87th Texas Legislative Session Roundup

NOTE - THIS MEETUP IS VIRTUAL AND WILL BE CONDUCTED ONLINE WITH EFF-AUSTIN'S ZOOM ACCOUNT. To join the meetup, RSVP to this event, and then click the link that you will be shown upon RSVPing. The meeting room passcode is 573615. Also, please note that due to the increasing popularity of these virtual meetings increasing the likelihood of Zoom-bombing, we have been forced to institute tighter permissions and security around meeting attendees. Going forward, guests will not be able to share their screen, unmute themselves, or message anyone besides the host(s) in the chat without permission from the meetup organizers. When we are in the Q&A portion of the presentation, guests can raise their hands and will be granted said permissions.

Our speaker this month is David Hensley. Born and raised in Austin, David is a local Legal Analyst, Researcher and Writer, with a love for philosophy, comics and various other literatures. While growing and developing with the information age, he found great intrigue in the rising hacktivist movements of the early 2000's into today and was personally moved by the publication and issues behind the Collateral Murder Videos. Such Travesty has inspired him to research and the dissemination of information.

David is going to be doing a roundup of several bills that passed during the 87th regular session of the Texas Legislature that touch upon the domains of technology, surveillance, personally identifying information and data, and digital civil liberties. Some of the bills that will be touched on include:

HB 129 - Relating to digital citizenship instruction in public schools

SB 112 - Relating to the procedures for the installation and use of tracking equipment and for access to certain communications and location information by law enforcement and the admissibility of certain evidence obtained through those procedures

HB 1194 -
Relating to requiring a school district or open-enrollment charter school to report data regarding certain disciplinary or law enforcement actions taken against students

HB 273 -
Relating to the establishment of a pilot program for the issuance of digital identification

SB 475 -
Relating to state agency and local government information management and security, including establishment of the state risk and authorization management program and the Texas volunteer incident response team; authorizing fees

Join us to learn what has recently become law in Texas, with an eye towards future necessary reforms in the next legislative session.

From our friends at Make Every Media: Make Every Media's Virtual Media Lounge is opening its digital doors to EFF-Austin for a post-meetup virtual pub happy hour! Decidedly NOT zoom, this spatial video conferencing platform is the closest thing we've found so far to simulating an in-person kind of presence without a VR headset. With the freedom of four glorious directions of movement, you can leave and join conversations at will, grab a private table for two, play an interactive party game, search for old-school 8-bit rpg easter eggs, and more! This lounge is best experienced in a Chrome Browser on your computer. Visit https://MakeEveryMedia.com/MediaLounge the day of the event to get your day-link, and see you after the talk :)

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