[dynm]

I think this is the main content of the law. (Everything below is quoted.)

---

Section 3. Right to compute

Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources for lawful purposes, which infringes on citizens' fundamental rights to property and free expression, must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety.

---

Section 4. Infrastructure controlled by artificial intelligence system -- shutdown.

(1) When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by an artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall ensure the capability to disable the artificial intelligence system's control over the infrastructure and revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time.

(2) When enacting a full shutdown, the deployer shall consider, as appropriate, disruptions to critical infrastructure that may result from a shutdown.

(3) Deployers shall implement, annually review, and test a risk management policy that includes a fallback mechanism and a redundancy and mitigation plan to ensure the deployer can continue operations and maintain control of the critical infrastructure facility without the use of the artificial intelligence system.

[yason]

If that's the gist of it, then:

> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately...

This seems weirdly backwards. The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own. The bill does nothing to address the actual rights of citizens, it just limits some ways government can't further restrict the citizens' right. The government should be protecting the citizens' digital rights from anyone trying to clamp them down.

[a_humean]

Yeah, the whole concept of rights in the US are, in the main, about restricting what the federal government and states can do individuals.

Whereas in Europe our concept of rights include restrictions on the state, but also also might restrict non-state actors. We also have a broader concept of rights that create obligations on the state and private actors to do things for individuals to their benefit.

[nandomrumber]

It’s kinda good the planet gets to run both experiments, and more.

The EU approach seems to want to insert government in to contracts between private individual and those they do business with, and the US approach seems to want to maybe allow too much power to accumulate in those who wield the mercantile powers.

The optimal approach probably lies in the tension between multiple loci.

[hx8]

It's one experiment because both systems are competing at the same time for global resources both in cooperation and competition with each other and other actors. Additional both systems exist in such widely different contexts that any comparison would be inaccurate because other factors such as geographic and historical have a large impact on any measured results.

[cma]

The US approach is more than that, for instance if every employee in a business pushes for a contract that says workers will negotiate as a block and pay new union dues, and the contract says new hires will be bound by that too, that's illegal in many states. Not just the normal "right-to-work" restrictions, the contract isn't valid even if unanimously agreed on by every current employee (union security agreements). But for shareholders they all set it up like that, with votes weighted by dollars. A new shareholder can't buy someone's shares and government says it's illegal for him to be bound by the voting structure.

And secondary strikes are also illegal in the US under Taft-Hartley.

[anonym29]

The optimal approach appears domain specific and granular, too.

As for domain specificity:

I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.

I don't know any European technology companies that hold a candle to the sheer breadth and depth of capabilities brought into the world by Google, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Nvidia, AMD, Intel, OpenAI, or Anthropic.

Yes, Mistral, Nokia, OVH, and SAP exist, but compared to the alternarives, they exist in the way the American healthcare system exists compared to its alternatives.

As for granularity:

Perhaps we want American style governance for building the tech, but then European style governance for running it?

[fakedang]

The American model of governance was created for a world with very distant nation-state threats but a large number of colonial threats, which is why it's centered around "every man for themselves" (in spite of FDR's best efforts). On the contrary, European governance was basically developed during the Revolutionary Wave, which was sweeping all across Europe, that monarchies found that the only way to appease the people was to give into their reforms - and often rapidly because of the domino effects of revolutions. In other words, American governance was built from the ground up, while European governance had to be adjusted within the existing environment and monarchical government frameworks.

In fact, European governments weren't even well-defined in their current state up until the end of WW2, in spite of how much Europeans like to take potshots against USA for being a "young" nation.

This does make the American form great for working with uncharted territory (how to handle new tech, how to exploit the earth in new ways, etc.) while the European form is more reactionary (how do we keep the people appeased, how do we provide a better standard of living, how do we alleviate hardship).

Perhaps the ideal mix of the two, between the frontier-style governance and European-style reactionism, like the Swiss model.

[scarby2]

> I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.

Selfishly I think my American healthcare is better than anything I ever had in the UK. I can see a doctor within 2 weeks even a specialist, I can actually get a sleep study, my doctor will actually listen to me rather than tell me I'm just getting old, go home and take an ibuprofen.

[piltdownman]

In terms of health outcomes, the UK generally has higher life expectancy and lower maternal mortality rates than the US - but that said, even the richest Americans face shorter lifespans than their European counterparts.

