I think this is the main content of the law. (Everything below is quoted.)
---
Section 3. Right to compute
Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
---
Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by artificial intelligence system -- shutdown.
(1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by an artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall ensure the capability to disable the artificial intelligence system's control over the infrastructure and revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time.
(2) When enacting a full shutdown, the deployer shall consider, as appropriate, disruptions to critical infrastructure that may result from a shutdown.
(3) Deployers shall implement, annually review, and test a risk management policy that includes a fallback mechanism and a redundancy and mitigation plan to ensure the deployer can continue operations and maintain control of the critical infrastructure facility without the use of the artificial intelligence system.
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...
This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does nothing to address the actual rights of citizens, it just limits some ways government can't further restrict the citizens' right. The government should be protecting the citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.
That's the notion of "rights" we have in the US though. It's the same with the Bill of Rights. It's true some states do go further and bestow more affirmative rights. But it's deeply ingrained in US political thought that "right to do X" means "government won't stop you from doing X", not "government will stop anyone who tries to stop you from doing X".
This seems to have the positive effect that patching applications on your own device (a la Revanced patching Spotify) appears blessed, since government prosecution would need to demonstrate a public interest case, if I'm reading this correctly.
No, the problem is the extent to which private parties can use the power of law to legally restrict your usage of property you own. And that's the reason it's a right.
If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been infringed.
"lawful" seems like an enormous loophole that makes this seem vacuous. If the government makes what you are doing unlawful, then it can be restricted. How would the government restrict you from doing something lawful in the first place? A bill of attainder? That's already illegal.
It gives a legal foothold to those who would challenge later laws, akin to the bill of rights. Believe it or not, courts will honor that kind of thing, and many legislators act in good faith (at least at the state level).
I feel like this was a mistake: “must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety”
So, public health or safety, in the hands of a tyrant how broad can that get? I imagine that by enshrining this in law, Montana has accidentally given a future leader the ability to confiscate all computing technology.
In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
Almost every part of government is in isolation a single point of failure to someone with a tyrannical streak, it's why most democracies end up with multiple houses/bodies and courts - supposed to act as checks and balances.
So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
> In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
But that is not how tyrants actually operate, at least most of the time.
The most tyrannical country possible would be a "free democratic union of independent people's republics". Democracy has been so successful that most tyrannies operate under its veneer. This is in stark contrast to how monarchies have operated historically.
The trick isn't to ignore laws, but to make them so broad, meaningless and impossible to follow that you have to commit crimes to survive. You can then be selective in which of these crimes you choose to prosecute.
You don't charge the human rights activist for the human rights activism. You charge them with engaging in illegal speculation for the food they bought on the black market, even though that was the only way to avoid starvation, and everybody else did it too. In the worst case scenario, you charge them with "endangering national peace", "spreading misinformation" or "delivering correspondence without possessing a government license to do so" (for giving out pamflets).
"must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest" is exactly the shenanigans tyrants love. You can get away with absolutely anything with a law like that.
How has that been working in the US where both the legislation branch and judicial branch have willingly given their authority to the executive branch?
> So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
If an unchecked tyrant exists, do they really need the paper-thin facade provided by manhandling the English language to pretend that some law supports their actions?
This is just making a slippery slope fallacy by circuitous means.
The point of all laws and thus the courts is that each new action provides an opportunity to debate and decide on whether an action is lawful, and thus determine whether it should proceed.
You are arguing that all such decisions would always be decided in favor of the tyrant because they're a tyrant ala a slippery slope: the law exists, all things will be declared lawful, ergo all things are allowed with no further challenge.
This can certainly be true, but it doesn't naturally follow.
in that case they can just vote in whatever law they want or they can hold starving kids hostage and forbid anybody from helping - I don't think this law in particular will make any of it worse.
Yea a Supreme Court ruling 110 years after a law passed only for them to reverse course 2 years later. Surely that’s based on the constitution and nothing else.
It seems strange (or maybe you are just young) that you think this. But both Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses have fought against excesses of their own President. The same is true for the Supreme Court in the past ruling against an administration of its own party.
There was an entire coalition of “Blue Dog Democrats” that came from red states as recently as 30 years ago.
Or did you really forget that even in Trumps first term that Republicans like McCain voted against Trump snd 10 voted to impeach him?
The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship. The behavior of republicans decades ago is irrelevant, and it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps first term.
Perhaps it's you who haven't been paying attention? I find older people have a lot of unfounded faith in these failing institutions, but if you try to keep up you'll see this isn't the same America you grew up in.
And 2021 was when the republicans decided to protect Trump after his half-assed failed coup attempt. He should have been locked up but the republicans decided to protect him.
I get (and partly agree with) the point you’re trying to make, but do consider that the fact that Trump was ever elected at all, let alone twice, is really not helping your argument.
> The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship.
remember the "sanctuary city" thing? That kind of blind obeisance to the tribe and defiance to the federal government smells awfully like what MAGA does today.But let me guess: it's okay when your tribe does it?
So this is a fascinating example of left vs right thinking.
To those on the left, why you do things matter. Breaking a law that is widely regarded as unjust is considered to be a moral action as long as it helps people.
