May, 23 2024, 04:14pm EDT
NH Deepfake Indictment Is Yet Another Wake-Up Call: Congress Must Act To Prevent Chaos
Today, New Hampshire Attorney General John Formella announced that political consultant Steven Kramer has been indicted for orchestrating robocalls to New Hampshire voters with a fake, AI-generated version of Joe Biden’s voice.
Robert Weissman, president of Public Citizen, issued the following statement in response:
“New Hampshire was able to indict Kramer because the robocalls aimed to deter people from voting. Almost every state makes it illegal to undertake fraudulent efforts to deceive people into not voting. New Hampshire also makes it illegal to impersonate a candidate on a telephone call.
“However, most political deepfakes misrepresenting candidates and aiming to defraud voters will not run afoul of existing law – unless lawmakers and regulators act. Eighteen states and counting have passed laws to prevent political deepfakes. Congress is moving slowly on the issue, with no guarantee of action. And the Federal Election Commission is, at best, slow walking the issue.
“The New Hampshire deepfake robocall should have been a wakeup call to policymakers across the country. Most hit the snooze button, but today’s indictment is the alarm sounding again: The American people need you to act now to prevent deepfake chaos in November. No one benefits from deepfake chaos and the problem is preventable. If policymakers fail to act, we should expect chaos to ensue.”
Public Citizen is a nonprofit consumer advocacy organization that champions the public interest in the halls of power. We defend democracy, resist corporate power and work to ensure that government works for the people - not for big corporations. Founded in 1971, we now have 500,000 members and supporters throughout the country.
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The president-elect's advisers are reportedly discussing plans to shrink or eliminate key bank watchdogs, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
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President-elect Donald Trump and his advisers are reportedly considering plans to weaken—or abolish altogether—top bank regulators, including the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency.
The Wall Street Journalreported Thursday that members of Trump's transition team and the new Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency have asked nominees under consideration to head the FDIC and OCC if the bank watchdogs could be eliminated and have their functions absorbed by the Treasury Department, which is set to be run by a billionaire hedge fund manager and crypto enthusiast.
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"The next recession starts here," tech journalist Jacob Silverman warned in response to the Journal's reporting.
Eric Rauchway, a historian of the New Deal, wrote that "even Milton Friedman appreciated the FDIC," underscoring the extreme nature of the incoming Trump administration's deregulatory ambitions.
Musk, the world's wealthiest man, is also pushing for the elimination of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency established in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis.
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Guterres "is particularly concerned over the hundreds of Israeli airstrikes on several locations in Syria" and has stressed the "urgent need to de-escalate violence on all fronts throughout the country," said U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric.
Israel claims its invasion and bombardment of Syria—which come as the United States and Turkey have also violated Syrian sovereignty with air and ground attacks—are meant to create a security buffer along the countries' shared border in the wake of last week's fall of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and amid the IDF's ongoing assault on Gaza, which has killed or wounded more than 162,000 Palestinians and is the subject of an International Court of Justice genocide case.
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Addressing the assassination of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and conversations it has sparked about the country's for-profit system, longtime Medicare for All advocate Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday condemned the murder and stressed that getting to universal coverage will require a movement challenging corporate money in politics.
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"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system."
"What you're seeing, the outpouring of anger at the insurance companies, is a reflection of how people feel about the current healthcare system," he continued, noting the tens of thousands of Americans who die each year because they can't get to a doctor.
"Killing people is not the way we're going to reform our healthcare system," Sanders added. "The way we're going to reform our healthcare system is having people come together and understanding that it is the right of every American to be able to walk into a doctor's office when they need to and not have to take out their wallet."
"The way we're going to bring about the kind of fundamental changes we need in healthcare is, in fact, by a political movement which understands the government has got to represent all of us, not just the 1%," the senator told Jacobin.
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