The real focus and point of contention should be that the US healthcare system is exponentially more expensive per capita than any European model, but is worse for almost all health outcomes including the major litmus tests of life expectancy and infant mortality. In some cases, the wealthiest Americans have survival rates on par with the poorest Europeans in western parts of Europe such as Germany, France and the Netherlands.

https://www.brown.edu/news/2025-04-02/wealth-mortality-gap

Americans average spend on inpatient and outpatient care was $8,353 per person vs $3,636 in peer countries - but this higher spending on providers is driven by higher prices rather than higher utilization of care. Pretty much all other insights in comparing the two systems can be extrapolated from that fact alone imo.

https://www.kff.org/global-health-policy/health-policy-101-i...

[bobthepanda]

specialists in two weeks is definitely not the norm everywhere in the US. it's certainly not in Seattle.

[LadyCailin]

I think you should also balance your take by asking people who recently lost their job what they think about their healthcare. I’m sure you’re aware of that, and my point is rhetorical, but that’s the trade off here, it isn’t only about what it looks like when things go right, you should also consider what happens when things go wrong. It’s also enlightening to see what happens many times when people “did everything right” and still got shafted by the US system. See: Sicko for instance https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=YbEQ7acb0IE

[yatopifo]

I suspect the time it takes to see a specialist in the UK depends on how urgently the issue needs to be addressed. The real advantage you have is that you can be seen by a specialist within two weeks even for non-urgent stuff. That’s not to dismiss your need though. The definition of medical urgency and comfort don’t align well.

[CrossVR]

The US has world-class healthcare, if you can pay for it. If you can't, then you're getting the healthcare equivalent to a third-world country.

[lostlogin]

You can and get that in the UK, surely?

[ekianjo]

> I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.

Probably depends a lot on where you are in Europe. Some countries have long waiting lists for surgeries (life saving ones) and access to doctors is very limited (too few, months to get an appointment) so it sucks as well if you are in such a situation

[TylerE]

Here in America we have to wait months for the privilege of paying out the nose.

[jojobas]

>I don't know any Europeans who'd prefer to have American healthcare.

Some 50-100k Europeans fly to the US to get American healthcare every year.

[stwr]

Ok, so about 0.0134%, Parent comment’s point is that -the average European- absolutely does not want the US healthcare system in Europe. Simply due to our shared believe healthcare is a basic right and should be universally available to everyone.

Those who have the financial means to travel to the USA for medical treatment do so largely due to running out of conventional options at home, experimental treatments or specific doctors who are regarded as the best in their particular field.

Most of the US outbound medical travel is due to treatment at home being too expensive and risking pushing entire families to bankruptcy.

The fact that 100k europeans fly to the US for medical treatment is factual, but does not equal them wanting the US healthcare system in Europe.

[dpark]

Just as a contrasting data point, some estimates are that well over a million Americans travel overseas for medical care every year.

https://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343%2818%2930620-X/ful...

This is mostly to obtain cheaper care. In general America does seem to have some of the best care in terms of quality. It’s just also some of the least affordable.

[saghm]

So the other 99.987% of Europeans agree with the parent comment?

[lionkor]

I couldn't find a source for this with a quick couple of searches, could you provide one?

[theturtle32]

That isn’t the flex you think it is lol

[pyrale]

I don’t want to rain on your parade, but you would be more fair by replacing these companies with VCs, because they’re the ones lifting real weight here.

[casey2]

That's because in the US we don't give non-state organization power over other people. At least not in the European way where you have to give your life to an org. A US citizen has the freedom to disassociate with any organization at any time for any reason.

Of course this comes with a social cost, offset as this allows people who are discontent with their arrangements to forge a new path States like California have high job lock, so most innovation comes from side-projects as people checkout from work.

[mcv]

> That's because in the US we don't give non-state organization power over other people.

How are credit ratings maintained again?

> At least not in the European way where you have to give your life to an org.

I have to what!? News to me.

> A US citizen has the freedom to disassociate with any organization at any time for any reason.

Maybe, but the EU is more militant in enforcing that right. Some US states are working on "right to be forgotten" laws, but they've got a lot of catching up to do, and I don't think there's a federal law in the works yet.

[hansmayer]

> That's because in the US we don't give non-state organization power over other people

Have you been following the news for the last few years?

