The pandemic pushed US lawmakers to provide provisions to expand medical coverage for telehealth in 2020, speeding up a process that would otherwise have taken years. Since then, there have been efforts to make the change permanent, through things like the Telehealth Expansion Act of 2021. But there is an interim period that could present some uncertainty over whether people can get crucial telehealth services while permanent legislation is drawn up. Today, a bipartisan group of 45 lawmakers, led by Senators Brian Schatz (D-Hawai‘i) and Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), said they're "calling for the extension of expanded coverage of telehealth services to be included in must-pass legislation in February."

The group published a letter addressing Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, as well as their minority counterparts and notable signees include Senators Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). 

The letter states "While Congress prepares to enact permanent telehealth legislation, we urge you to include an extension of the pandemic telehealth authorities in must-pass government funding legislation in February." 

Currently, pandemic telehealth decision-makers have temporary authority, and that's tied to the COVID-19 public health emergency declaration. As stated in today's letter, the emergency declaration is renewed in three-month increments. "Without more definitive knowledge about the duration of the pandemic and Medicare’s long-term coverage of telehealth, many organizations have been hesitant to fully invest in telehealth."

In addition to providing more confidence to providers that investing in telehealth will be a sound long-term investment, adding an extension to telehealth coverage while making it permanent will also "reassure patients that their care will not end abruptly."

The lawmakers called for "An extension to maintain expanded coverage of Medicare telehealth services for a set period of time," which the letter said "would provide much-needed certainty to health care providers and patients." They believe an extension would also allow additional time for studies to be conducted on the impact of telehealth, which "could help inform Congress's next steps on permanent telehealth legislation and appropriate program integrity and beneficiary protections."

Therefore, the group is also asking to ensure that "an extension not include unnecessary statutory barriers in accessing telehealth services during this data collection and analysis period," which could prevent people from getting essential care.

A major tech reform bill that would prevent the industry's biggest players — Apple, Amazon, Google, and their ilk — from discriminating against smaller businesses that rely on the big platforms' services is one step closer to passage on Thursday after passing from committee on a bipartisan 16-6 vote. Senators Mike Lee, John Cornyn, Ben Sasse, Tom Cotton, Thom Tillis, and Marsha Blackburn all voted against it.

The American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which was sponsored by Senator Amy Klobuchar, would prohibit Amazon from promoting its own Amazon Basics gear over similar products in search results. Similarly, Apple and Google would be barred from pushing their in-house apps over those from third-party developers in their respective app stores. The bill passed out of both the antitrust subcommittee and the primary judiciary committee with the support of that vote and will now be put forth on the Senate floor.   

Unsurprisingly, the platforms impacted by these proposed regulations are none too pleased with the recent proceedings. Apple's Tim Cook has reportedly been personally lobbying against the bill while Amazon has released the following statement:

There’s a reason why small businesses who sell on Amazon are asking Congress to take a look at the “collateral damage” that will fall on them and their customers, should the American Innovation and Choice Online Act become law. This bill is being rushed through the legislative process without any acknowledgment by its authors of its unintended consequences. As drafted, the bill’s vague prohibitions and unreasonable financial penalties—up to 15% of U.S. revenue, not income—would jeopardize our ability to allow small businesses to sell on Amazon. The bill would also make it difficult for us to guarantee one or two-day shipping for those small businesses' products—key benefits of Amazon Prime for sellers and customers alike. The bill’s authors are targeting common retail practices and, troublingly, appear to single out Amazon while giving preferential treatment to other large retailers that engage in the same practices. We urge the Senate Judiciary Committee to reject Senator Klobuchar and Senator Grassley’s bill and refuse to rush through an ambiguously worded bill with significant unintended consequences.

A similar bill has already passed the judiciary committee's counterpart in the House though the President has not yet weighed in regarding his support of these proposals.

