{"id":17530,"date":"2020-01-23T11:10:07","date_gmt":"2020-01-23T19:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2020\/01\/23\/news-11265\/"},"modified":"2020-01-23T11:10:07","modified_gmt":"2020-01-23T19:10:07","slug":"news-11265","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2020\/01\/23\/news-11265\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepfakes laws and proposals flood US"},"content":{"rendered":"

Credit to Author: David Ruiz| Date: Thu, 23 Jan 2020 17:59:05 +0000<\/strong><\/p>\n

In a rare example of legislative haste, roughly one dozen state and federal bills were introduced in the past 12 months to regulate deepfakes, the relatively modern technology that some fear could upend democracy. <\/p>\n

Though the federal proposals have yet to move forward, the state bills have found quick success at home. Already three states\u2014California, Virginia, and Texas\u2014have enacted deepfake laws, and legislation is pending in Massachusetts, New York, and Maryland, which introduced its own bill on January 16 this year. <\/p>\n

The laws and pending legislation vary in scope, penalties, and focus. <\/p>\n

The Virginia law amends current criminal law on revenge porn, making it a crime to, for instance, insert a woman\u2019s digital likeness into a pornographic video without her consent. The Texas law, on the other hand, prohibits the use of deepfakes for election interference, like making a video that fraudulently shows a political candidate at a Neo-Nazi rally one month prior to an election. <\/p>\n

A New York bill tackles an entirely different subject\u2014how to treat a deceased person\u2019s digital likeness, a reality that is coming to a screen near you (starring James Dean).<\/a> And two state laws potentially address the rising threat of \u201ccheapfakes,\u201d low-tech digital frauds that require no artificial intelligence tools to make. <\/p>\n

This legislative experimentation is expected for an emerging technology, said Matthew F. Ferraro, a senior associate at the law firm WilmerHale who advises clients on national security, cyber security, and crisis management. <\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways, this is [an example] of the laboratories of democracy,\u201d Ferraro said, citing an idea popularized decades ago by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis. \u201cThis is what people cheer about.\u201d <\/p>\n

But one category of deepfakes legislation has earned more upset than others\u2014the kind that solely regulates potential election interference. Groups including the American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, and First Draft, which researches and combats disinformation, warn of threats to free speech. <\/p>\n

Further, prioritizing political deepfakes legislation could, in effect, deprioritize the larger problem of deepfake pornography, which accounts for a whopping 96 percent of deepfake material online today<\/a>, said Adam Dodge, founder of the nonprofit End Technology-Enabled Abuse, or EndTAB.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s important that we address future harm, I just don\u2019t want that to come at the expense of the people being harmed right now,\u201d Dodge said. \u201cWe have four deepfakes laws on the books in the United States, and 50 percent of them don\u2019t address 96 percent of the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, Malwarebytes provides a more detailed look at deepfakes legislation and laws in the United States, following our analysis last week of the country\u2019s first-ever, federal deepfake rules<\/a>. Far beyond what that language requires, the following bills and laws call for civil and criminal penalties, and directly address concerns of both political disinformation and nonconsensual pornography. <\/p>\n

Federal deepfakes legislation before Congress<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Before lawmakers in Washington, DC, are at least four federal deepfakes bills in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate. They are:<\/p>\n