[cwel]

>in the US we don't give non-state organization power over other people.

False.

[smilespray]

What are you on about?

[anikom15]

What restrictions do European governments impose on the state?

[veltas]

I don't agree with that at all. If anyone else tries to infringe your rights it's either voluntary i.e. you've consented to this, or it's involuntary in which case you can sue them or the state will prosecute them on your behalf.

[dpark]

What you’re missing is that the set of rights European countries recognize and the set of rights that the American government recognizes are not the same set.

In Europe they recognize a right to be forgotten that simply does not exist in the US. Europe recognizes personal data rights that the US does not. These data rights impose requirements on the way companies manage your data and specifically do not allow, e.g., Facebook to get you to consent that your rights do not apply. The European government protects imposes citizens’ rights on businesses in several ways that the US government does not.

On the other hand, US free speech rights are generally stronger. And of course no one else except US citizens have an inalienable right to sleep on a bed made of loaded handguns.

[veltas]

Obviously the rights that the state grants are different in the US than Europe, but the rights of individuals are protected versus other individuals, corporations, and general organisations; just as they are in all civilised countries. To the extent you can have famous cases where people sue large coffee franchises for selling coffee that's too hot.

So the statement that "the whole concept of rights in the US are, in the main, about restricting what the federal government and states can do individuals" is far from reality, and I felt it necessary to ground this conversation back in reality.

[dpark]

> but the rights of individuals are protected versus other individuals, corporations, and general organisations; just as they are in all civilised countries

Kind of. In the US there is no protection of free speech when posting in Twitter or Facebook, for example. There isn’t even a consent issue here. There’s no need for you to consent that Facebook can sensor your speech because you have no right to free speech in that context at all.

This is exactly what the poster was presumably referring to. Many rights in the us are in fact only protected from infringement by the government.

[Broken_Hippo]

Unfortunately, the world contains nuance that your statement does not.

[veltas]

What I said is a very general statement that broadly applies to all civilised countries, reiterated because the parent comment was very incorrect suggesting that rights are mainly protecting citizens from their state in the US. It's simply not true.

[mbac32768]

It is oddly funny that people in my town are ferociously protesting the police force's adoption of Flock surveillance cameras when everyone already carries total surveillance devices (smartphones) on their person at all times.

[vineyardmike]

You can (generally) tell when a person around you is filming, and you generally don’t have to worry about tons of random individuals bringing together footage of you for tracking and surveillance.

[rjdj377dhabsn]

Private individuals generally aren't systematically using their cameras for mass surveillance of you. The government is.

[tim1994]

> The government is.

Companies too.

[rjdj377dhabsn]

Companies can't use violence against individuals who do things they don't like.

[eru]

Most of the cameras are attached to either Apple or Android devices. The companies that control these ecosystems could use them for mass surveillance. The government could 'politely' ask these companies to do that for them. Or they could just directly order the phones.

[ocdtrekkie]

Sort of except for the fatal flaw that you are talking about battery powered devices that mostly live in peoples' pockets. The reason Flock cameras and Ring doorbells both serve well for mass video surveillance is consistent predictable location and power.

[IshKebab]

Could, but don't.

[immibis]

In Germany it's (very roughly speaking) illegal to film people in public. (Importantly, not the same as filming a thing or event and having people incidentally in the frame)

[TehCorwiz]

I can leave my phone at home. I cannot leave flock at home. It’s about consent.

[derektank]

I'm pretty sure the point parent was trying to make is that you can't get other people to leave their phones at home and there is very little recourse if a private citizen decides to record you without your consent from their phone in a public space. There's of course a difference in the powers involved, but people have had their lives ruined because somebody captured a video of them out of context or in their worst moment.

[BrenBarn]

That's the notion of "rights" we have in the US though. It's the same with the Bill of Rights. It's true some states do go further and bestow more affirmative rights. But it's deeply ingrained in US political thought that "right to do X" means "government won't stop you from doing X", not "government will stop anyone who tries to stop you from doing X".

[AnthonyMouse]

> The main problem is not generally what government can and wishes to restrict, it's all the proprietary/private restrictions such as not being able to run whatever code you want on hardware you own.

But those come from laws, like DMCA 1201, that prohibit people from bypassing those restrictions. The problem being that the DMCA is a federal law and Montana can't fix that one, but at least they couldn't do state one?

