Comments
By hermannj314 2026-03-1415:453 reply When a "right to..." law is passed, there is usually an accompanying narrative that explains a past injustice that will be corrected. Matthew Shepard hate crime, Civil Rights Voting act, etc.
The absence of such a story makes me think this law doesn't protect shit. What exactly did a Montanian get killed or arrested trying to do with a computer that is now protected? Can I use AI during a traffic stop or use AI to surveil and doxx governemnt employees? What exactly is the government giving up by granting me this right?
Or is this just about supressing opposition to data centers?
Yeah I think it's pretty obviously the AI industry trying to ban its own regulation
> Nationally, the Right to Compute movement is gaining traction. Spearheaded by the grassroots group RightToCompute.ai, the campaign argues that computation — like speech and property — is a fundamental human right. “A computer is an extension of the human capacity to think,” the organization states.
Computation however requires a vast supply chain where certain middlemen have a near monopoly on distribution of said "fundamental right". The incentives for lobbyists seems clear.computation — like speech and property — is a fundamental human rightI don't necessarily disagree with the idea, but until profit is shared with taxpayers, this is a one-way transaction of taxpayers bankrolling AI companies.
By terminalshort 2026-03-1419:421 reply I find your claim that there is a monopoly on computing laughable. No other technology has improved in quality or dropped in price as much as computers over the last 40 years. If this what you get from a monopoly, then we need more monopolies.
By wyldfire 2026-03-1422:57 Modern semiconductor fabrication is a very narrow field.
As far as monopolies go I don't think it's our biggest concern, like you say.
If we want to continue to wage wars and seek conquest, it's not great to have it located in one/few countries. But instead if we want to work towards peace, we should continue breaking down barriers to trade (while maintaining protections for labor).
Regulation is just regulatory capture by incumbents and also a national security risk.
By lucianbr 2026-03-1419:42 Looks like this one might be while in general the rule does not hold. Good regulations exist, and so do bad ones. Arguments without nuance often do more harm than good to your side.
By tempodox 2026-03-1512:03 Deregulation is just regulatory capture by industry and also a national security risk.
You argue that food safety tellregialtikns are just regularity capture?
By jfengel 2026-03-1417:04 Aggravatingly, some of it is. The organic food regulations are impossible for the small farmers who invented the idea. Only mega corps can do it, and their definition is not much better (if at all) than industrial farms.
It's still way better than Upton Sinclair's time. But it would be nice if the FDA and USDA were run by people who eat rather than sell food.
To start a restaurant where I live it's $50k in fees and mandatory paperwork before you can even get a construction permit. Alot of it is, yes.
And none of it prevents bad food handling practices by minimum wage staff.
By FatherOfCurses 2026-03-1519:45 There are also laws about how fast you can drive to your restaurant and whether you can assault your employees once you get there. Neither of them have a place in a conversation about the efficacy of food safety laws, nor do the building permits you mention. We have different laws to regulate different domains and they exist largely because someone cut corners in the past and people literally died.
By jmye 2026-03-153:25 > And none of it prevents bad food handling practices by minimum wage staff.
Your argument is that all restaurants in your area handle food unsafely? Or that some do flagrantly and without penalty? Or that one has once and you got sick and so all the regulations are worthless as a result?
Trying to understand what argument you think you’re making, here, and specifically how factually bereft and vacuous it actually is.
This is mostly signaling, but NY is currently considering a law to prevent AI systems from giving legal and medical advice: https://statescoop.com/new-york-bill-would-ban-chatbots-lega...
I don't think that this is a good idea. For medical applications, I can understand that LLMs are not the best solution, since they are so bad with numbers/probabilities. But for legal advice, I think they should be pretty good.
So the only reason I can think of to forbid such use cases is that people in those professions fear being replaced by machines.
By hermannj314 2026-03-1420:432 reply Preventable medical errors kill 250,000 American every year, I can imagine LLMs could be both good and bad for that number, but on net, it is hard to say without just guessing. But if you ban the application of LLMs to medical care, you close that door before even seeing the potential on the other side. I think that is absurd.
By jlarocco 2026-03-1421:52 I don't think that conclusion really follows because I don't think the ban works that way.
There's a big difference between ChatGPT writing a prescription and a doctor double checking his diagnosis using some kind of Claude code for medicine. ChatGPT writing prescriptions and giving medical device directly to people should absolutely be prohibited for now, but the second approach should be encouraged.
