Today is a great time to take action on some key bills!
- HB 1834, an age verification bill, has a committee vote ***this afternoon***. We OPPOSE this bill.
- SB 6002, regulating Flock, is on the Senate floor calendar. We don't know juts when the vote will be, This bill still needs strengthening, but we are asking Senators to vote YES on it
- HB 2599 prohibits AI chatbots purporting to provide therapy. We SUPPORT this bill.
HB 1834, AG Brown's "Protecting Washington Children Online Bill", has an age verification requirement. The Appropriations committee has a vote scheduled for this on Monday afternoon -- today! -- so this is the most time-sensitive.
https://www.takeaction.network/xactions/46592 makes it easy to contact the appropriate legislators, and has a suggested script.
Age verification is bad.
A coalition of over civil, human, and digital rights groups highlights, "for vulnerable communities, a biometric scan or an ID upload can serve as a huge obstacle, especially for low-income, unhoused, and undocumented people".
And age verification laws are right out of the Project 2025 handbook -- trying to erase LGBTQIA2S+ identities from the net.
https://msmagazine.com/2025/02/25/lgbtq-abortion-censorship-age-verification-laws/
SB 6002 (the Driver Privacy Act) regulates Flock and other ALPRs, surveillance cameras that tke pictures of license plates and other "contextual images" (including bystanders and people in cars) and stores them in database. It's an important bill to pass -- although the current version is too weak to effectively protect Washingtonians.
