Anne: So I don't know if you follow what's going on in the US. There's a law, that probably won’t get passed in the Senate but just got passed in the house, that basically says that if someone like you, graduates from high school, or is on the way to graduating from high school and hasn't gotten in trouble, you can get a conditional residence—Mike: Right.Anne: And get a social security card for ten years. Ten years conditional residence. And then if you get employed in three years during that time you can get permanent legal access.Mike: Oh, okay. So that was the Trump administration when they came to an agreement, right?Anne: No, they haven't reached an agreement, but it's this new dream. If you had known that all you had to do was keep going to school and you could get a social security card and you could have a path to citizenship, would that have made a difference, do you think?Mike: Yes. I feel like yes, if I would have known earlier. But at the same time, once you start living in Arizona, or anywhere in the US, you kind of start thinking like you're from there. I was telling the nice lady from earlier, Anita, that once you get used to it, once you think that you're from there—that was my mistake, because I started not caring—you just start doing stuff that if you don't have papers you should know you're not supposed to do. I got kind of carried away and was trying to get the whole world. Because I didn't have my papers, I was trying to go after everybody. I'm like, "Okay. So if I can't work, cool, I'll just do my own thing, or I'll just do this, do that."Mike: I feel like if I was a little more informed, it would have gone a different way, or a little more help, programs or anything. I feel like I could have still had a fighting chance.Anne: Yeah. I mean the hope is that there will be policy that will give hope to people like you that as soon as you finish going to school, you can then get a social security card, you can get a job, you can make a life for yourself, but currently—

In Georgia, which went for a Democrat for the first time since Bill Clinton in 1992 and just elected two Democratic senators — one Black and one Jewish — there have been a raft of proposed voter restrictions.

Kerner Commission

Fair Housing Act

It is as though the Big Bad Wolf, after years of unsuccessfully trying to blow the brick house down, has instead introduced a legal framework that allows him to hold the three little pigs criminally responsible for being delicious and destroy the house anyway. When he is asked about this behavior, the Big Bad Wolf can credibly claim that nothing in the bill mentions “huffing” or “puffing” or “the application of forceful breath to a brick-based domicile” at all, but the end goal is still pretty clear to any outside observer.

For a political body that devotes a lot of attention to national security, the implicit threat of revoking Section 230 protection from organizations that implement end-to-end encryption is both troubling and confusing. Signal is recommended by the United States military. It is routinely used by senators and their staff. American allies in the EU Commission are Signal users too. End-to-end encryption is fundamental to the safety, security, and privacy of conversations worldwide.

At a time when more people than ever are benefiting from these protections, the EARN IT bill proposed by the Senate Judiciary Committee threatens to put them at risk.

EFF describes this as “a major threat,” warning that “the privacy and security of all users will suffer if U.S. law enforcement achieves its dream of breaking encryption.”

Despite its opposition, EARN-IT is the clearest threat yet to end-to-end encryption, given this clever twist in pushing the onus onto the platforms to avoid transmitting illegal content, rather than mandating a lawful interception approach.

Putting that risk more simply, the EARN-IT bill is cleverly leaving it to the tech platforms to keep themselves safe—there would be little option other than some form of access to encrypted content, even though it would not be specified in law. Sophos describes this as “the backdoor virus that law enforcement agencies have been trying to inflict on encryption for years.”

On the encryption front, HRW echoes others that have argued vehemently against the proposals—that weakened encryption will “endanger all people who rely on encryption for safety and security—once one government enjoys special access, so too will rights-abusing governments and criminal hackers.” Universal access to encryption “enables everyone, from children attending school online to journalists and whistleblowers, to exercise their rights without fear of retribution.”

the encryption debate continues to rage in the U.S., with proposed new legislation representing the clearest threat yet to the security underpinning WhatsApp and iMessage, as well as Signal, Telegram and Wickr

Who would have thought crypto investors would be U.S. securities law experts by the end of 2018

To prohibit the Federal Communications Commission from reclassifying broadband Internet access service as a telecommunications service and from posing certain regulations on providers of such service.

Mention has been made of the new environmental body. Strictly speaking, under this clause as it currently stands, the Government would be able to establish, under secondary legislation, the kind of body that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, who is no longer in his place, was arguing for earlier—a body so powerful it could sanction other public bodies, including the Government, if it was able to reproduce the powers that presently rest with the European Commission. That is an enormous power, which this House would not allow the Executive arm of government on its own without primary legislation conducted through the two Houses.

loopholes proliferated, and the tax code grew more complex

from Hawaii to Alabama to New Hampshire, a diverse, bipartisan coalition of state legislators will simultaneously announce state legislative proposals that, although varied, are all aimed at empowering their constituents to #TakeCTRL of their personal privacy. These bills would go far in ensuring students, employees, and everyone else has more of a say over who can know their whereabouts, track their activities online, and view information they share with friends.

The academic publisher Elsevier has contributed to many U.S. Congressional representatives, pushing the Elsevier-supported Research Works Act, which among other things would have forbidden any effort by any federal agency to ensure taxpayer access to work financed by the federal government without permission of the publisher.