Although this language seems particularly inelegant:

> computational resources for lawful purposes

So they can't make a law against it unless they make a law against it?

[sophrosyne42]

The proprietary restrictions are an extension of government, because the government grants private actors protection of their IP and enforces that IP. The only issue is that because we take IP protections for granted, we see it as an issue of the private actor rather than the state which has increasingly legislated against people's ability to execute code on computers they themselves own. But it should be simple. The government grants a monopoly in the form of IP to certain private actors - when that monopoly proves to be against the interests of the citizens, and I believe it is, then the government should no londer enforce that monopoly.

[gameman144]

This seems to have the positive effect that patching applications on your own device (a la Revanced patching Spotify) appears blessed, since government prosecution would need to demonstrate a public interest case, if I'm reading this correctly.

[samdoesnothing]

No, the problem is the extent to which private parties can use the power of law to legally restrict your usage of property you own. And that's the reason it's a right.

If you don't like the restrictions a product has you can simply not purchase the product, no "right" has been infringed.

[makeitdouble]

> you can simply not purchase the product

You should explain how you'd see the majority of the population not buying a smartphone from a major brand.

[samdoesnothing]

...by not purchasing one?

[_carbyau_]

The issue is societal lockin - aka network effects. People can't afford to "not buy one" because then they are "the one without".

Banking apps, delivery apps, public transport apps, utilities apps, insurance - so many services have been captured by the big two phone oligopoly that modern life revolves around your phone. The assumption is that you will have one.

Sure, you could decide not to, but you are instantly a societal pariah as every business finds it s so much harder to deal with you - and you don't have enough time in the day to deal with the secondary processes these businesses employ, for every aspect of your life.

[samdoesnothing]

Maybe it's country specific - here in Canada I don't feel like I need a smart phone for anything crucial. There is a trend where people including zoomers such as myself switch to dumb phones for a "digital detox". So it seems perfectly feasible to do so.

[eru]

Thirty years ago no one was buying smartphones from a major brand. No one was buying any smartphones at all.

[AnthonyMouse]

But 30 years ago there were also no government services or major companies who require you to interact with them using an app on a major smartphone platform.

[txrx0000]

One step at a time. First the citizens ought to ensure that their own government is actually aligned with them.

[eru]

Citizens aren't even aligned with each other.

[txrx0000]

Citizens don't need to be aligned with eachother, but they should ensure that the government is aligned with the citizenry as a whole. Everyone should have the freedom to polarize in different directions and hold different opinions as each individual sees fit. The government is only supposed to implement the laws that most people want in common, not enforce alignment of opinion in the populace (that's an authoritarian regime). If people are allowed to freely misalign, then they'll be misaligned in different directions, and their conflicting wishes will cancel eachother out like random noise when they vote, leaving only what most people want in common to be written into law.

[eru]

What is the 'citizenry as a whole'?

As a simple example, Finland's national government just passed a smartphone ban in schools. That's fine by the criteria you brought up, but I think it's utterly moronic.

Not because I disagree with the Finnish people, or their elected representatives on the issue itself: that's for them to decide. I disagree that this should be handled at the national level at all!

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity

> Subsidiarity is a principle of social organization that holds that social and political issues should be dealt with at the most immediate or local level that is consistent with their resolution. The Oxford English Dictionary defines subsidiarity as "the principle that a central authority should have a subsidiary function, performing only those tasks which cannot be performed at a more local level".[1] The concept is applicable in the fields of government, political science, neuropsychology, cybernetics, management and in military command (mission command). The OED adds that the term "subsidiarity" in English follows the early German usage of "Subsidiarität".[2] More distantly, it is derived from the Latin verb subsidio (to aid or help), and the related noun subsidium (aid or assistance).

In this case, I lack the imagination to see the reason why this issue couldn't have been handled at eg the city level, so that the good people of Oulo get the policy they want, and the good people of Helsinki get the policy they want.

Or even lower: there's no reason to even go as high as the city level, each school individually can decide what they want.

But just to give you the limits of subsidiarity here: I can see why you'd want to have a unified policy per school instead of per teacher or per class: the logistics are easier, and the individual teacher doesn't have to use their own judgement and authority on this. (Of course, individual schools should be free to let the teachers decide, if that's the policy they want.)