The difference is being able to understand that "defying the federal government" is neither an absolute moral good nor is it an evil. Why you're doing it is the more important reason.
That is not left or right issue. Why you do things matters to everyone.
What you're talking about, which the left can certainly be said to have been guilty of, is selective enforcement, where people who purport the right motivations (read: politics) are fine to do things that others are not.
This doesn't fully capture it, because the right is clearly fine with lawlessness.
The distinction is the left cares about why, as you said, while the right cares about who. If the Right People are breaking the law (Trump, ICE, the youth pastor), it's okay.
If every accusation is an admission, GP admits it plainly: "it's okay when your tribe does it?"
Municipal government does not have any power, obligation nor responsibility to enforce federal law.
Lowering themselves to be federal snitches, they reduce compliance with state and local laws which actually impact the public, and create a variety of other problems that hurt the community. Where does it end? Should states investigate purchases that may enable the violation of federal law? You realize that there’s almost no limit to what can be technically constructed to be a federal felony. Why is immigration so special?
To conservative thinkers, sitting behind their keyboards in the cushy suburbs, the concept of states’ rights ends with the oppression of minority voting and pillaging of the environment. Anyone, regardless of politics, who is comparing that legal concept to support of the lawlessness the regime is carrying out should really look within.
sanctuary cities are there partly due to government trying to be (just a little bit :) ) lawless… if ruling party was obeying the laws there wouldn’t be any need for “sanctuary cities” so pick another example
your “tribe” in particular is *all about State rights” unless of course States do what the Tzar doesn’t like, right?!
Sanctuary cities are there to shelter people who enter the country illegally. That's not the government being lawless.
They were not a reaction to recent ICE moves; you've no history, and have reversed cause and effect.
In the 1980s they were a great moral move originally by the southwestern churches, they've just expanded into electorate jerrymandering and virtue signalling.
So-called "sanctuary cities" have made the judgement that their law enforcement apparatus will be more effective if people who fear immigration authorities are willing to interface with it. They can't and don't stop enforcement actions by federal authorities (see Chicago, right now) - but they view active cooperation with those efforts as detrimental to other law enforcement activities. You might disagree with that assessment, but it is a straightforward exercise of the municipal power to allocate its own resources.
Claiming that they are "there to shelter people who enter the country illegally" is disingenuous at best. In reality, that is neither the goal nor the effect.
This is essentially the "strict scrutiny" standard, which governments have to achieve in order to violate your strongest constitutional rights (e.g. 1A). If you don't spell it out, then it might be delegated to a lower standard like "rational basis".
Seems like a lazy way to write a law. Basically just gives any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank check. The law should qualify what public safety means
What drives me nuts is the way lawyers (of all stripes) keep praising "legal reasoning". None of it strikes me as even vaguely rigorous.
I'm not a lawyer so I could well be completely off base here. But if my perception is correct, I would much rather they admit that it's fundamentally up to someone's gut feeling. That's more honest than telling me that a bit of reasoning is airtight when it's not.
The true honesty is that judges may rule however they please, regardless of the reasoning. In many cases they require their intuition to guide them. In that sense, it is already up to their gut feeling.
At some point someone needs to weigh the facts, and they are given great discretion to do so. It is generally a good thing, because we have multiple layers of appeal to prevent obviously horrible outcomes.
So this legislation, like all legislation, provides guidance for the good faith judge to help weigh the facts. There is no guidance that will prevent a bad faith judge from ruling badly: You do not need a clause about public safety to get the ruling you want, but there is an argument that your ruling may perhaps be less scrutinized.
There’s a reason an attorney’s answer is always “it depends” :) No legislation is truly airtight from abuse.
A judge can rule however they please, but if it goes against legislated law or precedent, it can (and should) be appealed. Sure, if the highest appellate determines the law says something different than it really does, that’s that, but it’s not like most judges have carte blanche to determine the outcome of any legal entanglement on a whole.
You want discretion for judges so that they can respond to the problems of their era wisely rather than rigidly applying the ideas of another time without nuance
Unless those judges themselves have a fondness for an imaginary "great" time, and will apply their reasoning in a way that just happens to fit their ideology.
Law is either rigorous or it's not. When I'm told that the law is against me but gosh darn it the law is the law, I grow resentful of the "discretion" reserved for some but not others.
I know what you mean, but this is actually as strong as a protection in Montana (and probably elsewhere) gets. The burden is high. Montana's RTC bill had strong and competent libertarian input.
It appears to be a law that is simply adding restrictions to what the state can do (like the first amendment, the best sorts of laws IMO). It’s not granting people limited rights. Any existing rights people had under the fourth or first example, for example, are still in place, this just sounds like further restrictions on the state.
That's .. unexpectedly broad? A strict interpretation of that would mean no gaming consoles and certainly no iPhones.
Their fundamental promise is a gatekeeper that restricts a lot of things that are not only legal but many customers want to do, including trivial things like writing their own software.
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources
If the government tried to block you from installing certain apps on your phone, that would fall under this law. Apple as a private company can still block whatever they want.
