Also of note and concern:
Buried in Trump’s ‘Big Beautiful Bill’ is a clause that would ban states from regulating artificial intelligence for 10 years
Amendment would empower the likes of Bill Gates, Sam Altman, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, the Saudis & other technocrat billionaires to run roughshod over Americans’ privacy and civil liberties.
Buried deep in Trump’s bill is a secretly added clause that seeks to usurp the rights of individual states to regulate AI.
https://leohohmann.substack.com/p/buried-in-trumps-big-beautiful-bill
Excerpt:
......Republicans in the House Energy and Commerce Committee quietly added the proposed amendment in Section 43201, Subsection C. I say it’s secret because it has received almost no media attention.
The amendment reads as follows:
“No state or political subdivision may enforce any law or regulation regulating artificial intelligence models, artificial intelligence systems, or automated decision systems during the 10-year period beginning on the date of the enactment of this Act.”
No state regulation of AI for 10 years. This is giving away the farm to the likes of Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Mark Zuckerberg, Saudi Prince Muhammed bin Salman and a host of other technocrats and billionaires investing in this world-changing technology. And a majority of states, both red and blue ones, are not going to take it sitting down.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin is among the 40 attorneys general who sent a May 16 letter to House Republicans arguing against the feds being able to block the ability of states to regulate AI.
Griffin told KATV, the local ABC News affiliate in Little Rock:
“That’s a horrible idea, because that’s not even replacing something, what the states are doing, with something else, what the feds might propose. It’s not doing that. It’s replacing something, what the states are doing, with nothing.”
Upgrade to paid
That’s right. Free and unfettered AI with no protections. No ethics required. That’s what the House Republicans want. What could possibly go wrong?
KATV noted that opponents of the last-minute amendment say states have had to step up and begin regulating artificial intelligence themselves in the absence of a comprehensive regulatory framework at the federal level.
“There still needs to be some guardrails, and the lack of action from the federal government has forced states to try and address these things at a more local level,” Arkansas State Rep. Scott Richardson, (R) District 13, told the outlet.
This last legislative session in Arkansas was the first where the state really began focusing on powerful, rapidly growing AI technology. About 15 bills were filed relating to AI and about half a dozen were signed into law.
Richardson sponsored three of them. One of Richardson’s bills establishes copyright guidelines for generative AI. Another bill criminalizes nonconsensual commercial use of an individual’s likeness through generative AI, which can mimic a person’s appearance and voice.
Similarly, another new Arkansas law tackles deepfakes, criminalizing creation and distribution of sexually explicit AI-generated images of real people, particularly minors.
Now, however, the proposed moratorium may hamper Arkansas’ ability to regulate exploitative AI-generated material, Griffin warned.
Thank you for pointing that out! If nothing else, in normal times when SCOTUS was committed to the Constitution, one might hope that that law would be overturned on the basis of state's rights or whatever. Now SCOTUS has seemingly joined the Deep State. Like AOC supposedly said a while back: if people had the right to own guns it would have been in the constitution!
Of course we can still bear 'arms' - - - I still have two of them! ❌
270 arrested in global dark web crackdown targeting online drug and criminal networks
Operation RapTor strikes hundreds of dark web vendors and buyers across four continents
https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/sb0040
Excerpt:
A global law enforcement operation coordinated by Europol has struck a major blow to the criminal underground, with 270 arrests of dark web vendors and buyers across ten countries. Known as Operation RapTor, this international sweep has dismantled networks trafficking in drugs, weapons, and counterfeit goods, sending a clear signal to criminals hiding behind the illusion of anonymity.
he suspects were identified through coordinated investigations based on intelligence from the takedowns of the dark web marketplaces Nemesis, Tor2Door, Bohemia and Kingdom Markets. Many had conducted thousands of sales on illicit marketplaces, using encryption tools and cryptocurrencies to cover their tracks — but law enforcement closed in.
This international action follows Operation SpecTor in 2023, which led to 288 arrests. Together, these operations show the increasing ability of law enforcement to penetrate the dark web’s cloak of secrecy.
Dark web vendors unmasked
The 270 arrests took place in the following countries:
United States of America: 130
Germany: 42
United Kingdom: 37
France: 29
South Korea: 19
Austria: 4
The Netherlands: 4
Brazil: 3
Switzerland: 1
Spain: 1
Investigations are ongoing to trace and apprehend more individuals involved in dark web crime.
Millions seized, weapons recovered
In parallel with the arrests, officers seized:
Over EUR 184 million in cash and cryptocurrencies
Over 2 tonnes of drugs, including amphetamines, cocaine, ketamine, opioids and cannabis
Over 180 firearms, along with imitation weapons, tasers and knives
12 500 counterfeit products
More than 4 tonnes of illegal tobacco
These seizures represent a major disruption to the criminal supply chains that feed the dark web economy.
.....While executing search warrants in New Jersey and New York, federal law enforcement officers seized more than $330,000, close to 80,000 counterfeit Adderall pills, one firearm, and two industrial pill press machines.
Additionally, two vehicles and several pieces of property were seized during the search warrants. An additional 30 kilograms of suspected counterfeit Adderall pills were seized on May 2, 2024, in New York.
he Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) additionally sanctioned Iranian national Behrouz Parsarad for his role as the founder and operator of Nemesis Market following seizure of the market. Parsarad was also indicted by a federal grand jury in the Northern District of Ohio on drug trafficking charges related to the illegal business he ran on the dark web.
Nemesis had over 30,000 active users and 1,000 vendors and facilitated the sale of nearly $30 million worth of drugs around the world between 2021 and 2024, including to the United States.
Behrouz Parsarad (Parsarad), residing in Iran, was the sole administrator of Nemesis. In this capacity, Parsarad established Nemesis and held full control over the marketplace and its virtual currency wallets. Parsarad enriched himself from fees he charged users of Nemesis with every transaction, pocketing what OFAC estimates to be millions of dollars over the course of the marketplace’s existence. In addition to providing criminals with a platform to conduct transactions, Parsarad laundered virtual currencies for narcotics traffickers and cybercriminals active on Nemesis.
On March 20, 2024, U.S., German, and Lithuanian law enforcement agencies seized Nemesis’ servers in a joint operation. Since the takedown of Nemesis, Parsarad has discussed setting up a new darknet marketplace to take the place of Nemesis with vendors that were once active on the marketplace.
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Lot of governments involved for small confiscation. Purpose, unstated, was probably to take down the ‘dark web’ narcotic sites, although the Iranian has already set up a new site.