You can surely create your own example that cover more familiar territory, eg legal drinking ages in the US (which are ostensibly a matter for the states, but have been hijacked by the central government.)

[Sharlin]

I'm not sure if national legislation is the correct place for the ban either, but consistency is sometimes better than flexibility. The Finnish school system has always (well, since the 70s when the current system was designed) been big on equity and everybody following the same basic rules (though at the same time giving individual teachers quite a lot of freedom to organize their teaching – there are almost no standardized tests, for example).

Students would understandably think it's unjust if their school had a stricter phone policy than their friends in the next school over. On the other hand, the new legislation only forbits phone use during classes, and gives individual schools the authority to decide if they want to restrict it during recesses too, so there will in any case be policy differences between schools. shrug

[likeclockwork]

There are fewer people in Finland than there are in Dallas, Texas.

"National level" sounds like a big deal but in real terms it's the same effect as your city wide rules for larger cities.

[txrx0000]

> ...but I think it's utterly moronic.

It could be because the general population is genuinely moronic in this matter, and actually do want to implement smartphone bans for kids at the national level, or it could be because their government is not a perfect democratic system so the bill has motives unrelated to its stated purpose that are designed to be convenient for the government at the people's expense.

Even if we assume all democracies operate the way they're supposed to all of the time, some moronic policies will still be favored over wiser alternatives when most of the population hold the same moronic opinions. That is just democracy working as intended.

One important difference between an authoritarian society and a democratic one is that the democratic one makes everyone feel like they're making very important decisions for themselves at the societal level. People with new ideas convince everyone else to voluntarily implement their ideas, rather than force everyone else to implement their ideas. Societal change in a democracy does not happen until the majority has internalized the ideas associated with those changes and want them to happen. And I think this is really nice because life is miserable if all you do is go through the motions. Being able to control your own destiny is a good feeling and source of motivation.

There are many pillars of democracy that must be supported by the majority of the population at all times, otherwise the democratic system will degrade or even collapse. But this is simply the people getting the government they deserve. The democratic system does not deny the populace the choice of replacing it with an authoritarian regime by voting that way. If the people regret it later, they will have to relearn what they forgot and rebuild what was lost through hardship.

Circling back to private ownership of computational resources: this is one of the many necessary conditions for online freedom of speech, which recently became a necessary condition for democracy to continue to exist. The recent surge of authoritarianism around the world is largely due to the centralized moderation and ranking mechanisms used on social media platforms, which encourage the formation of large echo chambers. If we want to reverse this surge, we must move filtering and ranking mechanisms to the client-side (so that each user can decide what they want to see without affecting what others can see), and then popularize decentralized protocols for social media. And that, coincidentally, would also address the root cause behind the smartphone ban you mentioned. These things are impossible to do if individuals can't own compute. Writing the right to own compute into law slightly decreases the likelihood of a dystopian future where every consumer device is a SaaS terminal that can't run anything on its own. And in that future, all democracies around the world would collapse or be severely degraded.

[novok]

Well if you want to really get pedantic about it, it comes from the government enforcing those restrictions, like the DMCA, patent, or copyright, otherwise people would just do it willy-nilly for the most part.

[immibis]

Also, government actions that restrict your ability to lawfully compute. If the government is restricting it, then isn't it by definition unlawful?

[eru]

Yes, but that's why the rest of the text gives some more meat to right.

It's not so much that the government can't restrict you, but this law would raise the bar for what justifications would be necessary.

[singron]

"lawful" seems like an enormous loophole that makes this seem vacuous. If the government makes what you are doing unlawful, then it can be restricted. How would the government restrict you from doing something lawful in the first place? A bill of attainder? That's already illegal.

[stephenlf]

It gives a legal foothold to those who would challenge later laws, akin to the bill of rights. Believe it or not, courts will honor that kind of thing, and many legislators act in good faith (at least at the state level).

[jjk166]

The difference is that while they can restrict the what, they can't restrict the how. Yeah they could make training LLMs illegal, but they can't for example put a quota on how much training you can do. Passing a law to ban something completely is a lot harder than passing a law that puts a "minor restriction" in place.

Ultimately any law can be repealed, so the loophole of changing the law in the future always exists. The point is that any future change to the law will take time and effort, so people can be confident in the near term that they won't be subject to the whims of a regulator or judge making decisions in a legal grayzone which may come down to which side of the bed they woke up on.

