Assembly Standing Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection

I'll go. It's fine. Okay. Well, we are going to call. Thank you, Assembly Member Wicks, always here for the team. But I'll go first. Yeah. Okay. We're going to call the Assembly Privacy and Consumer Protection Committee hearing to order.

We have 14 bills on the agenda today with one Bill, Assembly Bill 489 by Assemblymember Bonta on the consent calendar. We will take that motion once we have a quorum, which we don't. What we typically hear bills in file order. We have one change to that order.

We will be hearing AB56, my Bill as a special order to accommodate my witness to effectively manage time we'll be hearing, each witness will get two minutes, two witnesses per side. After this, two preliminary support witnesses and the two preliminary opposition witnesses.

We will take support and opposition from anybody in the room who would like to provide as much. And we, of course, are always happy to accept written testimony through the position letter portal on the Committee's website, which I can tell you we do look at. So with that, we will begin the hearing.

So I will turn it over to the Vice Chair because I'm going to go first. Clearly, everybody can come up. The party's starting. Perfect. Yes. That's great. Yeah, we'll see where we are. All right, Madam Chair, Assembly Bill 1064. We're going to do AB 56, if you don't mind. No worries.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair and members. First, I want to begin by accepting the committee amendments which they make some changes to the initial warning label in the bill, shortening its duration and making sure it allows for immediate access to social media platforms.

I want to thank my colleagues for bringing the concern around access to information in an emergency that resulted in these amendments. It also grants the Department of Public Health the ability to update the warning label. As science in the space evolves, we want to make sure we're always using the best possible science here in California.

I'm going to be brief because I think my witness is going to say everything that needs to be said. But as we all know, and as those of us in the room that are parents or grandparents are experienced every day, we are in the midst of a mental health crisis with our teens, and there are a lot of reasons for that.

And I am the first to say that social media is only a portion of what is causing our teens to suffer. But what has happened is that our teens have become a commodity. Their attention has become something that companies are trying to profit off of. And in so doing, they are harming our youth.

And this committee and this body and Republicans and Democrats alike, I want to note, have worked over the years to try to do everything we can to protect our kids from the harms that they are facing online. And we continue to do that work today.

And I had the privilege of voting for Assemblymember Dixon's bill in Judiciary just this morning that helps kids online. Assemblymember Wicks did age-appropriate design, which but for the company suing, would be the law today. And so this bill today, I want to say, is not the only solution to this problem.

But where we are is that we have not been able to put into law age-appropriate design because the companies have sued and stopped it. And so what is critically important, and by the way, what I have heard the company say again and again in this room is the parents should be taking control, is that we educate folks about what the actual harms of social media are.

And so this warning label, which is grounded in science and research that will allow users of social media to know that if they use social media for extended period of times, that it could cause harm. So that as they're experiencing it, as they get to that three hour point where the research shows that they start to experience the negative mental health impact, that they see that warning that we're educating them, okay, you're at that point, the research says now you're going to have those negative health impacts.

We continue to educate and inform the public about the risks. And that's what this bill is about. And it's about saving the lives of our youth and making them better. And I say in this hearing all the time, we have no higher calling than to protect our youth. And I truly believe that this bill does just that.

And so with that, I want to turn it over to Victoria Hinks, who is one of the strongest people I've had the privilege of getting to know. But I know she doesn't want to be here today. She would much rather not have to be here. But I thank her for her courage and her bravery and her willingness to help us save other lives. Victoria.

Good afternoon. I'm Victoria Hinks. I'm here to share my daughter Alexandra's story because she no longer can. Alexandra, lovingly known as Al by her family and friends, died by suicide eight months ago. She was only 16. She was a kind, beautiful soul and full of life. She loved animals, especially our dog, Elsa.

She loved her friends, babies, sports. She sang songs from Hamilton all the time. And she loved anything pink. But social media pulled her into a dark spiral. She was served content about self harm, suicide, eating disorders. She started believing she wasn't pretty enough and needed beauty filters.

She became hooked to doom scrolling for hours and getting more and more isolated. We as parents were left with impossible choices. Do we not let her be on social media and have her feel isolated from her friends? Or do we let her use social media to help her feel connected? We tried everything to help.

Even therapy didn't help. What worked for her at 13 did not work for her at 16. Parental controls were useless. She bypassed them all. She became someone we didn't recognize. Taking social media away was like taking drugs away from an addict. And finally, she used social media to find out the best way to kill herself.

A question which was answered in great detail and with encouragement. There's not a bone in my body that doubts social media played a major role in her death. Social media is knowingly and intentionally preying on the fragile psyche of teenage girls for profit. So instead of preparing for junior prom, I'm here today for change.

For Al, for California's kids. This could be your child. This could be your grandchild. This could be your niece or nephew. Social media does not discriminate. We're raising kids in an unregulated social experiment. But we don't have to keep being the guinea pigs. We can demand better, real warnings, parental controls that actually work.

Technology used for good and not for harm. These social media companies have incredible resources and a huge amount of intellectual horsepower. They could protect their kids, our kids, if they wanted to. And I can't bring back my beautiful little owl baby, but I won't let her short life be in vain.

Maybe her story can help save someone else's child. I'm here as a mom, appealing to other parents. Please vote like a mom. Please support AB 56. You have the power to end this experiment and you have the power to be on the right side of history. Thank you so much for having me.

Thank you. Thank you. Victoria and Tessa Pickard, a social worker and therapist, is here with Common Sense Media.

Hi, my name is Tessa Pickard and I'm a licensed clinical social worker. My expertise is in child development and trauma. I've worked for over 20 years with children both in foster care and with neurodevelopmental disorders. I'm also the mother of three.

I'm here as a council member of Common Sense Media and as an expert in this field to discuss how chronic stress from social media doesn't just harm mental health. It has the power to shape a developing brain. It has already been established that adverse childhood experiences are linked to lifelong health outcomes.

But I'm here to tell you that when teens experience prolonged repetitive stress in their social relationships, this stress can do lasting harm not only on their self esteem, but can also literally change how their developing brain is mapped out forever. Let me explain.

Experiences during development create superhighways in our brains, neural pathways that become default routes for thinking and feeling. Brains also operate on a use it or lose it principle, pruning away unused pathways and strengthening frequently activated ones.

So when teens spend hours of their day on social media, much of which leads to feelings of isolation and anxiety, the brain adapts accordingly. Repeated stress during critical windows becomes hardwired, making anxious and depressive states the default. This is known as states becoming traits where prolonged stress responses become ingrained personality traits. This isn't just a parenting issue.

Highly addictive social media is rewiring an entire generation's brains. Ignoring this reality is a reckless gambler with our greatest legacy, our children. AB 56 is important because it will require social media apps to provide a warning about potential mental health risks for users, especially minors. This helps families make informed choices about social media use. As lawmakers, you hold the power and the awesome responsibility to act. Thank you, Madam Chair and the members of this committee.

Thank you. Oh, he's just here for technical support from the AG's office. So if people have questions.

Thank you. Okay, do we have speakers in support, please? Assembly Bill, where are we? 56.

Crystal Strait with Common Sense Media, the sponsor of the bill, in support.

Hello, my name is Kate Ruley, and I'm here in support. Strongly support AB 56. And I also lost a child to suicide. And this is my son. Thank you.

Thank you.

I'm Mark Dale from Marin County. I've worked with many families who've lost and I stand in support of AB 56. Thank you.

Thank you.

Marc Berkman with the Organization for Social Media Safety in support.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Vice Chair. Ken Wang on behalf of the California Initiative for Technology Democracy in support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Malik Bynum with the Accounting Behavioral Health Directors Association in strong support. Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Steve Wimmer with the Transparency Corporation. And strong support.

Nick Romley here on behalf of the California School Nurses Organization. In support.

Okay, thank you. Oh, sorry, sir. Yes.

I'd just like to say I'm Anthony Liu from the Office of Attorney General Rob Bonso. We're also in support and one of the sponsors of this bill.

Okay. Oh, I see. Okay, thank you. Any other speakers in support? Speakers in opposition and main witness, if you want to come forward please. Please proceed. Thank you.

Thank you. Madam Chair, members of the committee, Dylan Hoffman, on behalf of TechNet in respectful opposition to AB 56. First, I want to state that our member companies don't dispute at all that there is a youth mental health crisis going on in our country which warrants serious discussion.

Our companies recognize that we need to be part of that conversation and have been for decades at the forefront for designing platforms and policies to provide as safe and enjoyable an experience as possible online. What we question is whether a bill like AB 56 is a meaningful solution to this problem.

And while the proposed amendments move in a better direction, we still have to question what this bill is actually going to accomplish. 10 seconds is a long time on the Internet. Even for a skippable warning, 90 seconds is an eternity. Consider that 40% of users navigate away from a loading screen after just three seconds.

This incredible nuisance and burdening of access to speech for all users simply won't meaningfully address youth mental health. First, the warning as proposed flattens an incredibly complex, nuanced and evolving issue to the point of overgeneralization.

It's inapplicable to adults, but it also tells minors nothing about what kinds of content, online behaviors or features could be risky, impact their mental health, or steps that they can take to prevent protect themselves. Second, excessive warnings also lead to users ignoring them. As studies have shown, users experience warning fatigue from repeated notices.

At best, these labels will be ignored. At worst, they'll create an annoyance and burden to users of all ages trying to access lawful speech. Which leads me to some of the constitutional issues with this Bill. We believe this bill is highly likely to be challenged in court and likely to be found unconstitutional.

Consider a couple of offline contexts requirements subjecting consumers entering a bookstore or a comedy club or other venue that the books or material they encounter inside could be harmful. That would never pass constitutional muster. Strict scrutiny would almost certainly apply to this bill, considering you're telling users that the content they see behind this warning could be harmful.

This bill almost certainly is not narrowly tailored or the least restrictive means to disseminate information about the potential risks of social media to youth. For those reasons, we're respectfully opposed to AB 56. Thank you.

Thank you. Next speaker, please.

Thank you for the opportunity to speak today. I'm Aodhan Downey. I serve as a State Policy Manager for the Computer and Communications Industry Association an international not for profit tech trade association. CCIA strongly believes in keeping children safe online. However, AB 56 would fail to make kids safer.

It displaces focus away from real solutions, including those that promote parental education and digital literacy. These focuses would be more effective compared to one size fits all warning labels that do not differentiate between healthy and unhealthy uses of social media.

While targeting a broad population unaffected by the harms it warns against, these mandated warning labels raise First Amendment concerns that have been ruled compelled speech or more accurately, compelled silence. Studies have found that 40% of users will not wait for 3 second delay for a website. Therefore, even the amended 10 seconds is significant

state imposed barrier to Information. This is important to note, especially as California courts have ruled against state imposed content regulations on digital services.

