The law states that tobacco can’t ever be sold to anybody born on or after Jan. 1, 2009.

It means the minimum age for buying cigarettes will keep going up and up. In theory, somebody trying to buy a pack of cigarettes 50 years from now would need ID to show they were at least 63 years old.

But health authorities hope smoking will fade away well before then. They have a stated goal of making New Zealand smoke-free by 2025.

The new law also reduces the number of retailers allowed to sell tobacco from about 6,000 to 600 and decreases the amount of nicotine allowed in tobacco that is smoked.

“There is no good reason to allow a product to be sold that kills half the people that use it,” Associate Minister of Health Dr. Ayesha Verrall told lawmakers in Parliament. “And I can tell you that we will end this in the future, as we pass this legislation.”

She said the health system would save billions of dollars from not needing to treat illnesses caused by smoking, such as cancer, heart attacks, strokes, and amputations. She said the bill would create generational change and leave a legacy of better health for youth.

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