> it is hard to say without just guessing
It really isn’t. How many surgeries do you think LLMs perform? How many of those medical errors would’ve been resolved by a chatbot? It’s easy to quote a big scary number and pretend like it has some vague relevance when you don’t actually understand the problem space.
By hermannj314 2026-03-155:56 Ok, so how many deaths from medicals errors have been caused by and prevented through the use of LLMs (since you say it isn't hard). Can you enlighten us and not leave us guessing?
I understand many deaths due to medical errors are caused by patients misunderstanding the advice they are given. You are saying you know exactly the net value of LLMs in this problem space?
By genthree 2026-03-1420:29 [dead]
Eh, if states can pass restrictive laws on AI in absence of a correspondingly negative motivating event, I don't see any contradiction in doing the opposite.
> if states can pass restrictive laws on AI in absence of a correspondingly negative motivating event...
If you mean besides the extensive harm to air quality, the large land fingerprint of data centers, the massive strain on water resources and treatment facilities, the insane electricity demands resulting in skyrocketing prices pushed onto everyone else, the deafening noise pollution, and what they've done to the price of RAM, then sure. And that's just the data centers!
The usage of AI itself has resulted in all kinds of harm and even actual deaths. AI has wrongfully denied people healthcare coverage they were entitled to preventing or delaying needed surgeries and treatments. There's a growing list of LLM related suicides (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_linked_to_chatbots). The use of AI in parole systems has kept people locked behind bars when they shouldn't have been due to biases in the bots making decisions. AI used for self-driving driving cars have killed pedestrians and other drivers. There are thousands of AI generated harms tracked here: https://airisk.mit.edu/ai-incident-tracker
By FatherOfCurses 2026-03-1519:49 Did you do the security setup for Jurassic Park?
By cowboylowrez 2026-03-1512:281 reply I knew this would happen, safety is now considered "woke" haha
Not sure what you mean by “woke” but prioritizing safety at the expense of everything else is poisonous
By FatherOfCurses 2026-03-1519:471 reply So is prioritizing corporate profiteering.
By tt24 2026-03-1521:44 Disagree
By terminalshort 2026-03-1419:251 reply [flagged]
Yeah, I'm going to believe the many many documented cases of these problems in VA alone over your non-example
https://www.businessinsider.com/living-next-to-data-centers-...
https://www.businessinsider.com/data-centers-northern-virgin...
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/15/opinion/data-centers-ai-a...
https://virginiamercury.com/2026/02/19/legislature-considers...
https://www.wdbj7.com/2026/02/04/virginia-lawmakers-look-add...
https://news.vcu.edu/article/northern-virginia-data-center-a...
By terminalshort 2026-03-1419:47 [flagged]
Job loss is a horrible reason to ban something. Think about our history if we always did that. We would all be stuck working on farms today, because we didn’t want to allow tractors or other machinery because it would take away farming jobs.
Instead of banning tech to save jobs, pass laws that make sure tech prices in externalities (tax carbon emissions), and find other ways to assist people who lose jobs (UBI, good social safety nets, etc).
Don’t stifle progress just because it makes us have to work less.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1418:202 reply Right - fix the economy instead. Why should increasing efficiency cause people to have less resources - that makes no sense.
Because there are people who live off rent (in a broad sense of this world), and there are people who live off selling their ability to work. Increased efficiency and productivity may or may not benefit the second kind of people, depending on whether they can sell their labour to be used for something else.
So instead of figuring out ways to limit the ability of people to live off rent, we want to ban beneficial things that people could extract rent from?
This is like saying, "We don't like how landlords extract value from housing, so we are banning apartment buildings"
By Joker_vD 2026-03-151:43 Well, usually we tax the landlords instead. But when the landlords make up the overwhelming majority of the legislature, this tend to not happen.
The situation with apartment buildings is even more quirky because the USA has quite ridiculous zoning regulations, which AIUI many landlords actually support? It's really a wonderful barrel of worms, and I am glad I have no paddle in it.
Banning AI does increase efficiency. It makes it more efficient for a working class family to afford to survive. What perverted definition of the word were you considering?
How is this different from saying "Banning mechanical farm equipment does increase efficiency, it makes it more efficient for farm workers to afford to survive"
You are fighting against productivity improvements when you should be fighting against people hoarding the benefits of productivity improvements.
That doesn't answer my question. My claim is that people working is efficient.
Your definition of efficient doesn't make any sense. If people can work less and produce more, that is the definition of efficient.