This regulation is likely to result in a significant operational and technical burden through the mandatory implementation of time tracking and the warning displays themselves, especially for smaller and medium sized digital services that fall into the scope of the broad definition of social media platform.

The costs required to redesign interfaces and conduct testing favor large companies with necessary resources, potentially harming smaller competitors or decentralized platform.

Overall, CCIA believes that an alternative to approaching these complex issues is to work with businesses to continue their ongoing private efforts to implement mechanisms such as daily time limits or child safe searching which provides parents control over their own child social media use.

Creating a safer online environment for all is a worthwhile goal, but it should not come at the expense of disempowering families and Californians. We appreciate the committee's consideration of these comments and request a no vote. Thank you.

Thank you. Do we have speakers in opposition? If you please come forward to the microphone.

Hi, Tracy Rosenberg from Oakland Privacy. We are not in an opposed position. We are in a tweener position. We just want to underline the comments regarding having the message correlate to a public health problem that is experienced by all of the users who will see the message.

We are, we are concerned that it will in fact get thrown out. Of course.

Becca Cramer-Mowder on behalf of Kaiser Advocacy, representing Electronic Frontier Foundation in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Ronak Daylami on behalf of Cal Chamber, respectfully also in opposition. Thank you.

Robert Singleton with Chamber of Progress, also respectfully opposed.

Thank you very much. Any other speakers in opposition, please come forward. Seeing none, we'll bring it up to the committee. Comments. Wicks.

Thank you. Thank you to the author for bringing this bill forward. You and I have served on this committee since we came in together in 2018. So it's our seventh year and have run numerous attempts at different ways to try to get to the problem.

The problem that there's pretty clear evidence that social media for young people increases anxiety. There's cyberbullying, there's distorted body image issues, self harm, shortened attention span. All of this is pretty well documented and outlined. And I apologize because I was talking to some of my colleagues during some of the opposition testimony.

But I think what I did hear from you, sir, was essentially arguing for no regulation in the face of all of this is what I was kind of picking up from that. And I will tell you as a mom, there is no way we are going to sit here and let this happen to our children.

This is one tragic example of many that we see across this country. It is our responsibility as lawmakers to keep our community safe, specifically our most vulnerable, which is our children. I know our chair and many others are committed to this. How anyone can argue against warning labels to me is just beyond me.

When we see this evidence, I would like to make a motion to move the Bill. I'd like to also be added as a co author. Second, we have a lot of seconds and just appreciate your testimony and bringing the, the story of your daughter to this hearing today and all the good work.

[roll call]

And I know this can't be easy for you. So thank you so much for being here and appreciate the work of the author.

Thank you. Before we go any further, let's do a couple administrative items.

We have a. Have a quorum. Take roll, please.

[roll call]

Just in time. Thank you for that. And then we'll have a vote on the consent calendar.

Okay to pass to the consent calendar.

We'll keep it open for absence. All right, back to the committee. We've heard from Assemblymember Wicks. Any other comments on AB 56? Yes. Ms. Mckinnor.

'd like to thank the author for bringing this bill. And I'd also like to thank the mom for coming here and testifying. You are so brave, and my heart goes to you. My prayers to your family. To the opposition. I think you mentioned that there were. You guys have.

Have protections already set up for children. Can you give me an example? Am I right? You said that there were. You have already. Can you give me an example of one of those protections?

Yeah. So it varies between different platforms, but sort of an industry standard is not only to have a family center where parents can access information about how the platform operates, where they can find those sorts of tools to restrict hours of use notifications and adjust various privacy settings.

Many platforms also enable parents to control who can message a teen or minor user. So some of those are just a few of the ways, but it kind of depends on each platform because the platforms are so inherently different. But across the board, there are those tools that exist, the settings.

Settings. Okay. Okay. Well, I don't think that goes far enough. I actually got attacked. I'm 60 years old, and last year at the end of session, I got attacked so brutally, and I am 60 years old. And it really sent me into a spin.

I'd never been spoken to in that way ever in my life by hundreds of people that I don't even know. And it was just horrible. It was so bad that I ended up getting off of X in January because I just. It was distracting and it was bad.

So I cannot imagine a 13 year old getting bullied on or a 10 year old getting bullied on social media and what that would cost.

So I suggest, as I'm gonna suggest in a lot of committees, is that you sit down and you talk to folks and you guys don't just say, no, let's find solution for these problems because it is a problem. If kids are committing suicide, that mean it is a problem. So we cannot ignore the problem.

So I suggest business that you sit down and you talk to people and you. We gotta care about these consumers. We just can't say no. But. And, and you. I will be voting yes on this bill.

Thank you, Assembly Member. All right, next comment. Yes, Irwin.

Yeah. You know, we often say in privacy that social media can be accessible. And I am. You are very brave for coming and sharing the story with us. I hear these stories all the time in my district. I'm, I'm definitely going to be supporting. I wish we could do way more than warning labels that there.

I agree with Assemblymember Mckinnor. There must be some way that we could get the industry to come together and acknowledge some of the issues that we have with social media. But there are also very good reasons to use social media. And I had this in my district with the Palisades fire.

People were on social media every minute looking for evacuation orders, road closures, and it was really, you had to get on very quickly. The winds were 60 miles an hour and people just wanted to know what was happening next. So I appreciate that you shortened the warning at the beginning.

One of the things that I'm hoping that you make more clear is to actually put an X in there so somebody can, in this case, can quickly get through the warning to make sure that they can get any information that they need, especially which is especially critical in times of disaster.

May I share? Okay. Thank you. Yeah. No. And I want to thank Assemblymember Irwin for raising this issue when she raised the issue of emergency preparedness and the ability to get that information in instances like the Palisades fire.

It was the first time someone had brought this issue up on this bill, which is what this committee process is all about. And so we actually pulled the bill from that hearing and made the amendments in concert with Assemblymember Irwin.

And we talked about adding that clear and conspicuous language around the ability to click through and so didn't have time to do it in this committee. But we'll continue to work on it and do appreciate your feedback because like I said to you that day, when you're like, nobody brought that up, nobody brought it up.

So your feedback was critical.

Assemblymember Ortega, please.

First, thank you. Would love to be added as a co author and your daughter would be or is very proud of you. Thank you for being here today. To the opposition, warning fatigue? That is your concern. Warning fatigue. I mean there was. I'm not looking for an answer. I'm just quoting what is in your opposition statement.

When it comes to our children, as a parent, I will never be fatigued to ensure that my child is safe. Tobacco industry did this when we asked for warning labels. They were also concerned with warning labels and we were able to achieve it.

So I don't understand why adding on warning label is so difficult here in the world of AI, where you come in here and talk about how wonderful it is and all the things that we can accomplish with the technology that we have today, a warning label that can save a life is not fatigue.

Thank you, Assembly Member. Any other comments up here? Ms. Pellerin.

First of all, I want to thank the author for all the conversations we've had and appreciate the amendments you're taking and to the primary witness and those in the room that have lost a child, I really feel your pain on that and I'm so honored to have you here and to hear your story and so I guess so the question I have is a very practical one right now.

Given that the social media platforms have different languages settings on their users preferences. Are you thinking about having the warning label in multiple languages or just English?

Just like Assemblymember Irwin, that's the first time we've been asked that question.

And I want to credit my coworker who asked last night. So I thought I'd put it out there today.

It's a great question. We hadn't thought about it, but I think it's important. The point of this bill is really education, which I've been hearing the platform say is really what they think needs to be done.

And so to your point, if someone is language is accessing it in a different language, that is something we should consider, but we haven't. But I absolutely will look into that. Thank you.

Absolutely. Following up on Assembly Member Irwin's questions about, you know, the social media being used during the Los Angeles fires to communicate between individuals and official sources to get information, I'm just wondering if it's possible to do some kind of, you know, granting social media companies some discretion during emergency situations.

So I'm not advocating for doom scrolling, but I do think maybe the geo fencing could be employed to allow folks in a disaster to have all forms of communication available to them as quickly as possible. Or is that something that's.

Yeah, I'd have to look at that. I mean, what we talked about, Assemblymember Erwin and I, which is what you see in the bill, is that now at the initial turn on of your app, whatever it is, you will not be blocked at all by this warning. Right.

So initially on introduction, you would have to look at the warning, and you wouldn't be able to get to social media until you'd seen the warning. That is no longer true. Now. You'll have the warning at the bottom. Assuming the bottom. I guess they put it at the top. I don't care where they put it.

And the rest of your screen will be your feed. It will be available. So there will be no disruption of access ever. At the beginning. Now, at three hours, where the research says you start to have these harms, then we will say, okay.

And you are the one who told me that Netflix already did this to you once, that they said, you've been on a long time. Are you sure? And so, you know, we know that they're trying to.

Call me out for binge watching. Thank you.

I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said.

We've all done it as though we remember Valerie. But we know they're tracking our usage, they're selling it to the ad folks. And so we know that they can do this. And so we're confident that at that point where you start to get it, that we need to make sure you did get that education that you did.

Catch on to what we said, because to the point of the opposition, we need to make sure warning labels are meaningful, which is how this bill is crafted.

First of all, I'd like to thank the woman testifying and sharing her story. It resonates with all of us. We're parents. I'm so sorry for your loss. Thank you. And I really appreciate you being here. It's making a dramatic difference. It's critically important. It takes a lot of strength. Appreciate you.

I also appreciate the author for bringing this forward. The author, who has a history of bringing these issues forward, who has been relentless on this issue because we have a mental health crisis taking place with our children that is directly tied to use of social media. No ifs, ands or buts tied to it.

So I want to commend you. I'd also like to be added as a co author, if you will have me. And I would like to ask a few questions to the opposition, my good man Dylan right here, who I feel for so much because we're friends and is in a very unenviable position.

And I think you do such a tremendous job, Dylan. So I just want to make sure I say that in front of the world. You know, prior to joining the legislature, I talk about this all the time. I served as Tech Executive and entrepreneur.

As President of FreeConferenceCall.com, we did all of our customer acquisition digitally and spent in the neighborhood of $50 million or so in customer acquisition annually. Everything's measured. Every single thing is measured. And that real estate and all the actions around it.

So I want to ask you a question, since the crux of the opposition is around the efforts that you're making right now to provide tools for parents. What is the take rate of those tools? What is the impact of those tools?

What are the defined goals and what are the metrics that you're trying to achieve with those goals? What is the penetration that you're trying to seek with that? Are those defined? What are those? What's being measured?

Through the Chair. Thank you, Mr. Assemblymember Lowenthal, for the question. Unfortunately, I can't answer that specifically for any platform. I think each platform is going to have different answers to those questions. Be happy to facilitate that conversation.

