
Lobbyists rewrote Washington state’s privacy law - Svip
https://www.politico.eu/article/how-lobbyists-rewrote-washington-state-privacy-law-microsoft-amazon-regulation/
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blub
"In the final draft circulated among local lawmakers last week, which was
obtained by POLITICO, Ryan Harkins, a senior public policy director at
Microsoft, also wrote notes in the margins, often chiding lawmakers for their
legislative approach and deleting sections of the bill that he viewed as
unsatisfactory."

Lobbying is pure corruption. No individual citizens or even organizations have
such power to strike paragraphs from a draft law. Even assuming that those
edits would be ignored, they bias the legislators against public interests.

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rayiner
That’s a perverted view of the “public interest” as being diametrically
opposed to corporate interests. Microsoft is a major employer in Washington.
Not to mention, it’s one of the nation’s major innovators, making products
everyone uses. It’s views on proposed legislation are extremely relevant and
helpful and it’s in the “public interest” for legislators to consider them.

Note that some of the provisions in question would have been a huge boon to
plaintiffs’ attorneys:

> While the state's attorney general had called for the inclusion of a right
> for individuals to sue companies for potential wrongdoing, such a provision
> was eventually not included in the final proposals. Financial penalties —
> much-needed teeth to ensure compliance — were capped at just $7,500 for each
> intentional violation and $2,500 for any unintended infractions.

Violations are generally construed to be “per user.” So a single unintentional
error could result in a huge penalty. Creating a private cause of action would
have created a huge incentive to turn every unintentional error into a class
action lawsuit.

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saagarjha
It's in the public interest for legislators to consider those views alongside
the views of the general public. Unfortunately the latter does not have the
resources to lobby as effectively as Microsoft does…

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rayiner
Draft legislation in Washington is publicly available. Anyone (including
privacy groups) could submit a redline markup. To the extent that the
legislature might prioritize the views of Microsoft isn’t corruption, it’s
common sense. The EU created a heavy handed data privacy law because it would
be American companies that would feel most of the compliance burden. When you
are Washington state and one those companies is in your own back yard, the
calculus is different.

This is the exactly sort of scenario where lobbying is important. “Privacy”
sounds good in the abstract. It’s like “think of the children.” Who could be
against more privacy? But what’s going to be the impact on local businesses?
On the products people buy?

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saagarjha
> Draft legislation in Washington is publicly available. Anyone (including
> privacy groups) could submit a redline markup.

Yes, but that requires that people know about the legislation and care enough
to be involved, and it is unlikely that they'll be more willing than Microsoft
will because it will affect them significantly less.

> The EU created a heavy handed data privacy law because it would be American
> companies that would feel most of the compliance burden.

It turns out that American companies are disproportionally affected because
there are more large American companies, which means the law will target them
more. That's like saying the U.S. should drop out of environmental agreements
because they'll hurt our local industry more–it's not taking into account the
fact that it's our own companies disproportionately causing the problem the
legislation is trying to solve.

> “Privacy” sounds good in the abstract. It’s like “think of the children.”

"Think of the children" tends to lead to mass surveillance and a degradation
of liberties, while calls for "privacy" lead to…Facebook earning less money?
Where are you trying to take this argument?

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rayiner
> Yes, but that requires that people know about the legislation and care
> enough to be involved, and it is unlikely that they'll be more willing than
> Microsoft will because it will affect them significantly less.

Aren’t those reasons to weigh the company’s views more heavily?

> It turns out that American companies are disproportionally affected because
> there are more large American companies, which means the law will target
> them more. That's like saying the U.S. should drop out of environmental
> agreements because they'll hurt our local industry more–it's not taking into
> account the fact that it's our own companies disproportionately causing the
> problem the legislation is trying to solve.

It certainly would be prudent for legislators to be more cautious about
environmental legislation that could affect major domestic employers. The cost
benefit (the potential gain from a cleaner environment versus the potential
loss from reduced economic activity) is different for the US than for other
countries.

> "Think of the children" tends to lead to mass surveillance and a degradation
> of liberties, while calls for "privacy" lead to…Facebook earning less money?
> Where are you trying to take this argument?

For both things, the benefits are widely appreciated while the costs
necessarily are not. It’s entirely appropriate for companies to come in and
say “hey, this law sounds great but is going to put additional burdens on
companies that are out of proportion to the benefits.” Legislators must of
course balance the resulting input, but the process of providing that input is
not corruption.

As to Facebook making less money, that is a cost that must be considered. A
huge fraction of the fancy coffee and avocado toast industry is bankrolled by
Facebook money. If the benefits from increased privacy don’t outweigh the
losses to companies like Facebook, the law is a bad one.

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saagarjha
> Aren’t those reasons to weigh the company’s views more heavily?

No. Coming back to the environmental (which is decent metaphor, I think), a
company which dumps into the local river is going to fight tooth and nail
against any regulation that stops them from doing this because it might have a
significant effect on their bottom line, while for most people this will not
be enough for them to care to get involved because the harm is difficult to
measure individually and hard to conceptualize (but, over the entire
population, has significant detrimental effects). This shouldn’t mean that the
government should weigh corporate concerns more heavily.

> The cost benefit (the potential gain from a cleaner environment versus the
> potential loss from reduced economic activity) is different for the US than
> for other countries.

Well, of course it is: it depends on which countries have business that rely
on their negative externalities not catching up to them.

> Legislators must of course balance the resulting input

The problem is that the input legislators get is from a source that is
strongly biased towards viewpoints that have a lot riding on the laws being
put in place, which is generally not the people you want to be listening to
for a fair, balanced opinion.

> If the benefits from increased privacy don’t outweigh the losses to
> companies like Facebook, the law is a bad one.

This is highly dependent on which group you are looking at. From Facebook’s
perspective, most privacy laws are bad for them, while from their user’s
perspective most privacy laws are probably good. The issue is that the latter
group is being left out when this consideration is made, or at least is not
well represented.

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Despegar
Microsoft could have thrown their lot in with Apple, but I guess they're going
to look more like the ad-tech giants than Apple and need to preserve the
status quo.

Apple should assemble a separate coalition of businesses that would lean just
as hard as the ad-tech coalition in favor of privacy in all these state
legislatures. I'm pretty sure most enterprise SaaS companies that charge money
for their product would have similar interests.

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rbritton
The text and history of the bill is available here [0]. It does not appear to
have made much progress in the House, so they may run out of time to pass it
at all.

[0]:
[https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5376&Year=2019](https://app.leg.wa.gov/billsummary?BillNumber=5376&Year=2019)

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samirillian
Did Jay Inslee invite these people? I'm not clear on that point.