It does get a little interesting to imagine the interface here though: if I circumvent those restrictions, a strict reading would be that I'm allowed to because the mechanism by which Apple would stop me would be through the State.
Which in turn would put it in conflict with the DMCA.
So this is probably just to attract datacenters with the promise there will be no recourse for the local environmental consequences and the horrible noise for neighbors.
Good job, Montana. There was a trend in proposed and passed policies that were eating at rights to own machines. Examples: DMCA anti-circumvention (right to repair and jailbreak), export controls for high-end chips and cybersecurity tools, proposals to weaken/negate e2e encryption or delay security updates, AI rules that you can't train past X amount (shortsighted for future of personal compute capacity), restricting individuals from crypto mining, etc. So basically a trend of restricting software use or modification on general-purpose hardware. Once the tiniest relevant policy lands, it tends to expand from there. Hence what Montana did.
I guess this is like the second amendment, except for computers and GPUs? I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real threat?
Maybe I'm naive, and I am definitely uncertain about how all this AI craziness is going to break -- whether empowering everyone or advancing ultra corporate dystopia. But do we think our government is gearing up to take our laptops away?
The federalist wing of the drafters of the US Constitution didn't think a Bill of Rights was necessary because they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.
So they didn't even think things like the First and Second Amendment were even necessary.
Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
"The law is antiquated and should be repealed. The framers could never have envisioned Our Supreme Lord AI and how irrelevant individual compute is today when writing that law."
> they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.
That's a perspective, but it seems to me that the Federalists didn't believe that government should be limited at all. The Constitution is a genie granting three wishes, and explaining beforehand that one of your wishes can be to wish for three more wishes.
Personally, it's always seemed obvious that the Federalists and their children have been the worst intellectual current in US government. They never had popular support at any time, and relied on the manipulation of power and position to accomplish personal goals (which is really their only ideology.) It began with a betrayal of the French Revolution, setting the US on a dirty path (and leaving the Revolution to be taken over by the insane.) The Bill of Rights is the only worthwhile part of the US Constitution; the rest of it is a bunch of slop meant to placate and protect local warlords and slaveholders. The Bill of Rights is the only part that acknowledges that individual people exist other than the preamble.
The Anti-Federalists were always right.
I agree with you that what we should be working on is specifying, codifying and expanding the Bill of Rights, rather than the courts continually trying to come up with new ways to subvert it. New ways that are never codified firmly, that always exist as vibes and penumbras. Rights shouldn't have anything to do with what a judge knows when he sees. If we want to abridge or expand the Bill of Rights, a new amendment should be written and passed; the Supreme Court is overloaded because 1) Congress has ceased to function and 2) the Senate is still an assembly of local warlords.
Ha. You reach for the 2nd but fail to realize that of all the Amendments, there is more legal precedent torture to sidestep that prohibition than any other amendment save maybe the 4th, 5th, and 10th.
There is a big push to limit what kind of models can be OSS'd, which in turn means yes, a limit to what AI you are allowed to run.
The California laws the article references make OSS AI model makers liable for whatever developers & users do. That chills the enthusiasm for someone like Facebook or a university to release a better llama. So I'm curious if this law removes that liability..
US Executive Orders 14110 and 14141 did create fairly onerous regulatory regimes that could have constrained the dynamism of the marketplace. However, my understanding is that both have been rescinded, so they do not currently post a real threat.
> I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real threat?
Yes, the threat of mandated computational devices performing mandated computations to do things in regular life. Currently, these come almost exclusively from private companies (at least in the free world), but I think it's a good precedent for a government to recognize the dangers here. To be really helpful, it needs to ban those private companies from doing what they're doing. But this is a good start.
You're thinking about your own situation - that's normal, but not enough: there are still loads of folks who don't have a computer but are expected to interface with their governments (municipal, county, state) using a computer, and have had to pay disproportionately more being in the least affluent and/or most vulnerable demographic.
It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools that folks like us think everyone already has access to.
That seems like something different though. My understanding is that this is not about the government handing out free laptops, the same way the second amendment is not about the government handing out free guns. Rather, this is saying people have the right to own general purpose computers.
As far as government expecting you to interface with them using a computer, I loathe this trend. And of course it's infinitely worse if they require a specific proprietary platform like iOS or Android. But I don't think this is about that.
I'm totally with you as far as requiring a proprietary platform, but at some point we do just have to cut off obsolete methods of communication. We can't just keep supporting them forever.
Interesting, has the EFF done a writeup/opinion on this legislation yet? I tend to trust them on breaking things down from the legalese and implications.
I used to do presentations at educational technology conferences and many (30+)years ago I speculated that "in the future" computers that could create would be licensed. This was based on the observation that every significant past technology under user control was eventually licensed for permission to operate - radio, television, cars, the list is long.
radio/tv share the bands which are very narrow resource so licensing pretty much have to exist else there would be interference abound (imagine competing TV station just driving around with a jammer on competition
cars have that + the fact infrastructure is built by public money. Allowing anyone on anything with no training there literally costs lives
Or, copyright wise, to earn money in before digital world you kinda had to not have too much of copyright infringement - while artist today might get popular enough to subside on patreon/other form of digital tips, before it wouldn't be possible
As long as laws are restricted to business services it shouldn't conflict. This is the right for citizens to use computation, business regulation is always a layer on top of that.
>Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
Exactly. I was hoping that this law would be the pushback to the overzealous prosecution of DeCSS, people who defeat DRM locks in order to lawfully back up the multimedia data that they already paid for, etc.
I also wonder what the impact of the law is on TPM chips on computers (restricting your ability to boot whatever OS you want), the locked-down iOS mobile app store, etc.
I admit I'm not knowledgeable about this law but as it's written it seems fairly meaningless to me, as it could be interpreted in many different ways, and the exclusion is a hole you could drive a metaphorical truck through.
Question nobody wants to talk about: will this prevent courts from issuing "no computer" restrictions on persons convicted or being investigated for crimes involving computers?
I have seen clients go for many years without cellphones because a judge cassually attached a "no computer" protective order. It is hard enough finding work as a convict or person under investigation, but 10x harder for those without cellphones and email.
It does look to be a nudge in that direction, but it's not a slam-dunk. From my non-lawyer reading of the text, it seems like it would depend on how well you can argue that a total ban is not "narrowly tailored."
These restrictions must be scrapped completely. Along with this barbaric "criminal record" they delegate big chunk of the population to an underclass, well, unless they are rich.
I feel super happy for the 5 people and 20 cows who will benefit. (This is intended less a jab at Montana specifically and more at state and national politicians who only seem to have political gumption when it concerns the needs of less-populated states with particular demographics.)
I’m all for this movement provided it’s actually focusing on the rights of individuals rather than empowering corporations to own and operate massive amounts of computing power unchecked. When I first read the article, I frankly assumed this was meant to limit regulation on AI. From what I’ve read in the law that doesn’t seem to explicitly be the case, but given the organizations involved, I fully expect to see more in that vein.
Yes. In written laws "citizen" generally means any person and/or organization subject to the laws of the state. It doesnt mean just living people who can vote.
Many a young law student has pontificated that as non-citizens, visiting tourists have no rights. There is no more loaded a word in US politics, and none more malleable under the law, as "citizen". It means something different in every context.
I mean, without this law, are the people not allowed to use computing? What exactly is the difference it brings? Does it force government to provide computing to all citizens?
Um. Montana resident here. The state also had quite strong anti-corruption (aka campaign finance) laws, since the copper baron days. But the US Supreme Court ruled that doesn't matter (because their corruption trumps any state anti-corruption law presumably). So don't expect this to amount to anything.
I think this is the main content of the law. (Everything below is quoted.)
---
Section 3. Right to compute
Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
---
Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by artificial intelligence system -- shutdown.
(1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by an artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall ensure the capability to disable the artificial intelligence system's control over the infrastructure and revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time.
(2) When enacting a full shutdown, the deployer shall consider, as appropriate, disruptions to critical infrastructure that may result from a shutdown.
(3) Deployers shall implement, annually review, and test a risk management policy that includes a fallback mechanism and a redundancy and mitigation plan to ensure the deployer can continue operations and maintain control of the critical infrastructure facility without the use of the artificial intelligence system.
If that's the gist of it, then:
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...
This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does nothing to address the actual rights of citizens, it just limits some ways government can't further restrict the citizens' right. The government should be protecting the citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.
That's the notion of "rights" we have in the US though. It's the same with the Bill of Rights. It's true some states do go further and bestow more affirmative rights. But it's deeply ingrained in US political thought that "right to do X" means "government won't stop you from doing X", not "government will stop anyone who tries to stop you from doing X".
This seems to have the positive effect that patching applications on your own device (a la Revanced patching Spotify) appears blessed, since government prosecution would need to demonstrate a public interest case, if I'm reading this correctly.
No, the problem is the extent to which private parties can use the power of law to legally restrict your usage of property you own. And that's the reason it's a right.
If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been infringed.
"lawful" seems like an enormous loophole that makes this seem vacuous. If the government makes what you are doing unlawful, then it can be restricted. How would the government restrict you from doing something lawful in the first place? A bill of attainder? That's already illegal.
It gives a legal foothold to those who would challenge later laws, akin to the bill of rights. Believe it or not, courts will honor that kind of thing, and many legislators act in good faith (at least at the state level).
Having dealt with lawyers for the past few months this is design
I feel like this was a mistake: “must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety”
So, public health or safety, in the hands of a tyrant how broad can that get? I imagine that by enshrining this in law, Montana has accidentally given a future leader the ability to confiscate all computing technology.
In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
Almost every part of government is in isolation a single point of failure to someone with a tyrannical streak, it's why most democracies end up with multiple houses/bodies and courts - supposed to act as checks and balances.
So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
> In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
But that is not how tyrants actually operate, at least most of the time.
The most tyrannical country possible would be a "free democratic union of independent people's republics". Democracy has been so successful that most tyrannies operate under its veneer. This is in stark contrast to how monarchies have operated historically.