But I don't have the numbers for each specific platform based on the take rate, the defined goals, how they're measuring different metrics.

And it was an unfair question to ask because you're representing an entire industry. And of course that goes on a platform by platform basis. But the reason why I'm asking you that question is you are going to continue to see legislation and bills aimed towards protecting the families that are here that are testifying right now.

Until we have these answers, until we know precisely what the industry is doing and what are the metrics they're seeking to achieve, and we have a dialogue specifically about what safety is and what it isn't and what we need to reach in order for that to happen, it's specifically because the industry is opaque on these topics and does not allow any visibility as to what success is and what success isn't, that you're going to continue to see bills like this and be in that unenviable chair defending what I believe to be indefensible so thank you again to the author.

I really appreciate this so much, and I look forward and challenge you to start to present and challenge each platform to give us metrics to be public and open about the metrics that they're seeking to achieve with putting these tools out there and how to optimize those tools.

Through the chair, if I may respond to that. If it's a question of more data and metrics on these specific questions, that's something we're more than happy to discuss. We've worked on prior iterations of bills that have increased transparency around the information that social media platforms are required to release publicly.

We've been active partners on a number of bills, providing red lines to avoid these bills ever going to court. So consider us partners in that. It's just when it comes to a bill like this that we think is unconstitutional, we have. That's what we're going to raise.

And we're going to say there are better ways to protect kids that aren't going to get tied up in court, that aren't going to push this problem further down the line. And I think that's an important conversation to be had. And so, like, that's the. That's where we're approaching this. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Any other committee? Yes. Ms. Petrie-Norris.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And thank you again to your witness for being here. I, too, am a parent. We've got two teenage boys who are 16 and 18. And like all the parents here, we recognize that social media is not good for our kids, but it's real, real hard to get them to disengage.

And I, too, appreciate the chair's focus on what is really a crisis. And I know you and I have had some conversation about this. Have you considered narrowing the bill to just provide this warning to individuals who we believe are, in fact, youth? So the folks who I think we're most concerned about.

Yeah, thank you assemblymember and I, as many of you know, the Attorney General is the sponsor of the bill. And I would, if you don't mind, defer to the Attorney General's Office on that one to explain that. Yeah. Is that okay? Is that okay?

Hi. Anthony Lew from the AG's office, the sponsor. Thank you for the question. The social media warning labels are an equitable, effective and transparent way to deliver public health information.

I think we need the microphone on. I can't hear.

Is it on? Okay.

Okay. So I think the question was why the initial warning label. Why not just the later label?

No, no, no. Why don't you just provide that to children? So serve that up to folks that are under 18.

So as you know, social media warning labels are a warning. They're a product warning to that we want to have sent to parents, adults, children, adults who are in a position to give the product to the child to make a decision.

Perhaps this warning alerts them, the reader of the warning, that this is a product that has some risk to children and maybe they should think twice about giving a risky product to a child.

We want them to have this information before they decide to buy the toy, to give the product that potentially poses a risk to the child.

And so for this bill, the social media warning label bill, this is a way to deliver public health information about the risk of social media to the parent, to the older brother, the cousin, the grandparents. This is a way to provide the information about the risk of social media.

Now the parents are responsible for enabling children to use social media platforms. And so the warning label is intended to reach the families, the children and others to provide the information in the morning.

Perhaps author could. Yeah, can I add to that? Okay, thank you. So I think what is critical is, I will say the research indicates that it has, sorry adults, negative mental health impacts on us too.

As we heard from our colleague that this extensive use and the researchers really showed three hours, at that point, even for us, it starts to have negative mental health impacts. So I will say that it isn't as if we are showing this warning to people who won't be impacted by those health impacts.

Obviously, as a mom, I am really here most focused on our children. But it is important this information gets to everyone. I mean, we really saw, I thought something about Ortega's point about cigarettes was such a good one because I think that what we have before us is something that people.

When I joined Facebook, which was the first one probably many of us ever joined back in 19. You're right, MySpace. And back then it actually didn't have the addictive features right. It was the old school timeline, which wasn't as addictive.

And then over the years, technology got better and they were able to. The attention economy was able to addict us more.

And we are now in this situation where we have a tool that when used for a little bit or to check evacuation routes or to find out whether the road to Tahoe is open, something I use Twitter for often is fine. It doesn't have the same impacts as extensive use, which is why the warning says that.

And so it is important we give it to everybody.

But in addition, I think the point the Attorney General's Office was trying to make is that when you're providing a warning, like a cigarette warning, for something that is harmful, you are trying to inform the public, you're trying to make sure that there is broad public understanding about the harms that are caused.

And that is what this does, which is why it is a broad applicability. And I don't know if you want to add anything based on the research on that or. I don't know.

Yeah, I mean, I think the idea is that it is a public awareness issue. And that way teachers, parents, adults, pediatricians, people in children's lives can all be aware of this. And I have to add also that it is, you know, there is harm to adults too.

And these repetitive pathways that happen for children also happen for adults in our brains. And so that's what I'd add to that. Okay, thank you. Okay.

And the opposition witness, I think in responding to Assemblymember Lowenthal's question, you, I think, said something to the fact you didn't think this was perhaps the most effective way to protect children online and that there were perhaps better ways. Can you provide some insight into what those are?

Certainly.

So I think part of our concern with the label going back to, you know, the potential for it to be ignored is we don't see, you know, if it's click through and people are not reading it and not paying attention to it, or it's not providing them actual information to help themselves, either to direct them to the settings in which they can dial in their privacy settings or change who can message them or any number of those features.

If it's not telling them what types of behaviors put them at risk, what types of content may be harmful for them, I don't know that it's actually addressing the root issue here. Some other things that we've worked on in the past, we've worked on the age appropriate design code. TechNet was a partner in that. We provided amendments.

We've made suggestions to try to help avoid litigation on that bill. We've provided amendments on other bills related to notifications, whether platforms providing settings related to those or other things like that.

We've provided these suggestions in the red lines in good faith to try to get to a point of comfort with these bills and to avoid them going to court. Because in our view, a bill that gets challenged and struck down as unconstitutional is absolutely not helping anyone.

And so our goal is to try to avoid that and to provide meaningful solutions. So those are just a few of the things. And you know, think of us again as partners in that we're reviewing every bill that's before us this year. We're engaging with multiple authors on various bills.

We've had conversations with members of this committee and authors that sit on this committee as well. But that's some of the things and certainly our platforms can tell you more directly. Here are the list of features that we've instituted in the last year, six months to try to get ahead of this.

But from my perspective, I can only speak generally about what specifically those are.

And I guess I feel like I'm once again in a little bit of a quandary and that I don't, I think the problem statement is very real, I don't know, to the opposition's point that this is going to be the thing that like is the silver bullet that changes it.

So I actually kind of like his suggestion about perhaps making those warning labels more action oriented and providing some like specific recommendations and providing resources. So perhaps there is an opportunity to have a meeting of the minds. So I will support the Bill today and hope that we can find ways to make this an actually meaningful intervention.

And if I may, Madam Vice Chair, I agree. I mean, they had not provided that feedback until today, but if they want us to make this educational piece in addition to the education we're achieving, also actionable, I don't see why we wouldn't want to do that.

So I appreciate that feedback and we are happy to beef it up to make sure parents can take action once they learn what they need to learn about the safety of their children.

You know, just listening here, listening this maybe for the second year of all the good work and hundreds of hours that have gone into trying to thread this needle so carefully that we won't be it won't be unconstitutional and it will be effective and it will hopefully prevent tragedies like our witness has unconscionably experienced.

We all can feel that as parents just sitting here without proposing necessarily amendments. I just have a couple of thoughts how this can be approached.

First of all, we're dealing with a technology we all know new to the world, innovates 24/7 new things all the time by putting this and I like your personally like your amendment how you've taken away the big black box and now it's just a little bar at the bottom and it disappears after 10 seconds.

If that's currently, so it's harmless. I can remember maybe because I'm old enough to remember this, but I was a little girl when the warning label on cigarettes my father smoked during that year, and he actually later had lung cancer, but he survived that. That was. He lived a long life. And I remember the controversy about that.

My father was in the newspaper business, so I remember all this going on at discussing the dinner table because he was an advocate for cigarette smoking in the 60s. And then this warning label came out, and my mother said, you know, you got to stop smoking. You got to stop smoking.

Eventually he did, and he lived a long life. But it's not something that this warning label, in my belief, is not going to instantly change behavior.

What I expect to happen with the competitive marketplace of the platforms wanting to do the right thing, I believe because in their heart of hearts, they don't want tragic tragedies like this to happen. So you have that little black box.

I would imagine this is an opportunity for the platforms to go one up and that the state doesn't have to regulate this. The state doesn't have to prescribe any further. Help us save children, Help us save lives. And they will come up with their own public awareness, public communications, because it will be talked about everywhere.

It's a headline news that the first time that there is some measure of restraint on watching out for children. And I believe that's what the marketplace will do. They'll be competitive with one another to inform the public of where the dangers are and 10 seconds of your life to maybe save a life and talk to your children.

It gives families an opportunity to talk to their children. And we've all had experiences. Many people know. I have three grandsons13, 11, and 9. And when I was the visit and they live in New York and I'm the visiting grandmother, and I want to spoil them and do all kinds of things when the parents aren't there.

You know how that is. The last word my daughter would say is, they're leaving now, Mom. Don't let them. Don't let them. 30 minutes. That's it. No more than 30 minutes. Okay, okay, okay. And then maybe it got to 45 minutes after she's gone.

And I'm watching them and I saw with my very eyes how the stupor arises that they are kind of my. Their eyes glaze over and they're just punching buttons all the time. And I said, you guys, time's up. Your mom is right. Totally right. I see how you're changing. And I talked to my grandsons how they.

I watched them physically change and disconnect from the other world. So I think you've come up. Maybe it's not the perfect solution. I guess it will be challenged in court. I don't know. I'm not a lawyer, so I can't speak to the constitutional issues. Others will do that. But to start somewhere, you've narrowed this so specifically.

See how it happens. See, we've got to do something. A little black box. How is that objectionable? Let the platforms go from there and make it better, using that as a foundation. So I will support the bill, obviously, with. But I've just. I've heard this in this committee for two years now.

Let's do something and move this forward. All right. Any other comments? Yeah, Any other comments? All right, your closing statement, please.

Thank you. And the bill is just for clarification, going to judiciary next on the constitutionality issue. So for those that are interested in that issue, I know Senator Dixon and I will get to have that conversation again next week.

And, you know, obviously, cigarette warnings are a perfect example of how there is actually case law on the constitutionality of forced speech around public health warnings. And it is constitutional and lawful. And we are doing this in compliance with constitutional law.