[throwaway384638]

Having dealt with lawyers for the past few months this is design

[halfcat]

> If the government makes what you are doing unlawful, then it can be restricted

Always been the case. An interesting question you might explore, is whether rights exist. And the question is not whether they ought to exist.

[antonvs]

Of course rights exist, as a social construct.

[halfcat]

Yes, rights are real in the way ideas are real, for what that’s worth. They’re not guarantees, as many tend to view them.

They only become tangibly real when those in power allow it. More of a temporary gift, quickly taken away when those in power are supplanted by a tyrant.

The interesting angle to me is that the same ideas seem to be sort of “inevitably re-emergent”. They return, even after generations of tyranny, where no one alive in society has been handed these ideas we call rights.

So it’s more of a temporary gift that we should appreciate while we have it, which is forever at risk of being taken away, but which will always re-emerge as long as there are conscious beings capable of suffering.

[marcosdumay]

That's as strong a rule as you can put in a normal law. If you want it to restrict what laws the government can pass, you need to put it in the constitution.

[BirAdam]

I feel like this was a mistake: “must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest in public health or safety”

So, public health or safety, in the hands of a tyrant how broad can that get? I imagine that by enshrining this in law, Montana has accidentally given a future leader the ability to confiscate all computing technology.

[noir_lord]

In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.

Almost every part of government is in isolation a single point of failure to someone with a tyrannical streak, it's why most democracies end up with multiple houses/bodies and courts - supposed to act as checks and balances.

So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.

[miki123211]

> In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.

But that is not how tyrants actually operate, at least most of the time.

The most tyrannical country possible would be a "free democratic union of independent people's republics". Democracy has been so successful that most tyrannies operate under its veneer. This is in stark contrast to how monarchies have operated historically.

The trick isn't to ignore laws, but to make them so broad, meaningless and impossible to follow that you have to commit crimes to survive. You can then be selective in which of these crimes you choose to prosecute.

You don't charge the human rights activist for the human rights activism. You charge them with engaging in illegal speculation for the food they bought on the black market, even though that was the only way to avoid starvation, and everybody else did it too. In the worst case scenario, you charge them with "endangering national peace", "spreading misinformation" or "delivering correspondence without possessing a government license to do so" (for giving out pamflets).

"must be limited to those demonstrably necessary and narrowly tailored to fulfill a compelling government interest" is exactly the shenanigans tyrants love. You can get away with absolutely anything with a law like that.

[MangoToupe]

> In the hands of a tyrant all laws can be arbitrary/ignored because that is a key part of what makes them a tyrant.

Sure, but legislators should generally avoid explicitly building the on-ramp to such behavior.

[raw_anon_1111]

How has that been working in the US where both the legislation branch and judicial branch have willingly given their authority to the executive branch?

[noir_lord]

You would think the fact that I put "supposed to act as checks and balances." in my post would answer that but apparently not.

[hansvm]

> So this law wouldn't alter the outcome in the slightest.

If an unchecked tyrant exists, do they really need the paper-thin facade provided by manhandling the English language to pretend that some law supports their actions?

[vlovich123]

Yes because tyrants still value the symbolism of pretext.

[XorNot]

This is just making a slippery slope fallacy by circuitous means.

The point of all laws and thus the courts is that each new action provides an opportunity to debate and decide on whether an action is lawful, and thus determine whether it should proceed.

You are arguing that all such decisions would always be decided in favor of the tyrant because they're a tyrant ala a slippery slope: the law exists, all things will be declared lawful, ergo all things are allowed with no further challenge.

This can certainly be true, but it doesn't naturally follow.

[xorcist]

It sounds like you completely agree with the comment you replied to?

[exe34]

in that case they can just vote in whatever law they want or they can hold starving kids hostage and forbid anybody from helping - I don't think this law in particular will make any of it worse.

[rolph]

give a man a shovel, and a treasure map, but dont tell him he is digging his own grave.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Yes. That has been a problem. Several states outright ignored the scotus Bruen decision.

[Retric]

Yea a Supreme Court ruling 110 years after a law passed only for them to reverse course 2 years later. Surely that’s based on the constitution and nothing else.

[SV_BubbleTime]

Is your argument that you should only listen to Supreme Court judgments that you agree with?