The trick isn't to ignore laws, but to make them so broad, meaningless and impossible to follow that you have to commit crimes to survive. You can then be selective in which of these crimes you choose to prosecute.
You don't charge the human rights activist for the human rights activism. You charge them with engaging in illegal speculation for the food they bought on the black market, even though that was the only way to avoid starvation, and everybody else did it too. In the worst case scenario, you charge them with "endangering national peace", "spreading misinformation" or "delivering correspondence without possessing a government license to do so" (for giving out pamflets).
"must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest" is exactly the shenanigans tyrants love. You can get away with absolutely anything with a law like that.
How has that been working in the US where both the legislation branch and judicial branch have willingly given their authority to the executive branch?
You would think the fact that I put "supposed to act as checks and balances." in my post would answer that but apparently not.
It sounds like you completely agree with the comment you replied to?
> So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.
If an unchecked tyrant exists, do they really need the paper-thin facade provided by manhandling the English language to pretend that some law supports their actions?
Yes because tyrants still value the symbolism of pretext.
This is just making a slippery slope fallacy by circuitous means.
The point of all laws and thus the courts is that each new action provides an opportunity to debate and decide on whether an action is lawful, and thus determine whether it should proceed.
You are arguing that all such decisions would always be decided in favor of the tyrant because they're a tyrant ala a slippery slope: the law exists, all things will be declared lawful, ergo all things are allowed with no further challenge.
This can certainly be true, but it doesn't naturally follow.
give a man a shovel, and a treasure map, but dont tell him he is digging his own grave.
in that case they can just vote in whatever law they want or they can hold starving kids hostage and forbid anybody from helping - I don't think this law in particular will make any of it worse.
Yes. That has been a problem. Several states outright ignored the scotus Bruen decision.
Yea a Supreme Court ruling 110 years after a law passed only for them to reverse course 2 years later. Surely that’s based on the constitution and nothing else.
How would you expect checks and balances to work when a single party controls all the branches? Is this a serious comment?
It seems strange (or maybe you are just young) that you think this. But both Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses have fought against excesses of their own President. The same is true for the Supreme Court in the past ruling against an administration of its own party.
There was an entire coalition of “Blue Dog Democrats” that came from red states as recently as 30 years ago.
Or did you really forget that even in Trumps first term that Republicans like McCain voted against Trump snd 10 voted to impeach him?
The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship. The behavior of republicans decades ago is irrelevant, and it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps first term.
Perhaps it's you who haven't been paying attention? I find older people have a lot of unfounded faith in these failing institutions, but if you try to keep up you'll see this isn't the same America you grew up in.
Yes way back in 2016-2020 when dinosaurs ruled the earth.
> it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps first term
Read all the words in a comment before replying to it.
2016 might well have been 1916. The state of US politics is night and day different now.
And 2021 was when the republicans decided to protect Trump after his half-assed failed coup attempt. He should have been locked up but the republicans decided to protect him.
I get (and partly agree with) the point you’re trying to make, but do consider that the fact that Trump was ever elected at all, let alone twice, is really not helping your argument.
> The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship.
remember the "sanctuary city" thing? That kind of blind obeisance to the tribe and defiance to the federal government smells awfully like what MAGA does today.But let me guess: it's okay when your tribe does it?
So this is a fascinating example of left vs right thinking.
To those on the left, why you do things matter. Breaking a law that is widely regarded as unjust is considered to be a moral action as long as it helps people.
The difference is being able to understand that "defying the federal government" is neither an absolute moral good nor is it an evil. Why you're doing it is the more important reason.
That is not left or right issue. Why you do things matters to everyone.
What you're talking about, which the left can certainly be said to have been guilty of, is selective enforcement, where people who purport the right motivations (read: politics) are fine to do things that others are not.
This doesn't fully capture it, because the right is clearly fine with lawlessness.
The distinction is the left cares about why, as you said, while the right cares about who. If the Right People are breaking the law (Trump, ICE, the youth pastor), it's okay.
If every accusation is an admission, GP admits it plainly: "it's okay when your tribe does it?"
Yes next up - look at all of those evil lawless people during the civil rights movement who dared stand up against Jim Crow laws
More recently, the difference between leaning on tech companies during an epidemic and a President leaning on companies to personally give him money.
Municipal government does not have any power, obligation nor responsibility to enforce federal law.
Lowering themselves to be federal snitches, they reduce compliance with state and local laws which actually impact the public, and create a variety of other problems that hurt the community. Where does it end? Should states investigate purchases that may enable the violation of federal law? You realize that there’s almost no limit to what can be technically constructed to be a federal felony. Why is immigration so special?
To conservative thinkers, sitting behind their keyboards in the cushy suburbs, the concept of states’ rights ends with the oppression of minority voting and pillaging of the environment. Anyone, regardless of politics, who is comparing that legal concept to support of the lawlessness the regime is carrying out should really look within.
sanctuary cities are there partly due to government trying to be (just a little bit :) ) lawless… if ruling party was obeying the laws there wouldn’t be any need for “sanctuary cities” so pick another example
your “tribe” in particular is *all about State rights” unless of course States do what the Tzar doesn’t like, right?!