But what I really want to say in closing is I want to thank Victoria for her bravery and for, I was just learning before this hearing, she's part of an angel network of moms that have lost their children by suicide. And there shouldn't be a network.

I'm glad they have it, but it shouldn't exist because we should be saving our children. And I have sat here for seven years alongside Assemblymember Wicks listening to there's a better solution. And yet I have yet to hear what that solution is.

And so we will continue to propose solutions to protect our children, because, like I said, I believe there's no higher calling. And in Judaism, when we lose a loved one, we say, may their memory be a blessing.

And I know today Al's memory is absolutely a blessing to the children of California as we move forward in her memory that I ask for your I vote.

Very good.

Okay, let's call the vote.

Item number two, AB 56 by Assemblymember Bauer-Kahan. The motion is do pass to the Judiciary Committee.

[roll call]

Keep it open. Nine to zero. Thank you. Good discussion.

Assemblymember Alvarez, you have your AB 358. You'd like to come forward, please? Thank you. Do you have a witness, Assemblymember? Okay. Okay. Press proceed on Assembly Bill 358. Thank you. And the Chair has just arrived.

Thank you, Madam Vice Chair. And thank you to the Chair as well and committee members. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity to present Assembly Bill 358, the Technology Reform for Access to Crime Evidence, or TRACE, amendment.

I also want to thank the committee staff for the extensive work on the bill and the analysis that is before you today. Assembly Bill 358 ensures that survivors of stalking, domestic violence, and harassment are not left defenseless when they discover that their privacy has been violated.

The bill makes a narrow, narrow again as your analysis identifies, and necessary change to the California Electronic Communications Privacy Act, also known as CalECPA, to allow law enforcement to access tracking and surveillance devices with the explicit consent of the person who finds it in their private space that's being used against them.

Right now, according to CalECPA, the law enforcement cannot immediately inspect spy cameras or AirTags that are placed in a victim's private space, even if the victim says that they have the authority to do so. That means that if a stalking or domestic violence survivor finds an unauthorized tracking or recording device in their home or in their vehicle, law enforcement cannot search the device without first obtaining a warrant. Obtaining a warrant can create a delay that gives perpetrators time to hide their tracks and continue to cause harm to victims.

This TRACE amendment empowers survivors and strengthens protections for those facing threats from stalkers and ensures that law enforcement can help victims in real time rather than being restricted by potential delays. With the most recent amendment, we have narrowed the scope of this bill to only apply to devices whose sole purpose is to record and to surveil.

That means we exclude cell phones, laptops, and other devices that may actually be used and contain personal information so that we could avoid any potential violation of privacy. Assembly Bill 358 does not allow warrantless searches beyond these narrow and victim-centered circumstances.

So imagine that a domestic violence survivor who finds an AirTag in their personal belongings or in their car, or if you have a guest come over and one of them sets up a spy camera in your bathroom, the perpetrators have technically abandoned that item, left it in your property, your possession, with the intent to track you or to spy on you without your permission.

As the analysis writes, the Fourth Amendment does not extend garbage left outside a home. Therefore, the perpetrator here essentially forfeits any reasonable expectation of privacy of that device, that person who placed that device in your property. Assembly Bill 358 is about common sense, safety, and survivor empowerment.

The bill does not undermine privacy rights, but rather ensures that victims, victims can protect themselves when their privacy has been violated. We have the Deputy's District Attorney's Office, Mr. Madero, who will provide some testimony. They've sponsored a bill and I thank them for being here.

Thank you very much and good afternoon to the Chair and members of the committee. Thank you, Assemblyman Member Alvarez, for sponsoring this or authoring this bill. My name is Joel Madero and I'm a prosecutor with the District Attorney's Office in San Diego.

And I am the director of the CATCH unit, which is our high-tech unit who is responsible for items such as spying devices that we're discussing today. AB 358 stemmed from ongoing incident that I was part of where it was spy cameras left in another individual's home in an adult daughter's vent in her bathroom and her bedroom.

They suspected that they knew exactly who it was. A person who had no right to the home, did not live in the house, but was associated with a member of the home. When that case came before my office, we had to discuss whether a warrant was needed.

When the victims of this case were on board, they wanted to consent. And consent has always been an exception to the requirement to get a warrant. We had victims prepared to move the investigation forward quickly. But instead, after several roundtables, myself and several other people who are experts with CalECPA, we decided that a warrant was needed and that warrant created a delay.

Ultimately, by the time it was done, it's unknown whether the device or whether the cloud, such as an Amazon, it was an Amazon device, would have had evidence, but we were unable to attain any evidence on that case, despite the fact that we are well aware of what the perpetrator was doing, which was spying on an adult young, 20-year-old woman and it was a male who had placed the device in the event of that person's home.

AB 358 aligns CalECPA with privacy interests. The privacy interests involved are the reasonable expectation of privacy that victims have in their own home, their own vehicle, and their own personal effects. Nothing outside of the protections granted by CalECPA, many of which are very important, would prevent a victim in these situations from consenting to being able to get into the devices fast. It is quite narrow. It's gone through a couple amendments at this point.

And at this point we are very much looking at items solely used to invade somebody else's privacy. And the reality is that CalECPA, as it stands, places the perpetrator's rights to a device left in somebody else's home, a place where they have no reasonable expectation of privacy above those of the victims, again in their homes and the areas where they should expect a reasonable expectation of privacy.

We believe that this was an unintended consequence of CalECPA, that this wasn't something that maybe was at the forefront of everybody's thought process as CalECPA was being passed. But we are seeing an increasing use of these types of devices. And as I reached out to law enforcement about this proposal immediately, I had investigators saying, oh, yeah, we're seeing this often. These devices are cheap.

Thank you. Can you wrap up?

Thank you very much.

Thank you. Any other witnesses in support of this bill?

Move the bill.

Chair and members, Max Perry on behalf of the California Police Chief Association.

Thank you. Is there anyone here in opposition to this bill? Come on up. Two minutes each, when you're ready.

Becca Cramer-Mowder with Kaiser Advocacy on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of the sponsors of CalECPA in respectful opposition to AB 358. EFF stands in solidarity with domestic violence survivors and has often worked closely with advocates for survivors to oppose legislation that would increase tracking risks to to domestic violence survivors. Let me be clear.

AB 358 will not protect domestic violence or stalking survivors in new ways. Instead, AB 358 creates an unnecessary loophole to allow police to circumvent the constitutionally-based CalECPA rights we all rely on. CalECPA currently allows warrantless searches of devices when law enforcement believes an emergency involving danger of death or serious physical injury to any person requiring accessing the device. That provision is in current law already, and it protects the people that AB 358 is trying to protect.

But by creating a different new provision for law enforcement to access electronic information without a warrant, AB 358 would eliminate the requirement that law enforcement apply for a search warrant retroactively, a requirement that provides needed oversight to ensure the exigent circumstances provision in CalECPA cannot be abused as a loophole to get around the statute's warrant requirement.

If no emergency exists, law enforcement can simply get a warrant to search the device and use one of the many readily available technologies to ensure the device cannot be remotely wiped while they wait 15 minutes for a warrant. Thus, AB 358 does not make domestic violence or stalking survivors safer. It simply allows law enforcement to skirt around basic Fourth Amendment Protections that keep us all safe. For these reasons, we ask that you vote no on AB 358.

Thank you. When you're ready.

Good morning. My name is. Or afternoon. Sorry. My name is Jake Snow. I'm a senior staff attorney at the ACLU of Northern California, also a sponsor of CalECPA, and I rise in opposition to AB 358. The narrowing amendments of this bill do not resolve the core problems with the approach and that is that the California Legislature, this body, passed CalECPA in 2015 to put limits on how the government can access people's electronic devices. And those limits take the modern day reality into account.

All of the immense amounts of information that we know are held on devices and also in cloud storage systems. And CalECPA and the United States Constitution and also the California Constitution allow the government to get access to that information based upon a showing of probable cause.

The information is available to the government so long as they can show that there's probable cause, that there's evidence of criminal activity. And getting a warrant is not a pointless inconvenience for law enforcement. It is one of the core foundational protections of our democracy and of people's privacy rights.

We can look around this country today and see how things that seem like an annoyance are actually the foundational rights that we must hold to with absolute commitment. Now, the sponsors claim that these devices and this permission is necessary to stop the remote wiping of these devices or for the interruption of an investigation.

But this imaginative scenario doesn't bear any resemblance to reality because the bill doesn't even cover devices that could be remotely wiped or that have the capability to put information on cloud storage. And if that information was on cloud storage in the cloud, in Google, in other places, then on those cloud storage systems, there would also be immense repositories of personal information that could be then available to the government. And for putting these devices in a state where they can't be accessed.

Faraday bags, which enclose a phone or a camera in a system that can stop it from communicating with the outside world and with the Internet, are already available and are already used frequently by law enforcement.

Fundamentally, a police officer should not be the person to decide in the moment whether a device is a surveillance device and whether they can just search it without a warrant. That's what the judicial system is for, that's what the warrant process is for, and that is one of the foundational privacy protections in our democracy. Thanks very much.

Thank you. Anybody else here in opposition to this legislation? Seeing nobody, We'll bring it up back up to the dais. I see McKinnor looks like she's ready.

Yes. I won't be able to support this bill today because I don't support anything with the warrantless search or warrantless arrest. It violates the Fourth Amendment. It sets a dangerous legal precedent allowing law enforcement to seize and search a device without probable cause. A court order weakens the warrant requirement. Legal standards must be objective and consistent.

The phrase reasonable believes is vague and open the door to abuse and misuse. It risks targeting innocent people and misidentified devices. You know, there are already legal remedies for this. If a person finds a suspicious device, they could file a police report. The law enforcement could then request a warrant to examine the device.

I definitely, definitely support people who are being abused. I don't want to see people being abused. It horrifies me that someone's placing a device in a bathroom for someone. But you can call the police, report the device, get a warrant and make sure that you can search this device.

Also, with the deportation issue that's happening right now, the risk of unlawful evidence gathering, the pathway to deportation data from the warrantless search could be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. ICE may use that location data to track arrest and initiate removal proceedings. Due process and discrimination concerns we must have.

We must have due process in this country and in this state. You know, we don't want to skirt our Fourth Amendment by when we're helping someone else, we want to do both. We want to make sure that we protect our, the victims and also we want to follow the law. So today I won't be able to support this bill.

Thank you, Assemblymember. Assemblymember Wilson.

Thank you to the author. I definitely understand your intent. I think it was referenced in the analysis. But also to the DA who expressed his expressed. I'm sorry, excuse me, who talked about a particular case. That part of why this brought this forward and in a time where rights are being trampled on and that we have to do everything to protect our rights and we're fighting battles that we never thought we'd have to fight again. I'm really mindful of that and I came into this more undecided whether I was supporting or not.