I agree that keeping everyone fed and sheltered is of primary importance... but wouldn't it be better to have everyone work less while doing that?
Let's have robots do all the hard work and then share the wealth with everyone. Why force people to work at jobs that could be done easier just to make sure we employee everyone? Might as well just pay people to move rocks back and forth.
Just increase taxes on robots and use that to pay basic income.
> Let's have the robots do all the hard work and then share the wealth with everyone
That sounds fantastic, except that in our capitalist economy the wealth will not be shared by everyone, and will instead be funnelled directly to the tech oligarchy, while workers get laid off. Until we fix that part of the equation, innovations to efficiency will continue to result in working people getting screwed over by technological innovation.
By cortesoft 2026-03-154:37 Sure, but this entire thread is about hypotheticals anyway.
It will be equally politically difficult to ban AI as it would be to grab some of the wealth generated by AI for the exact same reasons - either attempt would be fought against by the same tech oligarchs, for the same reason. To protect their money.
If we are going to have to fight them anyway, let's fight for the one where we don't have to work jobs that could be done by computers instead, while still having the same income.
And we don't have to get rid of capitalism entirely to spread the wealth. UBI can be used in a capitalist society, too.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1421:09 A carpenter using a hand saw instead of a power saw just to keep more carpenters employed is not being efficient. It's Pareto-better to keep all those carpenters employed, earning the same salary for fewer hours.
By TimorousBestie 2026-03-1418:211 reply > Job loss is a horrible reason to ban something. Think about our history if we always did that.
The US has continually set up protectionist policies to preserve a local workforce. Automotive manufacturers, the shipbuilding industry, etc.
By tt24 2026-03-1419:00 These are bad things
By FatherOfCurses 2026-03-1519:51 In an economy that depends on consumer spending, you can only wipe out so many jobs until no one can afford to purchase consumer goods.
By cortesoft 2026-03-1417:47 Another example why these types of laws make things worse for people.
By Ukv 2026-03-1417:00 If the idea was that laws must be motivated by a negative occurrence rather than preemptive, then that'd follow yeah (if counting job loss as a reason to ban something, which I think is questionable). But note akersten is saying that it's normal for laws to be preemptive in both cases.
Just like when musicians were on strike and the radio people decided to play a recording over the air (gasp! a record!) rather than live performances.
A nice ban on playing recorded music would have saved those jobs.
By gosub100 2026-03-1418:16 Bad example. You are agreeing that copyright is owned by the people whose work an AI agent is trained on. Sure, come take a class of jobs, and then pay them in perpetuity to license the exposition of their work. For 75 years after the authors death, just like current copyright.
>>absence of a correspondingly negative motivating event.
You don't think there's reasons pass laws banning AI...datacenters?
Because what state is banning the concept of AI? They're banning/restricting the creation of a type of infrastructure within their borders because they feel that is detrimental to their citizens. Maybe it's NIMBY/Luditte BS to you, but people not wanting their resources to go help ensure some dork can have a chat-bot girlfriend seems normal to me.
I'm already running an LLM locally. This is just me renting space in a data center. Since when did we restrict people's ability to do things? For the record my local models run off the solar bolted to my roof. Even including the data center I'm using 1/10th of the energy we were using on tube monitors back in the 90s. This is exhausting. My GPU would be demonstrably using more power by playing a videogame right now than when I run a local LLM.
Since when did we restrict people's ability to do things?
This question is not the obvious winner you think it is. To me, and I am sure many, it sort of undermines your argument.
Even in the most ‘free' cultures, society has _always_ restricted people’s individual ability to do things that it collectively deems harmful to the whole society.
This is literally why America was founded. Too many people stifle innovation. Move to Europe if you want to be stuck in the 20th century frankly. That doesn't mean we can't take care of folks. But the ludites need to get the fuck out of the way. You're all exhausting.
By jrmg 2026-03-150:34 And people in the late 1700s were just allowed to do anything? (The answer to that is obviously ‘no’).
I’m not even in complete disagreement with your opinion on data centers (like, people are coming up with noise, water use, pollution and traffic arguments about why a data center should not replace a recently controversially closed paper mill near me, which is ridiculous), but your argument doesn’t work. You need to change it if you want to convince people.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1418:251 reply America was founded because rich people didn't want to pay taxes.
If it wasn't for America you'd still be using a shovel and hoe instead of writing code for a living.