Sanctuary cities are there to shelter people who enter the country illegally. That's not the government being lawless.
They were not a reaction to recent ICE moves; you've no history, and have reversed cause and effect.
In the 1980s they were a great moral move originally by the southwestern churches, they've just expanded into electorate jerrymandering and virtue signalling.
So-called "sanctuary cities" have made the judgement that their law enforcement apparatus will be more effective if people who fear immigration authorities are willing to interface with it. They can't and don't stop enforcement actions by federal authorities (see Chicago, right now) - but they view active cooperation with those efforts as detrimental to other law enforcement activities. You might disagree with that assessment, but it is a straightforward exercise of the municipal power to allocate its own resources.
Claiming that they are "there to shelter people who enter the country illegally" is disingenuous at best. In reality, that is neither the goal nor the effect.
educated and sane comments like this don’t do well when debating issues that people believe politicians about :)
Nonsense, how does sanctuary cities anything at all to du with gerrymandering?
> In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.
Sure, but legislators should generally avoid explicitly building the on-ramp to such behavior.
This is essentially the "strict scrutiny" standard, which governments have to achieve in order to violate your strongest constitutional rights (e.g. 1A). If you don't spell it out, then it might be delegated to a lower standard like "rational basis".
Correct.
This is how laws are written. A court would determine whether the state is abusing or violating this public safety carve-out.
And this exact method is how we got minimum lot sizes, setbacks, FAR, and a burgeoning affordability and homelessness crisis. It's a blank check.
Yes, the ability to litigate is key. Only a few can afford it.
Seems like a lazy way to write a law. Basically just gives any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank check. The law should qualify what public safety means
What drives me nuts is the way lawyers (of all stripes) keep praising "legal reasoning". None of it strikes me as even vaguely rigorous.
I'm not a lawyer so I could well be completely off base here. But if my perception is correct, I would much rather they admit that it's fundamentally up to someone's gut feeling. That's more honest than telling me that a bit of reasoning is airtight when it's not.
The true honesty is that judges may rule however they please, regardless of the reasoning. In many cases they require their intuition to guide them. In that sense, it is already up to their gut feeling.
At some point someone needs to weigh the facts, and they are given great discretion to do so. It is generally a good thing, because we have multiple layers of appeal to prevent obviously horrible outcomes.
So this legislation, like all legislation, provides guidance for the good faith judge to help weigh the facts. There is no guidance that will prevent a bad faith judge from ruling badly: You do not need a clause about public safety to get the ruling you want, but there is an argument that your ruling may perhaps be less scrutinized.
There’s a reason an attorney’s answer is always “it depends” :) No legislation is truly airtight from abuse.
A judge can rule however they please, but if it goes against legislated law or precedent, it can (and should) be appealed. Sure, if the highest appellate determines the law says something different than it really does, that’s that, but it’s not like most judges have carte blanche to determine the outcome of any legal entanglement on a whole.
> gives any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank check
Here's the thing: this is not supposed to be a thing. Not supposed to be how things work at all, but it kind of does now.
So the trust implicit in the broad language of our laws gives - has been giving - a massive advantage to bad faith actors who obtain power.
You want discretion for judges so that they can respond to the problems of their era wisely rather than rigidly applying the ideas of another time without nuance
Unless those judges themselves have a fondness for an imaginary "great" time, and will apply their reasoning in a way that just happens to fit their ideology.
Law is either rigorous or it's not. When I'm told that the law is against me but gosh darn it the law is the law, I grow resentful of the "discretion" reserved for some but not others.
There’s no eliminating humans from human civilization. No risk no fun.
This phrasing is not by itself unusual; this almost mirrors the requirements for strict scrutiny.
Do tyrants care about law? They find ways to work around law, write new law, and rule by decree.
Democracy is largely following norms and tradition of respecting the people and laws, but it can also be ignored when those in power shift.
I see your point, but a tyrant doesn't need to follow laws in order to do tyranical things
I know what you mean, but this is actually as strong as a protection in Montana (and probably elsewhere) gets. The burden is high. Montana's RTC bill had strong and competent libertarian input.
It appears to be a law that is simply adding restrictions to what the state can do (like the first amendment, the best sorts of laws IMO). It’s not granting people limited rights. Any existing rights people had under the fourth or first example, for example, are still in place, this just sounds like further restrictions on the state.
What are rights besides restrictions on the state?
Agree - it feels a lot like emergency measures, which are broadly abused at every level of the government and by both major parties.
That's .. unexpectedly broad? A strict interpretation of that would mean no gaming consoles and certainly no iPhones.
Their fundamental promise is a gatekeeper that restricts a lot of things that are not only legal but many customers want to do, including trivial things like writing their own software.
> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources
If the government tried to block you from installing certain apps on your phone, that would fall under this law. Apple as a private company can still block whatever they want.
It does get a little interesting to imagine the interface here though: if I circumvent those restrictions, a strict reading would be that I'm allowed to because the mechanism by which Apple would stop me would be through the State.
Which in turn would put it in conflict with the DMCA.
So this is probably just to attract datacenters with the promise there will be no recourse for the local environmental consequences and the horrible noise for neighbors.