So I do have some follow up questions for both the proponent of the bill and opponent of the bill. You noted. Well, actually to the author first, I did note that there wasn't a lot of domestic violence support which would seem natural for this. And I know opponent talked about that. And so when you reached out, I know as, as staff reach out on our bills all the time to get support. What was the feedback that you got prior to today as it relates to domestic violence?

So I can't provide you with like a specific list of who was reaching.

Just the general what was said.

Right. The outreach was done to as many groups as possible. The only, the only affirmative support that we have at the time is what's in noted in the analysis, including obviously the probation officers, the Crime Victims Alliance and the District Attorney's Office as stated their support. Those are the only folks.

I just wanted to, did you get any feedback of people who were declining to support or weren't. Did you get any. I guess I'm wondering did you get any feedback as it relates to DV survivors? I know I've done bills in the space where they wanted to have a conversation when they were opposed or even supporting. And so I just wondered if there'd been any feedback as it relates to this noting their absence.

No, I don't have any feedback to provide to you.

And I will say the committee didn't receive any either.

Okay, good to know, Good to know. You noted about this the time that it took in that particular case. And so I would say more broadly you can speak to that case or more broadly, the time it took to get a warrant was so long that there was no information on there and you couldn't know whether it was deleted. Was none not captured yet or was it deleted? So how long does it typically take to get a warrant in these type of cases?

Yeah, so speaking more broadly versus in a particular case, I think 15 minutes is just simply unrealistic in most cases. I know that that was a referenced amount of time. It can take hours to days depending on the device and what's being sought.

And part of it is that it's essentially a two stage analysis because sometimes first you're getting into the device to figure out if the device itself has anything, including identifiers. And then if you're linking that to something like a cloud storage, you're getting a second stage warrant to then go to the cloud storage.

This bill, AB 358, would still require a warrant to get to potentially cloud storage. But the idea is to be able to get into the device quickly to be able to then if there is cloud storage connected to it, write a warrant to go directly to any potential cloud storage. So again, depending on the multiple factors, I would say hours to days in order to write a warrant, a well written warrant, that's going to get approved and pushed through. I think that's fair.

And would you say that a device that doesn't have cloud storage, that means that the data is stored locally, that you would still be able to access that data within hours to days to be able to make an assessment? I mean, I think the issue might be coming with cloud storage where somebody could delete but a data, but a device that is locally stored, what would be the impact of waiting for hours to days for a warrant?

You might not actually even know kind of how, what the connections look like until you get into the device itself. So in the camera, in the particular instance that I brought up, it was upon looking at logs in the device that we saw a lot of IP connections and items like that that triggered, oh, there's something more going on. And then that led to a second warrant. So getting into the device itself was step one and then going from there was going into to get the additional warrant. Yeah.

And so the analysis talks about a Faraday case. Isn't that pretty common for law enforcement and or District Attorney offices to have a Faraday case to be able to house devices? Isn't that a, isn't that a very common, like we all have refrigerators, at least I hope everybody has a refrigerator in their house.

I can speak to my unit. Of course, we, I mean we are a high-tech unit, so we have some pretty advanced Faraday boxes and bags. As far as every patrol officer who is handling a phone call that they're going out and collecting these devices, I think that that's unlikely.

Although I can tell you that my unit goes out and gives trainings on the importance of doing this. I think it would be unrealistic to think that a patrol officer usually is a less experienced officer who shows up to take a report from somebody who's identified a camera, is immediately throwing that camera into a Faraday bag.

Even at the time that it takes for law enforcement to show up to a location, that's that oftentimes is a significant delay. And I can speak as to my own calls to law enforcement. The amount of time can be hours just to get law enforcement to show up.

Just imagine a victim locates this camera and if the perpetrator is actively watching it or recording it now they know, oh, I've been caught and immediately they have the time to start obfuscating, deleting and kind of causing a problem to potentially prove a case down the line.

So really the impetus here is that the second law enforcement getting there, being able to analyze it to the best of their ability, could give additional information, whether it's an SD card or some kind of a memory on there and say, like, oh, it wasn't recording you, that's not what was happening here.

Or it was in fact recording you and it's connected to the cloud storage. So we'll work with the DA's office to kind of see, seek additional warrants. That's, that's really the impetus in this case. I would also just like to respectfully disagree that this is a Fourth Amendment issue.

There's no other state that we're aware of that and no case that, that we're aware of that has held that a device that's been effectively abandoned in somebody else's home has Fourth Amendment protection. A person who does that has no legal standing under the Fourth Amendment. So it really is the statutory protection granted by CalECPA that, that prevents law enforcement from moving forward.

Can you stay on that for just one second? Are you saying that, are you only saying that there's been no challenge to the Fourth Amendment related to something, a privacy component of someone else, property within somebody else's home, which could be effectively abandoned and not relating to other laws in other states dealing with this particular issue?

Yes. Speaking specifically to the jurisprudence under reasonable expectation of privacy, there's been no argument that I'm aware of that. Anybody that I work with is aware of that. That standing has been granted to somebody when they're leaving spying devices in somebody else's area that simply they, they would not have a reasonable expectation of privacy to that device. And therefore, if a victim found it under Fourth Amendment, they can consent to law enforcement searching it. And outside of electronic devices, that would still hold.

So if it was a document that somebody left behind in my home that delineated a crime or something like that, a victim could call the cops and say, hey, I had a house guest over. They left this. Let's say it was just a photograph to make it, I guess, a little bit more visual, like a child porn type photograph. And they were like, somebody left this in my home. Please come get it. Of course, that that person who finds it in their home would be able to hand over that photograph to law enforcement.

And that's, that's a similar type analysis. It's just CalECPA takes it to the next level. And so therefore there's, there's statutory rights, which we agree, and that's why we've sought, we've sought warrants in the past and are seeking this very, very narrow exception.

Thank you and then my question to the opponents. I'm glad you brought up and explained that more because that was going to be my question is where have you seen this become an issue in terms of violating Fourth Amendment rights? Are we aware of any cases and supposed to be brought it up as it relates to this particular issue having to defend this anywhere at all?

And I will just add, we do not have the legislative authority to overrule the Fourth Amendment.

That's right.

So the Fourth Amendment will still stand no matter what we do here today. The only thing we are doing here today is modifying CalECPA so the statutory protections that are currently in place for these devices. I do agree with the analysis that there is no reasonable expectation of privacy in these devices under the Fourth Amendment.

So I don't think we have a Fourth Amendment problem. But even if we did, these devices would still be protected under the Fourth Amendment even after this bill were to be signed into law if that were to happen. So I just want to clarify that.

And I'll look to the Chair because I know we have a lot of bills to get through today. So if you think that it's not an appropriate line of questioning for our committee and stuff, I'm fine to withdraw the question.

No, I mean I think it's an important conversation. I will say that the bill was first heard in public safety. That is much more their jurisdiction than ours. So I wasn't there for that but I assume this was a topic of conversation of public safety. But it's a fine question to ask.

I just wanted to clarify, as we asked the opposition, the question that even if they agree that you have a Fourth Amendment right to protect this, that our actions today wouldn't change that. So that was my clarification.

And I would like to speak though to the Fourth Amendment question. There is a doctrine of abandonment under the Fourth Amendment. If a device or something else is abandoned, then the Fourth Amendment reasonable expectation of privacy would not apply in that situation. There's a set of factors that determine whether something is abandoned.

You have to look at that on a case by case basis. But I think here there's a deeper problem which does implicate the Fourth Amendment, which is that you have a situation where potentially people who are in possession of these devices could be mistaken about them being abandoned and they could tell an officer that they're abandoned when in fact they are not.

An officer could also just decide that they're abandoned when there's not very much evidence of that. And certainly you don't have the person who ostensibly abandoned them available to say whether or not they were really abandoned.

And then you could have situations where either the police officer or the person claims that they were abandoned when in fact they are not. And the reason that's important is that getting a warrant is not just about the protection of having a judge see something before the search happens.

It also creates a public record where that judge has a paper, where they have granted a warrant, and it has a scope. That warrant is then available in the public record for people like me to go to a courthouse and say, I would like to look at all the warrants and see what's going on in terms of law enforcement accessing people's devices. Without that public record, transparency in our in California gets chipped away.

And then you just don't know what kinds of searches are happening by law enforcement of people's devices. Getting a warrant can happen relatively quickly. There's safeguards in place and that transparency and accountability really is vital. And so I think that these comments don't eliminate concerns.

Thank you. Is that complete for you, Assemblymember? Okay, thank you. Assemblymember Macedo.

I just want to say that I really appreciate you bringing this bill forward. I have a personal experience that I was leaving an event, I got in my car and my phone detected an AirTag. I immediately called my dad. My dad came, picked me up. I was scared to go home. I was scared to be in my vehicle.

Turned off my location settings and felt like no place was safe or private. So thankfully no device was found. But as a young woman, that's not a fun place to be. So time is of the essence in these situations to make sure that if somebody is stalking or potentially could cause harm to a young woman like myself, or a young man for that matter, any person, this is of the utmost importance. So I actually would appreciate to be added as a co-author to this bill and will be supporting this bill today. Thank you.

Thank you, Assemblymember. Anybody else with questions? I wanna thank the author for taking the narrowing amendments, most of which were taken, as I mentioned, in public safety. I was concerned that this is a tracking device. Let's be real, guys. But it also contains so much private information that each of us hold.

And by the way, I do actually think I could make a creative argument that I have an expectation of privacy in this because it is locked. Just so you know, when you put your trash out on the curb, the courts have found you don't have an expectation of privacy in what's in your trash can.

We don't have an expectation of privacy in everything. That's not how the Fourth Amendment works. I believe deeply in the warrant system, but I actually believe it's there to protect people's constitutional rights. I don't believe it's there as a record-keeping service.

And so I think that with the narrowing amendments, where we're talking about devices that are solely used to track or record people, that we really are talking about things that are being used nefariously. And if you leave that somewhere, you no longer have an expectation of privacy.

And so I personally believe that this change to CalECPA is minor, but will address some of what I know women in our communities deal with day in and day out. And these devices, which are really helpful when you want to track your luggage, but are really dangerous when you have an abusive spouse, are out there and are easily accessible. And our society has changed. And so we need to make sure that law enforcement has the tools to protect our community members. And so I am happy to support the bill today. And with that, would you like to close?

I would. Thank you very much. Appreciate all the input provided by everybody. The bill did go through public safety. It had just as a robust conversation there as it did here. And so I appreciate that. I just A couple of things that were said. Very mindful.