Or is it that they have some settling in time before you need to actually pay attention to them?

[hamdingers]

How would you expect checks and balances to work when a single party controls all the branches? Is this a serious comment?

[raw_anon_1111]

It seems strange (or maybe you are just young) that you think this. But both Democratic and Republican controlled Congresses have fought against excesses of their own President. The same is true for the Supreme Court in the past ruling against an administration of its own party.

There was an entire coalition of “Blue Dog Democrats” that came from red states as recently as 30 years ago.

Or did you really forget that even in Trumps first term that Republicans like McCain voted against Trump snd 10 voted to impeach him?

[hamdingers]

The party is MAGA and that party is pro-dictatorship. The behavior of republicans decades ago is irrelevant, and it's obvious that MAGA has learned lessons from Tumps first term.

Perhaps it's you who haven't been paying attention? I find older people have a lot of unfounded faith in these failing institutions, but if you try to keep up you'll see this isn't the same America you grew up in.

[singron]

This is essentially the "strict scrutiny" standard, which governments have to achieve in order to violate your strongest constitutional rights (e.g. 1A). If you don't spell it out, then it might be delegated to a lower standard like "rational basis".

[simplulo]

Correct.

[mpalmer]

This is how laws are written. A court would determine whether the state is abusing or violating this public safety carve-out.

[zbrozek]

And this exact method is how we got minimum lot sizes, setbacks, FAR, and a burgeoning affordability and homelessness crisis. It's a blank check.

[mpalmer]

Yes, the ability to litigate is key. Only a few can afford it.

[shortrounddev2]

Seems like a lazy way to write a law. Basically just gives any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank check. The law should qualify what public safety means

[kingkawn]

You want discretion for judges so that they can respond to the problems of their era wisely rather than rigidly applying the ideas of another time without nuance

[jfengel]

Unless those judges themselves have a fondness for an imaginary "great" time, and will apply their reasoning in a way that just happens to fit their ideology.

Law is either rigorous or it's not. When I'm told that the law is against me but gosh darn it the law is the law, I grow resentful of the "discretion" reserved for some but not others.

[kingkawn]

There’s no eliminating humans from human civilization. No risk no fun.

[jfengel]

What drives me nuts is the way lawyers (of all stripes) keep praising "legal reasoning". None of it strikes me as even vaguely rigorous.

I'm not a lawyer so I could well be completely off base here. But if my perception is correct, I would much rather they admit that it's fundamentally up to someone's gut feeling. That's more honest than telling me that a bit of reasoning is airtight when it's not.

[lanyard-textile]

The true honesty is that judges may rule however they please, regardless of the reasoning. In many cases they require their intuition to guide them. In that sense, it is already up to their gut feeling.

At some point someone needs to weigh the facts, and they are given great discretion to do so. It is generally a good thing, because we have multiple layers of appeal to prevent obviously horrible outcomes.

So this legislation, like all legislation, provides guidance for the good faith judge to help weigh the facts. There is no guidance that will prevent a bad faith judge from ruling badly: You do not need a clause about public safety to get the ruling you want, but there is an argument that your ruling may perhaps be less scrutinized.

There’s a reason an attorney’s answer is always “it depends” :) No legislation is truly airtight from abuse.

[DrewADesign]

A judge can rule however they please, but if it goes against legislated law or precedent, it can (and should) be appealed. Sure, if the highest appellate determines the law says something different than it really does, that’s that, but it’s not like most judges have carte blanche to determine the outcome of any legal entanglement on a whole.

[mpalmer]

> gives any governor whose party controls the supreme court a blank check

Here's the thing: this is not supposed to be a thing. Not supposed to be how things work at all, but it kind of does now.

So the trust implicit in the broad language of our laws gives - has been giving - a massive advantage to bad faith actors who obtain power.

[ralusek]

It appears to be a law that is simply adding restrictions to what the state can do (like the first amendment, the best sorts of laws IMO). It’s not granting people limited rights. Any existing rights people had under the fourth or first example, for example, are still in place, this just sounds like further restrictions on the state.

[terminalshort]

What are rights besides restrictions on the state?

[ethin]

This phrasing is not by itself unusual; this almost mirrors the requirements for strict scrutiny.

[captainkrtek]

Do tyrants care about law? They find ways to work around law, write new law, and rule by decree.