With the Senate Judiciary Committee scheduled to discuss the American Innovation and Choice Online Act and the Open App Markets Act this week, Apple and Google are stepping up their opposition to both bills. According to CNBC, Apple recently told lawmakers the legislation would make iPhone users less safe.

“The bills put consumers in harm’s way because of the real risk of privacy and security breaches,” Apple said in a letter seen by CNBC. The company specifically targets app sideloading as a potential threat. One of the provisions of the Open App Markets Act would force platform holders to allow consumers to sideload software and install third-party app stores. “But, if Apple is forced to enable sideloading, millions of Americans will likely suffer malware attacks on their phones that would otherwise have been stopped,” the company states in the letter.

On Tuesday, Google, in a post attributed to Kent Walker, the company’s president of global affairs and chief legal officer, advanced a similar argument. “Google is able to protect billions of people around the world from cyberattacks because we bake security and privacy protections into our services,” he said.

Walker warns the bills could hurt the company’s ability to integrate automated security features in its services. He also claims the bills could hurt the company’s ability and that of its US counterparts to compete with foreign firms by forcing them to obtain approval from “government bureaucrats” whenever they plan to release new features or address existing issues.

Apple and Google may not like the proposed bills, but they have support from others in the tech ecosystem. Specifically, the Coalition for App Fairness, an organization Epic and Spotify co-founded to pressure the two companies to change their app store policies, has come out in support of the legislation. “Moving this important legislation forward sends a clear and unambiguous message that monopoly control of the app ecosystem is no longer acceptable,” the group said on Monday.

The Senate Judiciary Committee will discuss both bills on Thursday, at which point they could advance to the floor of the Senate. At that point, the Senate would need to make time to vote on the legislation. That’s something that could take time with all the other issues it needs to consider in the coming weeks.

Unless you’re a lawyer, there’s a pretty good chance you’ve never read through a website’s entire terms of service. There’s a simple reason for that. Far too often, they’re too long and difficult to parse. Some services offer summary statements, but they’re the exception, not the norm.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers made up of Representative Lori Trahan and Senators Bill Cassidy and Ben Ray Luján of Louisana and New Mexico want to change that. They’ve introduced the Terms-of-service Labelling, Design and Readability Act – that’s TLDR for short. Taking a page from Apple, the proposed legislation would require online businesses to include a “nutrition label-style” summary at the top of their terms of service agreements and make the contracts easy for researchers to examine through the use of XML tags. It would also require them to disclose any recent data breaches, as well as provide information on whether a user can delete their data and how they would go about doing that.

“For far too long, blanket terms of service agreements have forced consumers to either ‘agree’ to all of a company’s conditions or lose access to a website or app entirely. No negotiation, no alternative, and no real choice,” said Representative Trahan. The group cites a 2012 study that found it would take the average American 76 workdays to read all the terms of service contracts they’ve agreed to use their favorite online services as the basis for the need of the TLDR Act. Should the legislation pass, it would empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce it.

Congress is making its biggest push ever to stop drunk driving with President Biden's huge infrastructure bill. As we previously reported, one of the provisions included a mandate for anti-drunk driving technology in new cars. Now, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act has passed Congress with the measure intact, Autoblog (AP) reports, and it's expected to be signed by the President soon. As part of the legislation, carmakers will have to include technology to detect and stop drunk drivers by as early as 2026.

First, though, the Department of Transportation will have to determine the best solution to curtail intoxicated drunk driving. Specifically, the bill requires something that will “passively monitor the performance of a driver of a motor vehicle to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired.” That sounds similar to infrared camera solutions already used today by GM, Nissan and others, Sam Abuelsamid, principal mobility analyst for Guidehouse Insights, tells the AP. It goes without saying that we'd need something more advanced than breathalyzers, which are already used as a punishment for convicted drunken drivers.

Around 10,000 people die every year in the US from drunk driving accidents, the NHTSA says. Now that we have smarter sensors and plenty of camera technology to monitor driver behavior, it makes sense to explore solutions that could help prevent those sorts of accidents. Within a decade, it should feel as commonplace as seatbelts. 