Does The Hum fall under the 1st Amendment? ;)
That’s no hum, it’s the sound of shareholder value.
Good job, Montana. There was a trend in proposed and passed policies that were eating at rights to own machines. Examples: DMCA anti-circumvention (right to repair and jailbreak), export controls for high-end chips and cybersecurity tools, proposals to weaken/negate e2e encryption or delay security updates, AI rules that you can't train past X amount (shortsighted for future of personal compute capacity), restricting individuals from crypto mining, etc. So basically a trend of restricting software use or modification on general-purpose hardware. Once the tiniest relevant policy lands, it tends to expand from there. Hence what Montana did.
I guess this is like the second amendment, except for computers and GPUs? I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real threat?
Maybe I'm naive, and I am definitely uncertain about how all this AI craziness is going to break -- whether empowering everyone or advancing ultra corporate dystopia. But do we think our government is gearing up to take our laptops away?
The federalist wing of the drafters of the US Constitution didn't think a Bill of Rights was necessary because they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.
So they didn't even think things like the First and Second Amendment were even necessary.
Fastfoward 250 years and now maybe the idea of a "right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed" doesn't sound like such a bad idea.
True -- I like this take on it. I wonder where we will be 250 years from now.
Our current form of government doesn't seem likely to last 25 years, let alone 250.
"The law is antiquated and should be repealed. The framers could never have envisioned Our Supreme Lord AI and how irrelevant individual compute is today when writing that law."
>"right of the people to own and self host their own software, shall not be infringed"
Count me in.
"Fastfoward 250 years and ..."
... the 10th amendment is largely ignored.
> they believed that a government of only enumerated powers was enough.
That's a perspective, but it seems to me that the Federalists didn't believe that government should be limited at all. The Constitution is a genie granting three wishes, and explaining beforehand that one of your wishes can be to wish for three more wishes.
Personally, it's always seemed obvious that the Federalists and their children have been the worst intellectual current in US government. They never had popular support at any time, and relied on the manipulation of power and position to accomplish personal goals (which is really their only ideology.) It began with a betrayal of the French Revolution, setting the US on a dirty path (and leaving the Revolution to be taken over by the insane.) The Bill of Rights is the only worthwhile part of the US Constitution; the rest of it is a bunch of slop meant to placate and protect local warlords and slaveholders. The Bill of Rights is the only part that acknowledges that individual people exist other than the preamble.
The Anti-Federalists were always right.
I agree with you that what we should be working on is specifying, codifying and expanding the Bill of Rights, rather than the courts continually trying to come up with new ways to subvert it. New ways that are never codified firmly, that always exist as vibes and penumbras. Rights shouldn't have anything to do with what a judge knows when he sees. If we want to abridge or expand the Bill of Rights, a new amendment should be written and passed; the Supreme Court is overloaded because 1) Congress has ceased to function and 2) the Senate is still an assembly of local warlords.
Ha. You reach for the 2nd but fail to realize that of all the Amendments, there is more legal precedent torture to sidestep that prohibition than any other amendment save maybe the 4th, 5th, and 10th.
There is a big push to limit what kind of models can be OSS'd, which in turn means yes, a limit to what AI you are allowed to run.
The California laws the article references make OSS AI model makers liable for whatever developers & users do. That chills the enthusiasm for someone like Facebook or a university to release a better llama. So I'm curious if this law removes that liability..
> but is this actually addressing a real threat?
US Executive Orders 14110 and 14141 did create fairly onerous regulatory regimes that could have constrained the dynamism of the marketplace. However, my understanding is that both have been rescinded, so they do not currently post a real threat.
The EU and UK keep trying to undermine encryption, so I'd say there's a pretty clear risk to the freedom of general purpose computation.
Maybe you've forgotten that the US at one time tried to ban encryption. They will try again too, I'm sure.
> I'm with it -- but is this actually addressing a real threat?
Yes, the threat of mandated computational devices performing mandated computations to do things in regular life. Currently, these come almost exclusively from private companies (at least in the free world), but I think it's a good precedent for a government to recognize the dangers here. To be really helpful, it needs to ban those private companies from doing what they're doing. But this is a good start.
Maybe they are trying to lure in more money.
You're thinking about your own situation - that's normal, but not enough: there are still loads of folks who don't have a computer but are expected to interface with their governments (municipal, county, state) using a computer, and have had to pay disproportionately more being in the least affluent and/or most vulnerable demographic.
It's not about losing access to laptops, it's about guaranteeing the right to even have access to the same tools that folks like us think everyone already has access to.
That seems like something different though. My understanding is that this is not about the government handing out free laptops, the same way the second amendment is not about the government handing out free guns. Rather, this is saying people have the right to own general purpose computers.
As far as government expecting you to interface with them using a computer, I loathe this trend. And of course it's infinitely worse if they require a specific proprietary platform like iOS or Android. But I don't think this is about that.
I'm totally with you as far as requiring a proprietary platform, but at some point we do just have to cut off obsolete methods of communication. We can't just keep supporting them forever.