And thank Ms. McKinnor for her concerns on sharing of information with federal agents. I think you would expect that I'd be concerned about that. SB 54 remains in place. This does not change that. So sharing and cooperating is not allowed and will not be allowed under the changes we're proposing. As was stated, this is not a change to the Fourth Amendment.

It's a change to state law, CalECPA. And that's what the focus is. And, you know, I doubt that there are circumstances when the opposition talks about police can just go and pick up any device and then say that they're thinking it's tracking or it's recording.

We very explicitly said if a victim gives their consent of something that's found in their personal property, then the police has the authority to do so. Police can't just walk up and pick up an AirTag or a camera, can't go into someone's home, just pick up a camera or an AirTag and start to search.

That's not what this does. It's if someone who is a victim gives the authority for the police to do so, then the authority exists. It does not exist before that. And so I want to clarify that this is specifically centered on victims wanting to make sure that justice is brought to whatever potential harm is being caused to them and not something that is just willy nilly being done by the police at any given moment. So with that, I respectfully request your aye vote.

Thank you. I have a motion and a second. Let's call the roll.

[Roll Call]

Thank you.

Thank you.

That has nine votes. It is out. But we will leave the roll open for absent Members. We'll move on to Assemblymember Krell's Bill, AB 1137. Thank you for being here, Assemblymember Krell.

When you're ready.

It's good to see you. Hi, good afternoon, everyone. Thanks so much to the Chair and thank you to the Committee for all your work on this Bill. Really appreciate it. Assembly Bill 1137 strengthens California's existing mechanism to report sexual abuse material on social media platforms.

If you might recall, my joint author in this Bill authored Assembly Bill 1394 last year, and this set up a really important framework for a reporting system to increase transparency and accountability, when sexual abuse material is shared online.

It's not news to this Committee that there are literally millions of CSAM images online, all the time, on social media platforms we've heard of, and some we haven't even heard of.

The mechanism that was put in place last year was a really, really important framework to try and report, reduce, and prevent additional child sexual abuse material from getting online. This Bill that I'm bringing today is really an implementation Bill. It makes—it takes—the vision of that Bill and allows it to more effectively be put into action.

The Bill would allow anyone to use the CSAM reporting mechanism on social media. Currently, the law limits reporting to the person in the CSAM, and so, expanding access to all users would relieve survivors from the burden of having to seek out their own instances of abuse.

It also requires that the reporting mechanism be clear and conspicuous, so that users of social media can easily see this and report it. It also requires that the CSAM reports be reviewed by hash matching, or an actual person, rather than just relying solely on algorithms.

Allowing public attorneys to bring civil charges against social media platforms for failure to comply with the reporting mechanism, and that way, it's just not solely the responsibility of the survivor to privately bring these cases.

And then, finally, it requires public biannual audits to be done by an independent third-party, ensuring that social media platforms aren't facilitating, aiding, or abetting in the CSAM. So, that's an overview of the Bill, and I appreciate the thorough analysis by the Committee.

With me today are Nicole W, the mother of a child who was a victim of CSAM on social media, and then, also, Hillary Evans, Survivor Leader, representing 3Strands Global Foundation. Now, who wants to go first?

Thank you. Two minutes each, when you're ready.

Good afternoon, Chair Bauer-Kahan and Members of the Committee. My name is Hillary Evans. I'm the Director of Social Impact at 3Strands Global Foundation, a California-based nonprofit dedicated to ending human trafficking and supporting survivors nationwide, through trauma-informed prevention, education, and reintegration services.

3Strands Global Foundation is proud to co-sponsor AB 1137 and strongly supports its passage. This Bill is a crucial next step in the fight against online child exploitation. In 2023, we co-sponsored AB 1394, which is now law, and laid a strong foundation, by requiring platforms to implement reporting systems for child sexual abuse material.

AB 1137 builds on that work, by ensuring that those systems are not only available, but effective and centered on the needs of survivors. Specifically, the Bill removes the requirement that a reporting user must be depicted in the material and mandates that reporting mechanisms be clear and conspicuous.

Most importantly, it strengthens the response process, by requiring that all reports be reviewed through robust methods, either via established hash matching technology for known material, or, where no match exists, by trained reviewers—human reviewers. As a direct service provider, we witness firsthand the devastating impact of online child sexual exploitation.

We work with survivors every day, young people who are not only living with the trauma of their abuse, but also the ongoing harm of seeing images of that abuse continue to circulate online. Social media platforms are not just bystanders in this crisis.

They are central to the spread of child sexual abuse material and without stronger enforceable safeguards, we know the exploitation will only increase. AB 1137 is an urgently needed response. It removes the painful burden, that survivors currently face, of having to locate and report their own abuse.

By allowing any user, not just the survivor, to report CSAM, this Bill creates a more accessible, responsive, and survivor-centered path to content removal. Requiring these reports to be reviewed by real people and not just algorithms ensures survivors are treated with the care and the dignity that they deserve, rather than being subjected to impersonal systems, that too often overlook and mishandle the severity of their pain.

We urge your strong support for AB 1137, as it is a vital step in protecting children who are vulnerable, supporting survivors, and ensuring tech companies take meaningful responsibility for the spaces that they create. Thank you for your leadership.

Thank you.

My name is Nicole, and I am the mother of a child sexual abuse survivor, whose abuse was recorded and has been widely distributed on a variety of Internet websites and social media platforms.

I am here today in support of AB 1137, a Bill that will allow crucial clarifications to existing California law, that requires social media platforms to take affirmative acts to remove child sexual abuse material from their platforms.

When the perpetrator, in my child's case, was arrested and charged, I was naive enough to be grateful that there were images proving what he had done, so that he would not be able to get away with it.

In the time that has passed, I have seen firsthand how the images themselves are abuse and every time the images are distributed, redistributed, and viewed, the child is revictimized. The current California law allows only someone depicted in the images to request their removal.

The reality is that many of the children being depicted are below the allowable age for them to be engaged on these platforms, in the first place. By allowing anyone to report these images, you are taking the responsibility off the children and allowing grownups in the room to speak up on their behalf.

AB 1137 also prevents revictimization by utilizing the existing hash data mechanism for known CSAM and requiring human review only in cases where the images have no hash match, and would not otherwise be removed. Imagine the worst thing that has ever happened to you having been recorded and shared out into the world, without your consent.

Wouldn't you want as few people to see this as possible? That's what this Bill does for CSAM survivors. Survivors need to have all of the remedies under the law available so that they can decide when, where, and how to seek justice against everyone who has been part of their abuse.

This Bill empowers the California Attorney General, state prosecutors, and local prosecutors to use their resources to pursue justice, on behalf of these children and their families. This Bill is about the safety of kids and there is nothing more important than protecting them. I know I alone could not have protected my own child.

We need help and new laws to keep children safe online. I urge the Assembly to move forward with AB 1137, to help ensure that every child has the safe childhood that they deserve.

Thank you so much for being here and for your testimony. Do we have any other witnesses here in support on this Bill?

Kim Stone, on behalf of the Children's Advocacy Institute, co-sponsor, in support.

And I was stuck in another Committee and didn't get to do a "Me Too" on your Bill, 56, which I'm happy to see it got out.

Thank you.

But they were all so supportive of that, and I'm sorry that I didn't...

It's one of those days.

Do that an hour ago.

Kristi Merrill, 3Strands Global Foundation, proud co-sponsor, in support.

Thank you.

Mark Berkman, with the Organization for Social Media Safety, proud co-sponsor, in support.

Thank you.

Sarah Hendy, 3Strands Global Foundation, proud sponsor, in support.

Thank you.

Ken Wang, on behalf of the California Initiative for Technology Democracy, in support.

Thank you. Anyone here in opposition to this Bill, come on up.

I thought they'd replaced you, Dylan, but you're back.

Do you have a frequent flyer program? I'd love to take advantage. Madam Chair, as the sole witness. Do you mind if I-- Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, Dylan Hoffman on behalf of TechNet in respectful opposition though, we anticipate moving to opposing unless amended as we continue to collect feedback and specific red lines. As an organization, we don't typically take an opposing lesson minute unless we have those red lines and have a path towards neutrality.

So we're working towards that. First, fully agree with the intent behind this bill. Our companies have been highly engaged partners in the fight to curb CSAM on the Internet and work very collaboratively with NCMEC and other nonprofits to do so. In fact, TechNet was a proactive partner in negotiations on the prior bill, AB 1394.

With the author, her staff and and sponsors of the bill, we provided numerous detailed red lines that would have made implementation more efficient, insulated the bill from constitutional challenges, and helped to remove more CSAM from the Internet.

While there were some issues we wish could have been resolved, we were appreciative of the conversations with Assemblymember Wicks and her willingness to work with us. All that to say we're more than willing to do the same with AB 1137 and have had an initial conversation with the author staff to begin that dialogue.

AB 1394 just went into effect January 1st of this year. If there is already evidence of gaps in compliance or ways to improve upon the bill, we'd like to be part of that conversation and provide helpful solutions in that regard. Want to highlight a few issues with the changes this bill makes.

First, as initially drafted, the human review requirement would have had a significant negative impact on our ability to process these reports. Platforms actually try to Automate Processing of CSAMs, CSAM reports as much as possible to prevent re victimization of the individual, but also to protect human moderators.

Content moderation is an incredibly difficult job, and one in which the nature of the content takes a significant toll on workers. It's in everyone's interest to have more, not less, automation in this instance, and the recent amendments help to address this issue, and we may have additional suggestions there.

Second, the changes to the audit requirements add significant compliance hurdles without much meaningful benefit. Third party audits are not only costly, but it's also not clear that there are auditors that would meet the requirements of having experience in digital trust and safety and content moderation.

AB 1394's audit requirements were constructed to ensure that companies were conducting meaningful self assessments of their systems and looking for ways to improve their methods. We still believe that twice yearly audits make that exercise more about checking a box than about a true assessment.

If the Committee finds it necessary to impose a third party audit requirement, we suggest that it's on a less frequent timeline with self assessments in between. More concerning, however, is the requirement that these audits be made public.

Platforms are in a constant battle to protect their users and their platforms from sophisticated bad actors that are trying to exploit and harm them.

Providing additional detailed information about platforms, moderation efforts, how they're using certain technologies, and identifying gaps in their systems and making this public is a very bad idea and gives sophisticated criminal organizations a significant advantage. The industry has made significant progress in the fight against CSAM and we cannot go backward.

This bill should not force companies to choose between non compliance and undercutting their work to combat CSAM on their platform. We've already discussed this point with the author's office and we're all obviously on the same team in this fight. This is an instance where transparency directly conflicts with safety and security.

