Meta, Samsung and OpenAI are chasing a $600 billion post-smartphone market, but lawsuits, venue bans and privacy fears are reshaping AI glasses and recorders.
Subhead:The Albanese government talks tough on artificial intelligence and hackers, yet its proposed Digital Duty of Care bill would let the eSafety commissioner run unlimited covert sock-puppet accounts and generate AI content that could be used to surveil and influence Australians behind a legal shield.# Anthony Albanese likes to talk about taming artificial intelligence in Australia's interests, yet his Government has drafted a law that would let the eSafety Commissioner hide behind fake identities, watch what Australians do online and produce material, AI included, with no one required to sign off. The power sits in an exposure draft of Labor's Digital Duty of Care bill, dated 8 September. The draft calls these false personas "sock puppet identities", its own term, and s 205J(1) is blunt: "The Commissioner may assume a sock puppet identity for the purposes of performing the Commissioner's functions or exercising the Commissioner's powers under this Act." https://x.com/shellenberger/status/2103996261342887949?s=20 Subsection 205K(2) "authorises (without limitation) the use of sock puppet identities by the Commissioner to generate material using an online service (including by means of artificial intelligence) to the extent that the production, dissemination or possession of that material is not an offence against a law of the Commonwealth, a State or a Territory." Contact with real users is allowed only so far as it keeps the account from being shut down. The power applies "despite anything to the contrary" in any other federal, state or territory law and in any contract, while s 205L shields anyone acting "in good faith" from civil suits. The Commissioner needs no warrant, no case-by-case authority and no outside approval. University researchers need approval that eSafety can control, plus ethics clearance, to use the same identities, and get no AI power. Federal police, the tax office and the intelligence agencies need no warrant for fake identities either, but under the Crimes Act 1914 each one requires a separate written authority from the agency head, who must be satisfied it is necessary and that the risk of abuse is minimal. Police authorities must be reviewed at least every 12 months, and law enforcement agencies report their use each year to the minister, who tables the report in Parliament. eSafety is not named in that scheme, and today's Online Safety Act has nothing like this. Enacted, the power would be lawful, but it would hand a civil regulator a covert toolkit without any of the checks placed on police.
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Cooler weather arrived just in time for the opening of archery deer season Saturday, but it's still too hot for many hunters.
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