A handful of substantive telecoms and Internet services bills and a stack of placeholders were introduced in the California legislature by last Friday. That was deadline for new bills, although it’s largely a formality – any of the placeholders (or the substantive bills) can get gutted, amended and turned into anything at all, right up to the end of the session in August.
Assemblyman Ed Chau (D – Monterey Park) is taking another run at Internet privacy, although in a more limited way than last year. Assembly bill 2511 would tighten privacy requirements for websites – social media, particularly – that serve minors, and AB 2935 would do the same for health monitoring services. Broader legislation could come later, though.
Social media gets a call out in two other bills. AB 1950 by assemblyman Marc Levine (D – Marin County) would prohibit bot-driven advertising or clicks, and AB 3169 by assemblyman James Gallagher (R – Butte County) would ban censorship by social media platforms or search engines “on the basis of on the basis of the political affiliation or political viewpoint of that content”, or “removing or manipulating content” from search results.
AB 1906, by assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D – Ventura County), would require an Internet–connected device to have password protection – in other words, you’d have to authorise your Alexa device before it could start eavesdropping on you.
Lifeline telecoms programs – which can include broadband service – would be less restricted under AB 3111, authored by assemblyman Eduardo Garcia (D – Imperial County). Right now, only one person per household can receive lifeline subsidies, which is a problem if the service is delivered via a mobile phone, rather than a wireline connection that can be shared by everyone. AB 3111 would allow different people living at the same address to receive lifeline service, although the one account per family restriction would stay in place. How that distinction would be policed by the California Public Utilities Commission isn’t clear, though.
So far, there’s been no move to introduce a new version of senate bill 649, which would have opened up city and county property to wireless operators, at nominal, below-market-value rental rates. It was vetoed by governor Jerry Brown because it went a bit too far. You can expect to see similar language slipped into a bill by wireless lobbyists in the coming months. Stay tuned.