We strongly suggest removing the public posting requirements from these audits. Additionally, the changes to the enforcement provisions upend several negotiation points on AB 1394, namely that inadvertent immaterial non compliance due to a technical malfunction or issue outside the control of the platform shouldn't be grounds for penalties or a lawsuit.

While we appreciate the change to make certain sections enforceable by public prosecutors rather than a private lawsuit, the bill and penalties currently treat small technical failures and serious intentional non compliance the same. We believe penalties and enforcement should be tailored to the harm caused by non compliance and we'll work to provide suggestions to that effect.

Lastly, I'll just say that AB 1394 reflected a careful balancing of interests between safety, transparency and accountability. It also balanced serious constitutional issues around the First and Fourth Amendments and is somewhat unique among social media bills in that it hasn't been challenged in court to date.

We suggest caution with any changes that could upset that very careful balance and we look forward to continuing our productive dialogue with the author and her staff and moving towards an opposing, less amended position. So thank you for your time today.

Thank you. Any other witnesses here in opposition? I see at least one I think.

Good afternoon. Ronak Daylami with Cal Chamber. Align our comments with those of TechNet. Respectfully in opposition. Thank you.

Aodhan Downey representing the Computer and Communications Industry Association, want to echo what Dylan said and we are opposed unless amended. Thank you.

Thank you. Seeing no additional witnesses here in opposition. We'll bring it back to the dais. Any questions? Concerns? Comment? Yeah, we'll start with Ms. Wilson.

Thank you to the author for bringing this forward. And I get that the law just went into effect at the beginning of this year, and I do think there's opportunity, as I was reading through the bill analysis, for improvement and I'll be supporting today.

But I do have one concern that I think is a valid concern and it is related to the audits being twice a year and having the third party requirement, an independent third party requirement. And I think that having the third party requirement is really good.

But then knowing having not done this type of audits, but just knowing how the audit process works, it could be long and cumbersome and rightfully so, especially when you're doing third party. And so it does feel more like a checks the box if you're doing them biannually. And so they should be meaningful and thorough.

And I am concerned about the two times a year. And then also with the information being public, we do want to protect. So there is some level of transparency I believe could be needed in terms of making notification that an audit has been completed and that being verifiable versus having to make the entire thing public.

So those are just some concerns that I thought when I read through. But I appreciate the work that you're doing and I think it's on track. And those are the only concerns that I saw that I thought were valid for further consideration from you by the author with these stakeholders. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Pellerin.

Thank you. I want to thank the author for bringing this bill forward and the witnesses for sharing your personal stories and the work you've done in this space as well. So it's my understanding that some of the CSAM's are going to be reviewed by humans.

And over the past couple years, we've seen an increased acknowledgment of the mental health harm suffered by content moderators, specifically as it relates to suicide, diagnosis of PTSD, depression and anxiety. So I'm just wondering whether you're looking at possibly having AI or some other method of reviewing the CSAM materials.

Yes, it is reviewed by AI, but then it would also require just in specific circumstances to have reviewed by a natural person.

So how often do you think that's going to occur?

I mean, it's still going to occur with some frequency.

Because AI can't be trained to be looking for everything we need it to find.

It can. And I mean, especially with hash images, AI can actually be better than human review in some circumstances, but we also need human review for situations where there's multiple reports and it's been rejected by AI. We want a person to look at it and make sure because that could be a child victim that's continuing to be victimized.

So we want to make sure we get it right.

Okay, makes sense. Thank you.

And I'll thank the author for her amendment in this committee which got rid of review by humans when it was being removed, because that did seem unnecessary. If they're doing the right thing and taking it down, we didn't need more eyes on that image.

So to the extent that the social that the companies are over inclusive in what they remove, there will be less eyes on it. But to the extent that they're choosing to leave it up, that's where this would apply. And I think that that's where they're making that decision.

We want to make sure it's a decision that is made with real thought, sadly. Any other additional questions? With that would you like to close?

Sure. I appreciate the comments from the members of this committee and for the Chair and the Chair staff's work on this bill. Thanks for the opposition comments as well. We'll continue to listen to everyone as we keep going down the road. But right now I'd respectfully ask for everybody's aye vote thank you.

And I'm supposed to give you the last word. If you want to say something after me, you can again. But I want to thank the author for this work. I know this is part of your life's work, protecting people who are survivors.

And this is so important and I really want to thank you and I, you know, here we are again, trying to protect the most vulnerable from the most egregious of crimes and we have social media posing. So I'm excited to see the day when they come and help protect California's children. Would you like to close again?

Are you good? Okay. Wait, do we have a motion?Oh, we have a motion and a second. And let's call the roll.

Item number five, AB 1137 by Assemblymember Krell. The motion is do passed to the Judiciary Committee. [Roll Call]

That bill has seven votes, so it is on call. We will get additional votes when folks get back to Committee. Ah, okay, perfect. We will hear AB 1331. Elhawary, there she is. Your ear. When you're ready.

I know you're working hard, so I'll keep it quick. All right. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. I'm here to present AB 1331, which strengthens workplace privacy laws to address the rise of invasive workplace. Excuse me, invasive employer surveillance. Employers today aren't just using cameras.

They're using wearable trackers, facial recognition, speech monitoring and algorithmic surveillance to monitor workers every minute of their shift, on and off the clock. The communities bearing the weight of the surveillance, excuse me, of the surveillance state, aren't the folks sitting in corner offices.

It's black, brown and immigrant workers, the ones doing physically demanding low wage jobs, who are tracked, monitored and policed every minute of their shift. In California, nearly half of our low wage workers are Latino. In regions like the Inland Empire, warehouse workers are disproportionately black and Latino.

And let's be honest, these are the same workers who don't feel like they can speak up because they're just trying to keep their jobs and provide for their families. These are the very communities, black, brown and immigrant workers, who are disproportionately subject to surveillance systems that track, control and monitor every move they make.

This kind of monitoring isn't neutral. It increases stress, reduces job satisfaction and strips workers of their basic dignity. AB 1331 will modernize our laws to protect workers privacy. It limits surveillance in private spaces, off duty locations, and ensures that surveillance of a worker's home or vehicle is only allowed when absolutely necessary.

This bill is about restoring dignity in the workplace and protecting the very people who keep our economy running. Black, brown, immigrant and low wage workers, so they are not forced to sacrifice their privacy just to earn a paycheck. With me testifying in support is Yvonne Fernandez with California Federation of Labor Unions.

Also with me in support is Shane Gusman with the Teamsters.

And before we move on, just want to make sure you're accepting the Committee amendments.

Yes.

Okay, great. And two minutes each one of you have a chance.

Perfect. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, Members of the Committee, Yvonne Fernandez with the California Labor Federation, a proud co sponsor of AB 1331. Members, when you think of surveillance, what comes to mind?

I assume some may think of a camera, some may think of a microphone, but I assure you, the tools of today are so much more powerful than this. As the Assembly Member noted, Employers today have access to seemingly military grade equipment such as wearable trackers, heat sensors, and even in some parts of the world, implantable RFID chips.

Surveillance hardware and software have become increasingly affordable and available. This is why employers are now eager to monitor every corner of the work site and it is why they have required workers to install keystroke monitors, a very effective form of productivity management and a practice that DOGE has instituted on federal workers.

With every inch of the workplace under the eye of the employer, workers simply do not have adequate protections for being washed at home, when eating lunch, or even when going to the restroom.

While there are existing privacy laws protecting workers from audio and visual recordings, this is primarily for camera and microphone technology, leaving workers vulnerable to new forms of surveillance technology.

There are two reasons why we must protect workers from being surveilled at all hours of the day and the first is that workers need privacy on the job whether they're in the restroom, their home office or while on break.

The second is that while that we all understand the power of data and how it can be used by employers to control the workplace. If an employer can track and listen to conversations throughout the entire day, they can gather as much information as possible and exercise that power over workers.

For example, Amazon has developed a centralized AI system that can detect union friendly phrases and behaviors in Amazon warehouses in real time.

AI then analyzes the data to learn how to devise strategies to neutralize their program target, which in this case could be workers in a break room who are potentially pro union or at the very least concerned about their rights.

Perceptics is a company that collects and analyzes employee surveys and other information and they said that they can create union vulnerability indexes so employers can see which groups of workers are at the highest risk of unionization. We at the Labor Federation of course support safety and workplace violence prevention.

However, this is pushing surveillance from being used for safety and security into full on invasive surveillance. AB 1331 enacts sensible workplace privacy protections and keeps the Boss out of the restroom. I respectfully urge your aye vote.

Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair. Members of the Committee, Shane Gusman, on behalf of the California Teamsters Public Affairs Council, co sponsor the bill along with the Amalgamated Transit Union, the Machinists Union, the Utility Workers Union of America, Unite Here and the Engineers and Scientists of California all in strong support of this measure.

Surveillance and monitoring of employees has been growing for some time, as you've just heard. Unfortunately, with the new technology, this practice is now becoming increasingly invasive and terribly problematic for worker Privacy, but not just privacy, also health and safety and actually productivity.

Workers who are constantly concerned about their employer monitoring every step of the day, including in bathrooms, in their private vehicles at home, do not make for better workers.

They make for stressed out, nervous workers that not only endangers their own mental health, but endangers their physical well being and the physical well being of their workers, especially if they're working in sort of safety sensitive areas, including distribution centers.

As you've just heard, this surveillance has been around for some time, but now because it's cheaper and more effective and more and more employers are taking advantage of it.

And so our view is that the time is now to act to provide some appropriate guardrails around the use of this technology so that we don't, you know, as the author said, force someone to trade off their privacy and autonomy just to get a paycheck.

Thank you both. Anyone else here in the room in support of this bill, come on up. Name, organization and position. Although.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair and Members. Robert Horrell, Executive Director of the Consumer Federation of California, in support of this bill, thank you.

Kimberly Rosenberger on behalf of SEIU, UFCW, and CSEA in strong support.

Samantha Gordon on behalf of Tech Equity, in support.

Ken Wang on behalf of the California Employment Lawyers Association, in support.

Yadi Yonsei with Oakland Privacy in support.

Daniel Endbird, on behalf of the American Federation for State County Municipal Employees in support, thank you.

Jp Hannah with the California Nurses Association in strong support, thank you.

And I assume we have witnesses in opposition who want to join us up here. Four minutes. You can do two minutes each or use it.

Thank you very much, chair and Members. Kaylin Dean, on behalf of the California Hospital Association, representing over 400 hospitals and health systems in the state, we are here in regrettable opposition to AB 1331. We appreciate the recent amendments from the author and sponsors, but unfortunately, many of our concerns still remain.

Hospitals do not want to infringe on the privacy of their workers, and hospitals do not surveil people in areas like locker rooms, bathrooms and lactation spaces. The safety of our hospital workers and patients are of utmost importance to us.