Democracy is largely following norms and tradition of respecting the people and laws, but it can also be ignored when those in power shift.

[SilverElfin]

Agree - it feels a lot like emergency measures, which are broadly abused at every level of the government and by both major parties.

[BirAdam]

Yeah, so much that my feel is this law basically gives the state of Montana the right to confiscate computing equipment rather than the right to of the owner to have and use it. I understand that the intent of those involved in passing this was to protect civilians from the state, but such a broad and unspecific carve out just makes me think that a radical from either side could paint with quite a broad brush. “Who’s the terrorist today?” Kind of thing.

[simplulo]

I know what you mean, but this is actually as strong as a protection in Montana (and probably elsewhere) gets. The burden is high. Montana's RTC bill had strong and competent libertarian input.

[dvntsemicolon]

I see your point, but a tyrant doesn't need to follow laws in order to do tyranical things

[BriggyDwiggs42]

So this is probably just to attract datacenters with the promise there will be no recourse for the local environmental consequences and the horrible noise for neighbors.

[soupy-soup]

This is exactly what's happening. There are some huge data center projects in progress in Montana.

[dweinus]

Exactly. All of the people in comments here thinking this has any impact on right to repair or open source are thoroughly kidding themselves. Lawmakers don't get out of bed in the morning to fight for nerds or the working class.

[andai]

Does The Hum fall under the 1st Amendment? ;)

[Spooky23]

That’s no hum, it’s the sound of shareholder value.

[einpoklum]

So, the bill:

* Reaffirms (state) government power to restrict individuals in computing

* Suggests that when a restriction infringes on your rights, but not on some specific fundamental rights, then then governmenty actions need not be limited.

* Legitimizes the control of infrastructure by artificial intelligence systems.

* Mostly doesn't distinguish between people and commercial/coroprate entities: The rights you claim to have, they will claim to also have.

Wonderful...

[wseqyrku]

>revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time.

They are going to seriously let it lose, when we talk about "revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time".

[xorcist]

That's .. unexpectedly broad? A strict interpretation of that would mean no gaming consoles and certainly no iPhones.

Their fundamental promise is a gatekeeper that restricts a lot of things that are not only legal but many customers want to do, including trivial things like writing their own software.

[qnleigh]

> Government actions that restrict the ability to privately own or make use of computational resources

If the government tried to block you from installing certain apps on your phone, that would fall under this law. Apple as a private company can still block whatever they want.

[XorNot]

It does get a little interesting to imagine the interface here though: if I circumvent those restrictions, a strict reading would be that I'm allowed to because the mechanism by which Apple would stop me would be through the State.

Which in turn would put it in conflict with the DMCA.

[anikom15]

There’s no conflict. DMCA trumps state law.

[benatkin]

That seems like a correct interpretation and I don't like seeing it spelled out like this in a law. It seems more like a CAN-SPAM act than a step in the right direction.

[vrighter]

So it's just a lot of hot air, simply because it is not the government that is restricting our right to compute. But the device makers, and software developers.

Google deciding to monopolize app installations is a restriction on computing. Not the government.

Device makers locking bootloaders is a restriction on computing. Not the government.

Bank applications refusing to run unless running on a blessed-by-google firmware on a device with a locked bootloader is a restriction on computing. Not the government.

[votepaunchy]

> So it's just a lot of hot air, simply because it is not the government that is restricting our right to compute. But the device makers, and software developers.

No, it is only the government which can restrict these rights through violence and the threat of violence. Sony cannot restrict you from buying an Xbox or Nintendo.

[vrighter]

But sony, microsoft and nintendo all heavily restrict what you can use their computer for, and what software you can run on it.

This is not a free-market issue. Yes, I am still free to buy another device. But if all device makers heavily restrict access, then this is a bunch of feel-good nonsense.

[cestith]

It is a free market issue, because when an oligopsony controls what can be bought and sold you don’t have a free market. These hardware vendors are controlling the market for software for their devices, and buyers are not free to make their own decisions about hardware they purportedly own.

[anikom15]

You are also free to alter the device in any way you want as long as it doesn’t start emitting radio waves.

[vrighter]

Modifying the hardware != running the software I want on the hardware I own.

So yes, your last statement is correct, but utterly irrelevant to this discussion.

[biztos]

> revert to human control within a reasonable amount of time

“You have 15 seconds to comply.”