The infrastructure bill also includes other safety measures, like rear seat reminders that could notify parents about children left in carseats. Additionally, Congress will also require automatic emergency braking and lane departure warnings, features that many new cars already offer. It's unclear when true self-driving cars will be a reality, but until then, at least human drivers can look forward to more ways to prevent accidents. 

A bipartisan group of House lawmakers has introduced legislation that would give people more control over the algorithms that shape their online experience. If passed, the Filter Bubble Transparency Act would require companies like Meta to offer a version of their platforms that runs on an "input-transparent" algorithm that doesn't pull on user data to generate recommendations.

The bill would not do away with "opaque" recommendation algorithms altogether but would make it a requirement to include a toggle that allows people to switch that functionality off. Additionally, platforms that continue to use recommendation algorithms need to have a notification that informs people those recommendations are based on inferences generated by their personal data. The prompt can be a one-time notice, but it would need to be presented in a "clear, conspicuous manner," according to the proposed bill.

The legislation was introduced by Representatives Ken Buck (R-CO), David Cicilline (D-RI), Lori Trahan (D-MA) and Burgess Owens (R-UT). It's a companion bill to legislation Senators John Thune of South Dakota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut introduced this past June. "Consumers should have the option to engage with internet platforms without being manipulated by secret algorithms driven by user-specific data," Buck told Axios, the first outlet to report on the legislation.

Lawmakers have frequently criticized social media giants for using recommendation algorithms to boost user engagement, but so far, there's been little legislative action to curb their use. In the aftermath of the January 6th US Capitol attack, a group of more than 30 Democratic lawmakers called on Meta (then known as Facebook), Twitter and YouTube to make substantive changes to their recommendation engines but ultimately stopped short of threatening regulatory action. Although the Filter Bubble Transparency Act has bipartisan support across the House and Senate, it's unclear if it would pass.

The right to repair movement just got a big boost from the US Copyright Office. Responding to proposals from a variety of organizations, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and iFixit, the office on Wednesday recommended new exemptions to Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act as it relates to the repair of consumer electronics. The statute prohibits the circumvention of software copy protection and has been the target of right to repair advocates for years.

As reported by The Verge, the Copyright Office recommends additional protections for many consumer-facing devices that rely on software to function. As one example, it adopts a recommendation from Public Knowledge and iFixit that involves video game consoles. It says “the repair of software-enabled consumer devices is likely to be fair use, the Register finds that certain video game console repair is also likely fair use.”

It notes consumers can access the firmware on their systems as long as it’s with the intention of fixing the device’s optical drive and they restore any protective measures afterward. The rulemaking stops short of protecting non-consumer devices. However, the Library of Congress has signed off on the recommendations, paving the way for them to go into effect on October 28th.

The decision is likely to complement the efforts of the Biden administration on the same front. At the start of July, the president ordered the Federal Trade Commission to draft new rules to empower consumers and businesses to repair their devices on their own and at independent shops. The executive order marked the first time a US president had ever weighed in on the right to repair movement. Later that same month, the FTC complied with the directive, voting unanimously to tackle unlawful repair restrictions. At the time, it said it would work with law enforcement and policymakers to update existing regulations to protect small businesses and companies that would prevent them from fixing their own products.

We’ve reached out to iFixit and the EFF for comment.

In 14 years' time, no fossil fuel-powered vehicles will be sold in New York anymore. The state has passed a new law that bans the sale of gas vehicles starting in 2035, requiring all new cars to be zero emission. New York's Senate and Assembly passed the bill and Governor Kathy Hochul signed it into law last week. The move will help reduce the state's greenhouse gas emissions by 35 percent and help it achieve its climate targets, including an 85 reduction in GHG emissions by 2050.