Please, don't be so negative about the rest of the world. No one has any idea what would have happened if the US did not create their country the way they did. This is the same level of under-appreciation of humans that the ancient aliens people have when they say its impossible for humans to have built the pyramids. Lets be constructive instead of just hating on everyone else please.
I was born in Europe. I know this for a fact. The difference in "can do" culture between old world and new world is everything. There's a reason Europe still doesn't have a self landing rocket. They aren't even trying. It's crabs in a bucket mentality writ large. I wish it weren't so. Yet it is.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1421:071 reply It's partially true but it's not as true as doomers would like. It's not America: innovation=yes, Europe: innovation=no. Most of the American innovation came from a small number of very rich people. It has a lot of very poor people as a consequence.
> Most of the American innovation came from a small number of very rich people
Replace "came from" with "was purchased by" or "was copied by an entity with the resources to push the inventor out of the market" and you're getting a lot closer.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1423:331 reply How about "was driven by"
This encompasses rich people telling others what to do, and it also encompasses others doing work they think they can sell to rich people.
I think in Europe, people are just overall a bit more chill, and happy people don't feel the need to join the ultra-competitive scramble to the top, they're fine doing enough work but not an extreme amount.
By Arainach 2026-03-153:07 I don't even agree with that. In many cases the rich people at best paid the salaries of other innovative people and then claimed the IP rights and the overwhelming share of the proceeds.
Elon didn't invent anything about rockets or electric cars. He hired (or perhaps just bought a company that had already hired) smart innovative people and got rich off them.
Pharmaceutical CEOs aren't innovating anything but they get rich off the innovations of others.
Most of the people who innovate or invent a new tool or product don't have the capital to mass produce and market it and end up selling their rights, which others benefit from.
Very few rich people are involved at all in innovations. Technology, which is less capital-intensive to scale than other fields, is an exception where several rich folks actually were involved - Steve Jobs' design sense, Larry and Sergei's PageRank algorithm, etc. but even then most of the people actually innovating new things don't get rich and watch others with more resources copy them, outmarket them, and take the money.
By jmye 2026-03-153:32 [flagged]
By cheeeeeeeese 2026-03-1416:38 [dead]
By moate 2026-03-1416:22 >>when did we restrict people's abilities to do things? That's literally what most laws are, saying what you can and can't do. This is like, a foundational understanding of what government/regulation is.
>>this is just me renting space... Okay, so a "network effect" is when things have greater impact due to larger usage. So the data center usage that you're talking about does not represent the overall impact of the data center. Saying "I only pour ONE cup of bleach into the ocean, so I don't see why it's so bad to have the bleach factory pump all its waste in as well" is a WILD take.
>Since when did we restrict people's ability to do things?
When those things impact other people - such as by skyrocketing utility prices, overloading the electrical grid, and more.
I thought this was a free market? Or is that not how things work anymore?
Never has been. A totally free market doesn't work and has failed every time it was tried. You want one today, go set up shop in Somalia.
Holes such as what?
There have always been rules and laws. The US has never been a totally free market. Most of the laws and rules we have were written in blood by people professing a "free market" right to poison our people, rivers, air, and more.
America was largely a free market until the 1920s. Since then more regulations have actually increased the cost of living. The healthcare problem in America has a lot to do with increased regulations. For one we have a fixed limit on how many doctors can graduate every year. That was put in place by the medical lobby in the US. Ever since then healthcare costs have increased exponentially. Tale as old as time. This happens with every single new rule put in place. Rent control does the same thing. Prices just go up. This includes NIMBY laws.
The US does not limit the number of doctors that can graduate. The limit is on the number of residencies funded by medicare. If the private sector wanted more doctors in order to pay doctors less, they could just offer paid residencies themselves. Somehow the free market hasn't solved that one. This ignores that doctors' salaries aren't a significant cause of the problems and insurance companies are the true root of high prices.
Rent control stabilizes prices while more supply can be built, because it is in the interests of society for people to be able to afford to live, and we can't will additional buildings into place overnight. High eviction rates destroy communities and have many negative side effects.
In the absence of regulation, corporations lie, cheat, and steal, and have a massive power imbalance against ordinary people. No one has enough time and energy to research every option for everything in their daily life, and they rely on laws to establish safety measures they can rely on.
Oh you're one of those. You actually believe rent control works in the face of overwhelming evidence that all is does is increase the cost of housing. Fascinating. Pointless talking to you.
