Press Releases

Tuesday, April 10, 2018

KCRA

By Kevin Oliver

While Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg was testifying before Congress in Washington D.C., California lawmakers are just days away from taking their first crack at the state's own regulations concerning data privacy on websites.

Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, said it is vital that California protect personal data.

"California has got this amazing opportunity as the home of Silicon Valley to protect our residents and how their information is used to help their online activities and how it is then marketed and sold to a third party to be used against against our activities online and to influence us," Levine said.

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Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Vox

By Emily Stewart

The federal government is already investigating Facebook. The question now is how much further it will go to regulate it.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg is testifying before Congress Tuesday and Wednesday in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal and revelations about the platform’s role in the dissemination of Russian disinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign to answer questions about Facebook’s past, current, and future actions.

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Wednesday, April 4, 2018

San Jose Inside

By Kristin Lam

Sen. Dianne Feinstein gave Mark Zuckerberg a fiery ultimatum. Before a roomful of a few hundred Silicon Valley executives on Monday, the top Democrat on a Senate panel investigating Facebook’s massive privacy breach told the Facebook CEO to correct course or have the government do it for him.

“Fix it before it really breaks,” she said at a “fireside chat” in Sunnyvale with Silicon Valley Leadership Group CEO Carl Guardino.

“If you don’t control your platform, we’re going to have to do something about it,” she added. “I am hopeful that they will.”

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Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Bloomberg Technology

By Selina Wang

California has proposed legislation that would require social platforms like Facebook Inc. and Twitter Inc. to identify automated accounts, or bots, amid a push by state lawmakers to police the technology companies that have proven vulnerable to manipulation and the spread of fake news.

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Tuesday, April 3, 2018

Engadget

By David Lumb

Facebook and Twitter are plenty aware that Russian-backed actors have been using troll accounts to manipulate online discourse. Despite introducing transparency tools and purging lists of bots, California lawmakers don't think the companies are doing enough to safeguard consumers. Legislators proposed a bill that would force social media platforms to identify automated accounts and deal with them within three days.

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Sunday, April 1, 2018

The Press Democrat

By The Editorial Board

For many homeowners, the full extent of the devastation from the October fires is still unfolding — on their calculators.

As Staff Writer Bill

Swindell spelled out in his front-page story a week ago (“Painful insurance reality,” Sunday), the number of people in Sonoma County who lost their homes and were underinsured or uninsured has exceeded the fears of many local leaders and even some industry experts. A survey by San Francisco-based consumer group United Policyholders shows nearly 70 percent of local fire victims believe they do not have enough insurance to rebuild their homes. According to Amy Bach, executive director of United Policyholders, those homeowners are finding that the gap between what they need to rebuild and what they can expect to receive from insurance companies is between tens of thousands of dollars to more than $1 million. “Those are breathtaking numbers,” Bach said.

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Wednesday, March 28, 2018

KPFA 94.1 FM

8:08 Marc Levine, Democratic assemblymember representing California’s 10th district. He’s the author of two bills trying to create new regulations in the social media sphere: AB 2182, which  would create a California Data Protection Authority modeled after a similar organization in Europe; and AB 1950, which would regulate bots – social accounts that are run by algorithms, not people.

 

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