Month: December 2023

Against the backdrop of high inflation rates and geopolitical uncertainty, states are increasingly enacting measures that encourage saving in precious metals and even using gold and silver as money.

With five bills signed into law in 2023, sound money reforms are gaining momentum across the United States.

Money Metals Exchange’s Sound Money Defense League project has emerged as an influential force, actively engaging in legislative battles by prompting intense grassroots support, drafting legislation, recruiting bill sponsors, and providing expert testimony directly to lawmakers.

Twenty-five states considered fifty pieces of legislation this year aimed at ending taxes on monetary metals, strengthening state finances by investing reserve funds in physical gold, establishing in-state depositories, and more.

The 2024 Sound Money Index, published by Money Metals Exchange, provides a full rundown on how each state stacks up in this important policy area.

Ending Sales Tax on Gold and Silver Is a Winning Issue

The vast majority of states have now eliminated taxes on the purchase of precious metals.

In 2023, Mississippi became the forty-third state to do so, following the recent examples set by Ohio and Arkansas in 2021 and Tennessee in 2022.

That leaves just seven sales tax states: New Mexico, Hawaii, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Maine, New Jersey, and Vermont.

Of these seven states, five considered legislation in 2023 to end the tax.

New Jersey hopes to become the forty-fourth sales-tax-exempt state. Assembly Bill 5294 passed unanimously through the state Assembly by a vote of 74–0, and a Senate committee unanimously passed the bill this week.

Meanwhile, Money Metals leaders collaborated with legislators in Wisconsin to introduce Assembly Bill 29 and Senate Bill 33. These measures have garnered support from twenty-four cosponsors representing both sides of the aisle with a hearing expected soon.

The Alaska state House passed House Bill 3, the bill seeking the end to borough and city sales taxes on sound money. The measure will be considered by the Senate when the legislature reconvenes in early 2024.

In Kentucky, Representative Steven Doan sponsored House Bill 213 as a single-issue bill, but Republican leaders insisted on incorporating the language that would end sales taxes on precious metals into a broader bill covering multiple topics.

Despite broad support in the House, Senate leaders specifically removed the sound money provision, thwarting the effort in 2023.

The most contentious sound money battles of 2023 unfolded in Augusta, Maine, when Senator Eric Brakey introduced Legislative Draft 1051 to end sales taxes on gold and silver purchases.

The bill passed 17–15 out of the Maine Senate. On the House side, it received two favorable votes. However, Democrat majority leadership pressured its members, ultimately flipping enough votes to defeat the bill 71–72 during the final vote.

And finally, Vermont lawmakers introduced House Bill 295 to end the sales tax on sound money . . . as did lawmakers in Minnesota. But neither received a…

Yesterday, EPIC filed an amicus brief urging the Ninth Circuit to reverse a lower court ruling that Google was not liable for tracking Chrome users’ browsing data. EPIC argued that Google’s general terms of service disclaimers cannot override specific privacy promises made to Chrome users. Google contends that even when it explicitly promised its Chrome users heightened privacy protections, it doesn’t have to abide by those promises so long as it points to contrary terms in its general user agreement. At its core, this case is about what happens when a company claims to offer its users new privacy-protective settings, but then breaks those promises by continuing to invade user privacy. This case, which highlights Google’s misleading and extractive data practices, underscores why the law does—and should—require actual, meaningful consent. The Ninth Circuit should not enable Google, or any other company with similar practices, to continue disclaiming specific promises to limit data collection through conflicting disclosures in a general Privacy Policy.

EPIC regularly advocates for meaningful regulation of extractive, invasive, and unfair data collection and profiling systems. EPIC previously filed an amicus brief in Smith v. Facebook on the insufficiency of generic notices to establish meaningful consent for data practices.

“I think the biggest concern is probably this data privacy and security of your individual information as a user at least,” Electronic Privacy Information Center spokesperson Ben Winters said. 

The information center said using generative AI can make users vulnerable to misinformation and scams.

Read more here. 