By RiverCrochet 2026-03-152:42 Rent control doesn't have to be "you as a landlord can't change no more than $X in rent." It can also be "rent increases on existing tenants in good standing are limited to X%.
By pocksuppet 2026-03-1418:26 What are the holes? There are places today with no government - perfect free markets. If you think perfect free markets are awesome, you can move there and do business there. It's a bit like telling someone who loves communism to go to China.
By balamatom 2026-03-1420:19 An absolute free market would, by definition, permit the selling of the service "restrict someone's freedom for me".
Not sure if that leaves it a free market. So if we're gonna be talking holes in the cheese - seems like you're reasoning in terms of a basically self-contradictory notion.
But truly, what do you reckon about the 1st point, in terms of the interpretation of market freedom which you use?
> Since when did we restrict people's ability to do things?
At least 4000 years ago, but that's just the earliest we have evidence for
I don't think you understand the qualifier. I meant in the tradition of liberal free markets that have unlocked human potential on the global scale. I'm saying no it's actually good that you don't have to ask the local government when you want to do something. If American style free markets didn't gain traction we'd still be doing subsistence farming.
The thing is, since we recognized that such a tradition led to the unfettered destruction of the natural environment which we depend upon to survive, we have decided that local governments should be responsible for preserving said environment by regulating the destructive actions performed by the liberal free market. Not doing so will even destroy our ability to perform subsistence farming in the long run.
So far all I hear is complaining about electricity prices. No one actually cares about the "environment". They are just mad that the KW/h is up 3 cents.
By tadfisher 2026-03-1515:56 Then you are not replying to me in good faith. I didn't say a thing about electricity rates.
By cortesoft 2026-03-1417:12 Why should we stop there? Let’s ban people flying on vacations, because why should our resources go towards some dork laying out in the sun? Air travel is horribly wasteful. Let’s ban people racing cars, that is also wasteful. We shouldn’t be using our resources to drive in circles.
How do we pick which activities are worth using resources? Which ones are too ‘dorky’ to allow?
Look, I am all for pricing the externalities into resource consumption. Tax carbon production, to make sure energy consumption is sustainable, but don’t dictate which uses of energy are acceptable or ‘worth it’, because I don’t want only mainstream things to be allowed.
I didn't say any of that in my comment nor express an opinion about this whole thing writ large. I'm only pointing out that it's not weird for legislature to preempt a real world use case by way of pointing out similar laws.
I'm going to do this again:
>>>>absence of a correspondingly negative motivating event.
What did you mean? Why do you believe there has not been a motivating event to ban data centers when those bans have happened, which is literally what you said?
By akersten 2026-03-1416:23 In the context of the discussion a correspondingly negative event would have been along the lines of "we built a data center and then it exploded, we need to make sure that doesn't happen." Not "we're worried about the effects the data center might have," which is vis a vis to "we're worried about the effects banning ai might have." All I'm saying is neither of those last two are weird reasons to enact a law.
GP was insisting that "rights" named laws always come after some negative event and it is weird that we have this "rights" named law without someone being deprived of their computation or whatever. I'm disagreeing with the premise that that's weird by pointing out laws preempt real world events all the time, in either direction (restrictive or permissive).
By baggy_trough 2026-03-1416:112 reply > Maybe it's NIMBY/Luditte BS to you, but people not wanting their resources to go help ensure some dork can have a chat-bot girlfriend seems normal to me.
Why would it be your business, or anyone else's, to stop someone from doing this?
Because these data centers are at best overstressing utility grids and elevating prices for everyone and at worse running dirty generators and poisoning entire communities, for a start.
Oh no, we couldn't possibly generate more power! Impossible! We're at our limit!
China has 100 reactors under construction - meanwhile in the West, folks like you exist.
By int_19h 2026-03-159:26 In the West the new datacenters popping up are mostly powered by gas.
By Arainach 2026-03-1420:07 If the businesses that want data centers want to pay the full construction costs for the new power plants, great. Otherwise consumers are paying for them in the rates they pay to energy companies.
It should not be considered shocking or controversial that people already hit hard by corporate greed and other effects of late-stage capitalism don't want to pay higher utility rates to subsidize the data centers being built by megacorporations who want to take away even more of their jobs.
> Why would it be your business, or anyone else's, to stop someone from doing this?
Because, in this country, we have “local government” wherein a bunch of people who live near each other have frequently banded together to make laws about the places they live. Surely this isn’t shocking news to you? Surely you’ve encountered this phenomenon before?
