Consumer Information

CFA State AI & Privacy Update # 3 – Feb 12, 2025

 |  Blog Post

Welcome to the third installment of a newsletter from the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) tracking the latest news about how AI and personal data are used, abused, and regulated. If you’re reading this and not subscribed, head to https://cfa.simplelists.com/ and on the list select the second from the top (“ai-privacy-updates (CFA State AI and Privacy Updates.)

Alright – let’s get into it:

STATE AI AND PRIVACY POLICIES

  • One side of the Virginia legislature passed a bill banning the sale of consumers’ precise geolocation information, and it’s now pending in the other. (Law360)
    • Zoom in: CFA, along with eight other consumer protection and digital rights organizations, sent a letter to the Virginia legislature to respond to bad-faith industry arguments trying to tank the bill. (CFA)
  • New Mexico is hearing a good bill later today on internet privacy and safety. It’s pretty strong! (Source New Meixco)
  • Maryland state legislature heard a bill that would ban algorithmic price fixing for rent pricing. Companies like Realpage collect non-public rental pricing and term data from landlords and use that to recommend rates above competitive market rates. CFA testified in strong support of this law – more on that here. (CFA)
  • Washington state is considering a really strong consumer privacy bill (WA Privacy Organizers)
    • CFA testimony can be viewed from about ~47 minutes into this video (TVW)
  • New York state passed a strong bill protecting health-related data privacy. This includes data from location-related apps, period-tracking apps, mental health app information, and more that isn’t covered by HIPPA. Gov Hochul should sign this law since it was passed, but she’s getting pressure from industry who wants to collect and sell any and all data was born – CFA urged her to do exactly that. (CFA)
  • Three strong privacy bills focused on data privacy generally, data brokers specifically, and kids privacy specifically were introduced in Vermont, by Rep Monique Priestley. (BlueSky Thread from the Sponsor herself)

RELEVANT NEWS

  • The first private lawsuit under the My Health, My Data law in Washington state was brought against Amazon for treatment of customer’s location data. (Bloomberg)
  • The Trump Administration is trying to destroy the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which, if you’re not too familiar with, is an amazing agency that helps everyone besides massive banks and other entities trying to screw you. More on consequences from CFA Director of Financial Services Adam Rust (blog).
  • EPIC, Democracy Forward, and a Federal Worker are suing the fake but damaging agency “Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE)” over their “illegal seizure of personal data from treasury, personnel systems.” (EPIC)
  • There was a great decision in a lawsuit, rejecting a “fair use” claim by Reuters, who had their work scraped/stolen to build an AI model. This may not be the result everywhere, but is important since almost all of the large AI models powering big chatbots (including ChatGPT) are using copyrighted material, and the fair use defense is what they rely on. (The Verge)
  • There’s a good academic paper studying and quantifying the “public health impact of AI” – building off the environmental impact and focusing on air pollutants from data centers among others. (ARXIV)
    • One crazy highlight/number: Moreover, depending on the location, training an AI model of the Llama-3.1 scale can produce an amount of air pollutants equivalent to driving a car for more than 10,000 round trips between Los Angeles and New York City, resulting in a health cost that even exceeds 120% of the training electricity cost.