But in order for us to ensure safety while adhering to workplace violence prevention standards and a host of other regulations, we use security cameras 24 hours a day, seven days a week throughout the hospital facilities and grounds, including around the perimeter of the property.

Due to the unique operations of hospitals, workers take their breaks at various times throughout the 24 hours, often in common areas shared by the public, such as the cafeteria or designated smoking areas while off duty, either to begin or end their shift.

Workers are likely to be in other public spaces such as elevators, corridors or stairwells and the parking lot. There are cameras in all of these areas to protect our workers and the public. AB 1331 is not practical.

Workers off duty areas are shared with the public and from a security perspective, the components of the bill would put our health care system at risk by not being able to observe activity in common areas that have included assaults, larcenies, slips and falls, and unfortunately, attempts at even infant abduction.

The tools that hospitals use cannot be turned off or disabled by the worker. My colleague from the Chamber will discuss more info or more concerns that we have around cybersecurity monitoring and the California Hospital Association respectfully request your no vote today. Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you. Good afternoon. Ronak Dalami on behalf of Cal Chamber. I'm actually playing the role of Ashley Hoffman today, who is much smarter than me in our labor issues, so please bear with me. We are respectfully in opposition today as a cost driver to AB 1330. Of course, privacy does not exist in a vacuum.

It exists in conflict with other rights and obligations, including safety and security. Unfortunately, AB 1331 does not account for the legitimate reasons why businesses, schools, banks, hospitals and many more use surveillance. Many employers have security cameras in areas like hallways or parking lots where employees may happen to concrete in their breaks.

We do disagree with the bill's characterization of those areas as being on the same level as bathrooms or changing rooms. Cameras in those areas would be prohibited under AB 1331 for any reason.

If an employee asks for a camera because of a recent incident, or if there was a suspicious person in an office or a school campus, we do track computers and systems system access, for example, because of as anyone who's taken a cybersecurity training in the last year knows, people are really the number one way in which hackers or those who are attempting phishing attacks or ransomware attacks can get in.

As such, those systems must always be running to identify low level attacks in seconds. We also collect emails on our servers to ensure compliance with legal obligations and prevent incidents of harassment. There are scenarios where disabling or leaving behind a tool is also not practical.

Consider when an employee is having lunch or an employer owned vehicle, excuse me, between site visits or customer calls. Those geolocation systems cannot simply be turned off and on and they cannot just be leave the car behind.

So to be clear, we are absolutely not defending surveillance for nefarious purposes, but AB 1331's flaw is that it bans certain actions altogether without considering the technological feasibility for doing so or the reasoning behind so certain tools that we need to be able to use for legitimate reasons.

And so for these reasons, we do ask for your no vote and oppose. Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else here in opposition to this bill? Come on up. Name, organization and position, please.

Good afternoon. Delilah Clay on behalf of the California Construction and Industrial Materials Association, in opposition.

Good afternoon Chair and Members. Laura Curtis with the American Property Casualty Insurance Association also in respectful opposition. Thank you.

Good afternoon. Marcus Detwiler with the California Special Districts Association in opposition. I've also been asked to convey the opposition of the League of California Cities and the California State Association of Counties. Thank you.

Thank you. Chris Rose on behalf of the California Forestry Association in opposition.

[Unintelligible] on behalf of The California Travel Association. In opposition.

Scott Governor on behalf of the Construction Employers Association, also speaking on behalf of the National Electrical Contractors Association, Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors Association, Southern California Contractors Association, United Contractors and the Wall and Ceiling Alliance in opposition.

I'm sure that there was someone you forgot, but good afternoon.

Emily Doe with the California Credit Union League in opposition.

Sarah Duquette on behalf of the Rural County Representatives of California and the Urban Counties of California, in opposition.

Madam Chair, Members, Carlos Gutierrez here on behalf of the California Grocers Association, in opposition.

[Unintelligible] the after the California League of Food Producers, in opposition. Thank you.

Matt Easley on behalf of Associated General Contractors of California, in opposition.

Katie Davie with the Dairy Institute of California, in opposition.

Sam Hood on behalf of the Security Industry Association, respectfully opposed. Today.

Nick Chappie on behalf of the California Trucking Association, respectfully opposed. Thank you.

Robert Boykin with Technet, respectfully opposition.

Max Perry on behalf of the California Pest Management Association, also opposition.

Jack Yannis on behalf of the California Fuels and Convenience Alliance, respectfully opposed.

Good afternoon. John Doherty with Hawaiian Gardens Casino, in opposition.

Mike Robeson on behalf of the California Alarm Association in post.

Hi. Dylan Hoffman on behalf of Prism. Respectfully opposed.

Sabrina Lockhart, California Attractions and Parks Association, in opposition.

Jacob Brent with the California Retailers Association, in respectful opposition.

Thank you. Seeing no further opposition. I'm going to bring it back to the dais. I will just make a point on this bill, which is we received the request from the Hospital Association yesterday afternoon to talk about the bill for the first time. We are only as good as the engagement we get on legislation.

And so I would just ask people to engage earlier, have productive conversations. I don't think that the author intends to put Anybody at risk in a hospital, I think I hope those conversations continue. But having been the recipient of the communications, I know they've been coming very late.

And so, you know, I would appreciate in the future if people could engage a little earlier. Bringing it back. Anybody else? Family Member Pellerin?

Hello. Thank you. I had thought that in Assembly labor and Employment, the Committee suggested that you do an exception, exception for workplace surveillance around off duty areas. Is that still something you're considering doing?

That's a good question. And I'm going to ask my witnesses if we have talked about that with the amendments. I don't remember.

Could you. So. Yes. So could you, could you elaborate a little further if possible?

If I, if I, I mean, it's just my understanding that in some. In Assembly labor and Employment, the Committee suggested that you consider an exception for the use of a workplace surveillance tool in off duty areas to ensure the safety of workers. And I thought that I had heard that was something that you had accepted to do.

But I don't see that in the amendment.

So yes, I can.

So maybe I misheard. I don't know. Yeah.

If I may, through the chair. So we took amendments heading into this Committee specifically in 1561 D that allow for surveillance tools to be used in areas not listed in 1561 A, which are those off duty areas that we had listed.

So you know, we can commonly refer to those as General areas so that a surveillance tool can be operating while a worker is still on a, is on a break. But it's not, but not in those off duty areas that we had mentioned.

So for example, in a grocery store, a, a surveillance system can still remain on even when workers are on a break and they would not have to turn off or alter their surveillance systems. And that was the intent of our Amendment specifically in 1561 D.

And if I also may add, you know, we're continuing working with opposition to try to get at the issue of ongoing surveillance as it pertains to workers, you know, who are off duty, but in General areas.

Yeah. No.

And I understand that this is a trade off that you're considering and I would urge you to consider amendments that would allow for the recording of common spaces, but predicate the assessing of those recordings on the filing of a complaint from HR management or law enforcement in the case of an alleged sexual assault, harassment, bullying or violence.

You know, these employee on employee kinds of, you know, violence could most likely occur in those areas like a break room. And from 1966 to 2021, there were 53 workplace shootings across the country. And that's 30% of the mass shootings during that same period. One of them occurred near my district in 2021 at BTA.

And so I would see no issue with imposing penalties for the improper access of those recordings. But I would hope that those recordings would exist should an employee file a complaint about sexual harassment or have some kind of violence against them. So have you given that some consideration.

If I may, through the chair? Yeah, you know, we're definitely, you know, taking into consideration workplace safety as it pertains to, you know, making sure that these recordings are.

Or just General surveillance tools are able to be used, which is, you know, then going back to 1561 D, which is why we are allowing for surveillance to be occurring in General areas. And if I may, on the topic of safety, I will note that in terms of safety, we took that amendment to address that.

But then also we see best workplace practices as methods of increasing safety. So, for example, increasing staffing and increasing security personnel, in addition to increasing workplace harassment trainings, all going in tandem with one another.

And then also taking into consideration the amendment which is allowing for surveillance in just those General areas, those things going together to get at the issue of safety. So we definitely understand the concern regarding safety as you're mentioning, and we're open to conversations to make sure that workers are safe on the work site.

I just have great faith in the author that you'll continue to work with the opposition to resolve those safety concerns that exist. So I'll go ahead and vote for the bill today.

Thank you. Thank you. So then Wex, is that okay?

Thank you. I do. I will be supporting the bill today. You know, obviously we want to make sure that we're not surveilling workers to that extent. But I have to say a lot of the concerns of the opposition resonate in the. In the letter that they wrote. Employee safety. I think that that's a big issue.

Yes, you can have additional workers, but the cameras often are there and that are there contribute to worker safety. I think it's an all of the above situation for worker safety.

But I'm also concerned about the conflicts with the Cal OSHA, the conflicts with the Cal OSHA regulations, and then the cybersecurity concerns that were brought up by the opposition. So I feel like there need to be more exemptions and a narrowing of the bill to get at what it is that you are trying to achieve.

And we'll see what the bill. I do have faith in the author, and we'll see what the bill looks like on the floor. But like I said, I'll be supporting today.

Thank you. So thank you.

I will also be supporting the bill today. I believe in the spirit of what you're attempting to do. I do want to align my comments with my colleagues, though, because I do think there's still some work to be done both on the safety issues also. And so I should make sure I have this clear.

The bill that we're voting on today, does it allow for surveillance, security cameras in elevators or public spaces or parking.

Lots, if I may correct.

It does. Okay, got it. Okay, great. Just a little bit more thoughtfulness on this just because I do think there's been some good issues raised. But obviously we're in the First Committee of the First House. I want to give you the opportunity to keep working on the bill.

So we'll be supporting it, but would love to see continue to work with opposition on trying to refine some of these things.

Thank you, Assembly Member Wicks and Member Wilson.

I have to agree with my colleagues. Thank you to the author for bringing this forward. You know, we are in this State of affairs where technology has allowed our privacy to be eroded in places where we expect some level of privacy outside of work. Right.

Whether that be remote work at home or when we're on break and things of that nature. But I think the concerns that were brought up with my colleagues, that were amplified from opposition by my colleagues are valid.

And I do think there needs to be level of refinement, especially given the issues of workplace violence from employees on employees and as well as being in secure environments, taken for example, what was noted from hospital and others like that of a need to be able to have some level of passive surveillance.

And I'll use the word from the analysis because I look at it as surveillance and then enhanced surveillance, which not supportive of. And so I think that there definitely needs to be refinement. I think this is one where you can be nuanced.

It's going to take time to be able to do that and more time than our legislative process allows when you're coming to the First Committee. Right. Or even to the Second Committee when you're in the first House. And so keep that in mind. I'll be supporting it today as well.