Why do you think you have a right to do anything you want, anywhere you want, no matter what?
By baggy_trough 2026-03-1518:59 That some group of people passed a foolish law does not make it any of their business. That would have to be argued separately.
By lukeschlather 2026-03-1415:402 reply I was really hoping this gave people the right to use their computers, but it really looks like it simply prevents "the government" from regulating the right to "make use of computational resources." So Google or Apple can still prevent me from using my phone for lawful purposes, the government just can't regulate it (and the government might not be able to write restrictions that prevent manufacturers from violating my right to compute.)
By sophrosyne42 2026-03-1417:31 Google or Apple only hold an ability to prevent you to use your phone because the government itself enforces IP. So the restriction against regulations in this bill is only a partial and incomplete restriction against the government from interfering with people's right to compute.
Imagine if Montata required that all compute platforms sold in the state to be free of user restriction: That they be amenable to modification, that all source code, firmware and hardware specs be open, and when that is not the case - the company would be compelled to release the relevant information on pain of having assets seized, required to refund payments etc. That would have been a hoot :-)
By sroussey 2026-03-1416:54 Simply not sell to that state.
I think the main content of this law (https://legiscan.com/MT/text/SB212/id/3212152) is just two paragraphs. I'd suggest reading them yourself rather than relying on secondary description:
"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."
"When critical infrastructure facilities are controlled in whole or in part by a critical artificial intelligence system, the deployer shall develop a risk management policy after deploying the system that is reasonable and considers guidance and standards in the latest version of the artificial intelligence risk management framework from the national institute of standards and technology, the ISO/IEC 4200 artificial intelligence standard from the international organization for standardization, or another nationally or internationally recognized risk management framework for artificial intelligence systems. A plan prepared under federal requirements constitutes compliance with this section."
In particular, I think the reporting is straight wrong that there's a shutdown requirement. That was in an earlier version (https://legiscan.com/MT/text/SB212/id/3078731) and remains in the title of this version, but seems to have been removed from the actual text.
By torginus 2026-03-1417:10 Ah, finally something that the common man wants. A mandatory risk management strategy compliant with ISO/IEC guidelines
So the government is afforded the opportunity to constrict compute if for a government interest.
This bill seems to expand powers, not restrict
Before the law, I think the state government or local governments could (by passing a law) restrict computing for any reason, even without a government interest. Now, they'd have to repeal this first.
How?
I know the whole 90s meme of 'I am a controlled munition' went around because cryptography was labeled an ordnance subject to export control laws, and therefore code that performed those kind of computations were forbidden to be sold abroad, liable to a felony.
What happens today? Government gets rights to source code, logs, and rubber stamps/rejects your code from executing in the cloud?
Government limits your access to commodity infrastructure?
By lokar 2026-03-1421:34 djb had to (with the EFF) spend years in court to establish (on appeal) that writing crypto code was a speech issue:
https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice
Laws like this make it much simpler for someone to challenge a law or regulation. They don't have to convince the judge (and possibly appeals court) that building or using a computer is a form of protected expression, this law says it is.
It may seem kind of flimsy or non-consequential, but while it's not a massive change, it is a really change and it's constructive.
How? By default, state governments can pass basically whatever laws they want. They don't have (theoretically) limited enumerated powers like the federal government.
By RobRivera 2026-03-1417:20 Im not asking for policy mechanics, I'm asking for implementation detail clarification.
By scuff3d 2026-03-1416:47 When you contextualize the law with comments like this
"The initiative... contrasts with recent restrictive legislation efforts in states like California and Virginia. Zolnikov, a noted advocate for privacy, has been instrumental in pushing for tech-friendly policies that ensure individual liberties in an evolving digital landscape.
"'As governments around the world and in our own country try to crack down on individual freedom and gain state control over modern technologies,' Zolnikov said. 'Montana is doing the opposite by protecting freedom and restraining the government.'"
And it's the normal framing we always see with this crap. This is more an attempt to protect corporations from regulation then it is to protect individuals.
By toomanystraws 2026-03-1416:36 "... the deployer shall develop a risk management policy after deploying the system...."
This is a complete sham. Anything really geared towards protecting people would have protections in place before deployment.
By tzs 2026-03-1417:41 Hmmm. "[...] the deployer shall develop a risk management policy after deploying the system [...]".
I wonder why it is after rather than before?