It's not like second amendment due to "limited to those demonstrably necessary"
Oh wow, Greg Gianforte managed to do something in politics I don’t vehemently hate.
He’s not a very nice person but he did at least used to own a tech company.
Interesting, has the EFF done a writeup/opinion on this legislation yet? I tend to trust them on breaking things down from the legalese and implications.
The major context of this law is regulations like Executive Order 14110, of 2023 (since rescinded),
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_14110
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38067314 ("Executive Order on Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence (whitehouse.gov)"—337 comments)
I used to do presentations at educational technology conferences and many (30+)years ago I speculated that "in the future" computers that could create would be licensed. This was based on the observation that every significant past technology under user control was eventually licensed for permission to operate - radio, television, cars, the list is long.
you need better examples than radio/tv/cars
radio/tv share the bands which are very narrow resource so licensing pretty much have to exist else there would be interference abound (imagine competing TV station just driving around with a jammer on competition
cars have that + the fact infrastructure is built by public money. Allowing anyone on anything with no training there literally costs lives
Or, copyright wise, to earn money in before digital world you kinda had to not have too much of copyright infringement - while artist today might get popular enough to subside on patreon/other form of digital tips, before it wouldn't be possible
I'm not sure exactly what this law does, but I would like to do with a computer anything I could theoretically and legally do with my mind.
Eg. If I'm a shopkeeper and see some customer coming in who stole stuff from the shop last time, I am within my rights to tell them to leave the shop.
However if I use a computer to do the same, many countries would disallow facial recognition, keeping databases of customers without consent, etc.
OK, but be careful what you wish for. We might get regulations on allowable thought if that's what's necessary to regulate computation.
It's a nice gesture, but I'm not sure it will matter. AI is likely already on the Federal radar for superseding regulation.
As long as laws are restricted to business services it shouldn't conflict. This is the right for citizens to use computation, business regulation is always a layer on top of that.
>Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.
....what does this say about DRM enforcement?
Exactly. I was hoping that this law would be the pushback to the overzealous prosecution of DeCSS, people who defeat DRM locks in order to lawfully back up the multimedia data that they already paid for, etc.
Somewhat related: https://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html , https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_to_Read
I also wonder what the impact of the law is on TPM chips on computers (restricting your ability to boot whatever OS you want), the locked-down iOS mobile app store, etc.
I admit I'm not knowledgeable about this law but as it's written it seems fairly meaningless to me, as it could be interpreted in many different ways, and the exclusion is a hole you could drive a metaphorical truck through.
Most of the laws which touch on DRM are federal, and so they override any state laws due to the supremacy clause.
Question nobody wants to talk about: will this prevent courts from issuing "no computer" restrictions on persons convicted or being investigated for crimes involving computers?
I have seen clients go for many years without cellphones because a judge cassually attached a "no computer" protective order. It is hard enough finding work as a convict or person under investigation, but 10x harder for those without cellphones and email.
It does look to be a nudge in that direction, but it's not a slam-dunk. From my non-lawyer reading of the text, it seems like it would depend on how well you can argue that a total ban is not "narrowly tailored."
These restrictions must be scrapped completely. Along with this barbaric "criminal record" they delegate big chunk of the population to an underclass, well, unless they are rich.
I feel super happy for the 5 people and 20 cows who will benefit. (This is intended less a jab at Montana specifically and more at state and national politicians who only seem to have political gumption when it concerns the needs of less-populated states with particular demographics.)
I’m all for this movement provided it’s actually focusing on the rights of individuals rather than empowering corporations to own and operate massive amounts of computing power unchecked. When I first read the article, I frankly assumed this was meant to limit regulation on AI. From what I’ve read in the law that doesn’t seem to explicitly be the case, but given the organizations involved, I fully expect to see more in that vein.
Any idea how “citizen” is defined here? Does this apply, like speech (and campaign donations), to corporations?
Yes. In written laws "citizen" generally means any person and/or organization subject to the laws of the state. It doesnt mean just living people who can vote.
Many a young law student has pontificated that as non-citizens, visiting tourists have no rights. There is no more loaded a word in US politics, and none more malleable under the law, as "citizen". It means something different in every context.
I mean, without this law, are the people not allowed to use computing? What exactly is the difference it brings? Does it force government to provide computing to all citizens?
Makes it harder for people to oppose construction of data centers in their back yard
Here is the official text: https://bills.legmt.gov/#/laws/bill/2/LC0292?open_tab=bill
I mean, isn’t there also law that says people have basic rights to food, housing, healthcare?
What will this law change, effectively?
If there a law saying people have the right to food?
There is no basic right to food, housing, or healthcare. Your premise is wrong.
No...?
What does this make with Montana?
Here's the actual text of the law: https://legiscan.com/MT/text/SB212/id/3078731
It's hilarious that the text of this law is blocked behind an impassible cloudflare computational paywall.
So impassible that I didn't even see it
Um. Montana resident here. The state also had quite strong anti-corruption (aka campaign finance) laws, since the copper baron days. But the US Supreme Court ruled that doesn't matter (because their corruption trumps any state anti-corruption law presumably). So don't expect this to amount to anything.