As Ars Technica notes, though, the state has a lot of work ahead of it, considering only around one percent of new vehicles sold in New York at the moment is fully electric. That's why, under the new law, several state agencies are required to work together to conjure a zero-emissions vehicle market development strategy by the end of next year. They'll have to find a feasible way to make sure that even off-road vehicles and equipment sold in the state are emissions-free by 2035. The law also requires all medium- and heavy-duty vehicles sold in New York to be emissions-free by 2045.

In addition to having to convince people to buy electric within the next 14 years, New York will also have install an extensive charging network across the state. That includes installing charging stations at apartments, groceries, malls and parking lots. 

California also banned the sales of new gas-powered cars by 2035 last year, and Massachusetts followed suit earlier this year. Meanwhile, Washington lawmakers tried to pass a law that prohibits sales of gas-powered cars by 2030, but it was ultimately vetoed by Governor Jay Inslee.

California's state senate has passed AB-701 — a bill that aims to regulate warehouse productivity quotas. It will require companies to give government agencies detailed descriptions of the targets workers are expected to meet, along with the repercussions of missing them. If it becomes law, it would also prohibit quotas that force workers to skip safety techniques or anything that prevents them from having state-mandated meal or toilet breaks. While AB-701 covers all warehouse owners, its proponents targeted Amazon, in particular. 

The bill's author, California Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, said that she and the bill's other backers are "absolutely targeting the practices of Amazon that are being picked up... by other retailers. Amazon drew flak after workers spoke out about the enormous productivity expectations they have to meet, forcing them to skip breaks to be able to keep up. Further, because they're expected to move as fast as the machines they're working with, repetitive strain injuries are a huge issue.

As Financial Times notes, Amazon's rate of injury is more than double that of the national warehousing industry average, based on figures submitted to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. Eric Frumin, director of health and safety for the Strategic Organizing Center, told the publication: "If Amazon complies with the law, workers will now have an unparalleled ability to fight back against abusive workloads."

AB-701 passed despite fierce opposition from business and trade groups. Rachel Michelin, the president of the California Retailers Association, warned that consumers will pay the price if it becomes a law, as it would apparently increase manufacturing, storage and distribution costs. Meanwhile, the bill's supporters believe there's more to be done, especially since they had to remove some provisions to get those on the fence to vote for it. One of the provisions they killed would require Cal/OSHA to create a rule aiming to minimize musculoskeletal injuries among workers.

The bill is pending final approval this week in the Assembly, which is usually just a formality. After that, it's in the hands of Gov. Gavin Newsom, who can either sign it into law or veto it.

After years of advocacy work, the right to repair movement in the US could soon see a significant breakthrough. According to Bloomberg, President Joe Biden will “in the coming days” direct the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) to draft new regulations to empower consumers to repair their devices on their own and at independent shops.

While there aren’t many details on the executive order just yet, it will reportedly mention phone companies as a possible target of regulation. However, farmers are expected be the primary beneficiary. During Tuesday's White House briefing, Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the order would give them "the right to repair their own equipment how they like.” White House economic adviser Brian Deese said on Friday that the order is broadly designed to drive “greater competition in the economy, in service of lower prices for American families and higher wages for American workers.”

Over the years, states across the US have tried to pass right to repair legislation. However, companies like Caterpillar, John Deere, and Apple have consistently lobbied against those efforts, claiming they would put consumers at risk by compromising the security and safety of their devices. And to date, no state has passed legislation that makes it easier for consumers to repair their products independently. As Motherboard notes, Biden’s order will mark the first time a president has weighed in on the issue.

The move comes as support for the right to repair movement builds in other parts of the world. In 2020, the European Commission said it would introduce legislation to push manufacturers to create products that are easier to repair and reuse. That same year, the European Parliament voted to direct the Commission to develop and introduce a mandatory labeling system that assigns a reparability score to products.

We’ve reached out to the Consumer Technology Association, which represents electronics manufacturers, for comment. We’ve contacted iFixit as well. We’ll update this article when we hear back from them.