Google’s decision cutting off its ability to comply with geofence warrants may not have much practical legal impact on Chatrie’s case and the others pending. And while it closes one avenue for government access to personal data, it’s unknown whether Google will have access to unencrypted location data from its other products, said Sara Geoghegan, counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center. 

Google’s terms of service tell users who disable location history tracking the company may still collect location data from searches or other apps. 

“This decision by Google underscores how we need meaningful comprehensive general privacy protections that are much more than pinky promises from tech companies,” Geoghegan said. “This decision shows that Google has too much power here and controls too much information.” 

Read more here.

The Federal Trade Commission released a notice of proposed rulemaking this week introducing major changes to the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) rule. COPPA currently requires companies to obtain parental consent to collect data from children under 13, but the proposed rule would significantly strengthen protections for children online. The new rule would: 

• Impose additional restrictions on how companies can collect, use, retain, and disclose children’s data; 
• Limit companies’ ability to monetize children’s personal information; 
• Prohibit targeted advertising to children and require that online service providers obtain separate parental consent before disclosing children’s data to third-party advertisers; 
• Reinforce the existing ban on conditioning a child’s online activity on the collection of personal data; 
• Prohibit using nudges to prompt or encourage children to stay online; 
• Codify the FTC’s existing EdTech guidance, which allows schools and school districts to collect, use, and disclose students’ personal information only for educational purposes, not for commercial purposes; 
• Establish stronger data security requirements to safeguard children’s personal information; and 
• Expand COPPA’s definition of “personal information” to include biometric identifiers. 

EPIC has long advocated for robust children’s privacy protections. EPIC submitted comments to the FTC in 2019 when the agency announced its plan to review and update COPPA rules. EPIC’s comments are favorably cited in the Commission’s proposed rule. 

Recently, EPIC submitted comments to the National Telecommunications and Information Administration focusing on youth privacy, mental health, and safety online. EPIC, the Center for Digital Democracy, and Fairplay also recently submitted a comment to the FTC to argue that an age-estimation technology using biometric and personal data does not meet COPPA’s requirements for the collection of verifiable parental consent. The public may submit comments to the FTC on the proposed rule within 60 days following the publication of the rule in the Federal Register. 

Yesterday, EPIC filed an amicus brief urging the Ninth Circuit to reverse a district decision striking down the California Age-Appropriate Design Code, or AADC, based on a dangerously overbroad reading of the First Amendment. As EPIC has previously explained, the decision below is so sweeping that it poses an existential threat to all privacy laws. 

California passed the Age-Appropriate Design Code last year in an effort to promote privacy protections for children online and to ensure that online products and services are designed in ways that enable children to learn, explore, and play with some basic protections. The AADC has three main components: a requirement that companies complete data protection impact assessments, privacy and data protection mandates, and an option to use age estimation to apply the privacy and data protection mandates only to users whom the company believes are kids.

NetChoice, a trade group that represents some of the biggest and most powerful tech companies in the world, challenged the law before it came into force. NetChoice argued, among other things, that the law violated its members’ First Amendment rights to collect and use the personal information of their users. The district court sided with NetChoice, finding that any law that limits the collection or use of data automatically triggers heightened First Amendment scrutiny, and that the AADC failed under such scrutiny because it limited user access to information, required invasive age verification, and otherwise did not address any concrete harms.

EPIC’s brief rebuts the district court’s “false assumptions that the AADC requires companies to limit access to content and to deploy invasive age verification techniques.” As EPIC explained in its amicus brief, the district court “failed to appreciate the specific privacy harms that the commercial collection and use of personal information poses to children and failed to recognize that the AADC is designed to address these harms.” 

EPIC’s brief also explained that the AADC involves age estimation, not age verification, and provided examples of age estimation methods that are not invasive. EPIC noted that “the AADC is fundamentally different from other statutes that seek to prohibit children’s access to online content or services and, thereby, impose substantial age verification burdens on adult users.”

EPIC filed an amicus brief in the district court supporting the AADC. EPIC routinely files amicus briefs defending tech accountability measures against First Amendment, Section 230, and other challenges.