logan koepke
@jlkoepke.bsky.social
senior project director @upturn.org. research and advocacy on the material harms of AI systems, with a specific focus on civil rights. personal views. we have it in our power to begin the world over again. www.jlkoepke.com
one way you can tell that the current FTC has zero familiarity with the basics of disparate impact is that it has no understanding of how often corporations *are* able to defeat claims by simply offering a basic business rationale for a practice. www.ftc.gov/system/files...
![Compounding its perniciousness, the theory of disparate-impact liability is effectively unbounded because almost any conceivable policy or practice affects different groups differently. As one commentator succinctly put it, “[d]isparate impact is one of the most controversial concepts in civil rights law and policy partly because just about everything has a disparate impact.”25 And while some form of a business-necessity defense is generally available, in practice that defense often provides little protection."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:zhd3twq2r2tcbuys7dp55g3w/bafkreidvxmd2bsr74otebqeiob5h6i4edtzs6j7xnross3a6zx4hgoifbu)
imagine it's January 2026 and an independent verification organization is tasked with independently verifying whether a frontier AI lab met a cybersecurity standard. would it likely have certified that OpenAI or Anthropic met the standard? if yes, what does that suggest?
Today, CDT, EFF, EPIC, & Upturn submitted comments to the General Services Administration (GSA) in response to the request for comment regarding their updated draft AI Terms and Conditions for federal solicitations and contracts.
CDT, EFF, EPIC, and Upturn Submit Comments on GSA’s Updated Draft AI Terms and Conditions for Federal Contracts
Today, the Center for Democracy & Technology, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and Upturn submitted comments to the General Services Administration (GSA) in response to the request for comment regarding their updated draft AI Terms and Conditions for federal solicitations and contracts. In March, GSA released an initial draft […]
cdt.org
It is rare for the public to see such a large list of ICE’s technology capabilities in a single document. 404 Media has published the whole document, called “ICE Wide Analytical Tools," here: www.404media.co/leaked-docum... @josephcox.bsky.social reports:
Often in discussions of algorithmic discrimination and proposed new laws or regulations you'll hear some folks say "frankly, we have everything we need to combat discrimination." Oddly, you don't hear those same people say anything about this administration's revanchist moves to gut civil rights.
Millions of people are losing access to food benefits right now for literally no good reason and I wish more people were aware and talking about it. www.cbpp.org/research/foo... (As opposed to or at least in addition to the other stuff.)
SNAP Tracker: People Are Losing Food Assistance as the Republican Megabill Is Implemented
SNAP participation nationwide fell by more than 4 million people (nearly 10 percent) between the law’s July 2025 enactment and March 2026, based on the latest month of data.
cbpp.org
very strange to observe the policy debate about ai auditing basically cycle through the debate in FAccT papers about the ecosystem and institutional design of ai auditing from 2017-2022, but functionally give zero acknowledgment of this literature or work.
so the killer use-case pitch for a technology that is going to allegedly pull forward unbounded human flourishing is, of course, the very human flourishing-coded ***prior authorization for a healthcare procedure***
- third-party audits for unbounded risks that have no real concrete metrics to assess against: industry approved - third-party audits for specific risks that have longstanding metrics: destroyed by industry
personally, if you think ai systems will be important at the level of economy-defining scale, private governance will not be sufficient given the amount of risk *assumed by the public.* you need robust state capacity to manage public risk.
this FTC policy statement that seems to essentially suggest if your models don’t behave exactly how the FTC thinks they should, that’s deceptive under the FTC Act.
logan koepke@jlkoepke.bsky.social · last mo.“In light of the above, the Commission believes that AI companies that steer the outputs of their AI systems toward unexpected objectives, and away from the objectives set by or reasonably expected by users, are likely to deceive.” www.ftc.gov/news-events/...
this FTC policy statement that seems to essentially suggest if your models don’t behave exactly how the FTC thinks they should, that’s deceptive under the FTC Act.
logan koepke@jlkoepke.bsky.social · last mo.“In light of the above, the Commission believes that AI companies that steer the outputs of their AI systems toward unexpected objectives, and away from the objectives set by or reasonably expected by users, are likely to deceive.” www.ftc.gov/news-events/...
“In light of the above, the Commission believes that AI companies that steer the outputs of their AI systems toward unexpected objectives, and away from the objectives set by or reasonably expected by users, are likely to deceive.” www.ftc.gov/news-events/...
FTC Seeks Public Comment on Policy Statement Addressing AI Accuracy
The Federal Trade Commission is seeking public comment on a
ftc.gov
If you need help navigating the new Medicaid work requirement in Nebraska -- the first state to implement it -- you can call the helpline between 8 am and 5 pm. Hopefully, you have a job that gives you the flexibility to call during the workday.
it is clear the conservative bloc on the supreme court is more comfortable with the country of the 1880s and 1890s: a country hostile to anyone who is not a white man, an administrative state *dependent upon* corruption to operate, and complete deference to industrialists.
5-4 for what it explicitly says in the constitution is incredible. They were this close to undoing the civil war entirely. bsky.app/profile/mjsd...
Mark Joseph Stern@mjsdc.bsky.social · last mo.The Supreme Court strikes down Trump's attack on birthright citizenship. By a 5–4 vote, it holds that the 14th Amendment guarantees citizenship to children born of unauthorized and temporary immigrants. Roberts and Barrett join the three liberals. www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25p...
2 more thoughts on birthright: 1. The movement to overturn Roe and Humphrey's Executor was built over decades. It took an enormous amount of effort to manufacture that sense of scholarly viability (see: Teles, Hollis-Brusky). The right got 5-4 on birthright with a sloppy last-minute scramble
the slaughter scotus decision basically imperils any ai governance policy proposal that would rely upon multi-member, independent commissioners to do technical licensing calls.
The new racist double standard set up by Alito in the TPS ruling: if there’s any other motive in addition to the racism, the racism doesn’t count, but if the state wants to *prevent* discrimination against black people, that is racist and unconstitutional www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
if you're interested in how regulatory design shapes corporations' actions, processes, and policies to mitigate the material harms of AI systems, fair lending in the US offers decades of overlooked lessons. check out our new FAccT paper ⬇️ dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/...
The Fair Lending Model: How the Longest-Running Algorithmic Fairness Programs Work in Practice | Proceedings of the 2026 ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency
dl.acm.org