Stealth Quotas Bite the Dust

In this Congress, anyway.

For those who've followed the progress of a dangerous stealth quota provision in Congress, I'm pleased to report that what looked three weeks ago like a retreat on the issue has turned into a full-fledged rout.

A new discussion draft of the widely touted American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) has been released. This bill was hailed as a bipartisan and bicameral compromise with overwhelming support when it first appeared. The original version contained a detailed blueprint for imposing race, gender, and other preferences on algorithms that use personal data. After a long analysis of the risks of such an approach ran here in the Volokh Conspiracy, a second version of the bill was released that dropped most of the detail but still had troubling provisions that could have encouraged similar preferences, as pointed out in a second Volokh Conspiracy post.

Now a third discussion draft has been released, and it drops all of the algorithmic discrimination and civil rights provisions that were driving quotas. It is a complete victory for those of us who objected to the smuggling of race and gender preferences into the digital infrastructure that will govern our economy and society for the next several decades.

The bill will go to markup next week. It remains controversial. A good summary of the issues can be found in this piece by Brandon Pugh and Steven Ward of R Street. There will be some bare-fisted R-on-R fighting over the bill, a priority for the retiring chair of the House commerce committee. But at least quotas won't be part of the bargain.

On a personal note, this has been an unusual experience for me. There is no doubt that staff and members of the commerce committee have been paying attention to these posts, and modifying the bill to respond to them.  But exactly which staff and which members has never been entirely clear. So I can only lift a virtual glass to the anonymous heroes who performed such effective work in the trenches: And I promise that I'll be glad to buy you an actual beer if I ever learn who you are!

Comments

[Kazinski]

Excellent work, I wrote my Congressman after your first post, and linked the post in my email.

He isn't on the commerce committee however.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

"After a long analysis of the risks of such an approach ran here in the Volokh Conspiracy, a second version of the bill was released that dropped most of the detail but still had troubling provisions"

(1) Who wrote the right-wing advocacy piece that was placed in the Volokh Conspiracy to reach Republicans on Capitol Hill?

(2) Who paid for it?

(3) Are the drafts anything more than House Republican (MAGA) wish lists? Is there any indication the Senate or White House supports any version of the Rodgers document? What indicates the Republicans are in any position to lead in this context?

[Longtobefree]

This is beginning to sound like the arguments in computer science when the concept of quality assurance standards for programming began. The programmers wanted 'creative freedom' in program design, and the standards side wanted more predictable results from provable test cases. I was in one of the meetings between the programming director, and the QA director. After a few hours of the usual arguments, the QA director finally said to the programming director, "How about if we go ahead with these proposed standards, but just as guidelines?" The programming director agreed to this.
After the programming group left, the QA director told his entire staff "Enforce the guidelines like standards".

As long as one democrat lives, there WILL be quotas.

[Magister]

Sorry, I fell asleep during that anecdote. Was there a bug because someone enabled Javascript, or was it two digit years?

[Frank Drackman]

The Quota-ists, they’re like Roaches! Rats! Like with Ham-Ass or Cancer, you need to kill every last Roach/Rat/Ham-Ass/Cancer cell or they’ll just come back and you have to start all over. I’ve found that a Cyanide based approach works best, it’s cheap, readily available, and if you ever need it (yeah right) an effective Antidote is available (use it quick, once you smell the Almonds it’s too late)

Frank

[Magister]

.

[Nige]

The unconscious racist and sexist biases of the progammers are clearly freedom of speech, and any fixes tend to make everything worse anyway.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

” There is no doubt that staff and members of the commerce committee have been paying attention to these posts, and modifying the bill to respond to them. But exactly which staff and which members has never been entirely clear. ”

Spoiler: It’s the Republican staffers and members who are drawn to a white, male, polemical blog featuring a daily stream of bigotry — vile racial slurs, superstition-driven gay-bashing, right-wing misogyny, white nationalism, Republican xenophobia, Federalist Society transphobia, Christian dominionism, red state Islamophobia, Unite the Right-style chanting antisemitism, white supremacy, etc.

[GKHoff]

There goes your last chance to influence national policy.