What Brazil can teach CA when it comes to children and technology

Compared to the rest of the country, California is a pioneer in regulating potentially harmful uses of technology.

But how does it compare to the rest world?

It’s a question we’re increasingly interested in at CalMatters—and this we try to answer today, with a wide-angle view how laws protecting children online have developed in California and how they compare not only to what has come out of the US Congress, but also to a package of laws that has emerged in Brazil.

We reported this story in partnership with Agência Pública, Brazil’s first non-governmental investigative newsroom. Pública’s María Marta Bruno works with CalMatters’ Colin Letcher to show how California’s laws stack up against ECA Digital, a sweeping children’s privacy law passed this year in the face of tech industry lobbying.

One California policy could be ripe for theft, according to an expert: Detailed parental controls on content’s social media features that allow restrictions on several different types of activity, such as autoplay and messaging.

But the bigger lesson for the state is perhaps what no according to some observers: Bowing to the influence of the technology industry.

• Ed Howardfrom the University of San Diego, to CalMatters: “Our system is uniquely vulnerable to the power of this money.”

That influence will be tested later this year as the Legislature and governor consider the fate of bills to further protect children’s use of chatbots and keep them away from addictive social media feeds.

Read more.

California college professors navigate carefully how to teach students about Cesar Chavez following allegations of sexual assault by labor rights leader, writes CalMatters’ Khadeejah Khan College Journalism Network.

In March, the New York Times published bomb investigation which revealed that Chavez raped and sexually abused women and girls who were part of the United Farm Workers. California colleges quickly removed his name from campus memorials, statues and student centers.

Alina Mendez, professor of Chicano and Latin American studies at Fresno State, is changing her approach to focus more on local leaders and the stories of farmworker movements. She and her students agreed that they should still learn about Chavez while holding him accountable.

• Mendes: “There’s this collective grief … of, ‘If Cesar Chavez is no longer our hero, then who do we emulate?’ That is why I insisted (we) look to our local communities. Let’s look around us and see other people who sacrificed a lot of time, a lot of resources, a lot of sweat to make these successes possible.”

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Federal agents used racial slurs — including “wet” and “tone” — to identify people to target while doing background checks in Los Angeles, CalMatters’ Sergio Olmos and Wendy Fry report.

On Monday, the American Civil Liberties Union cited that language in its ongoing lawsuit over last year’s raids, alleging that agents acted outside the law by racially profiling Hispanics when making arrests “without suspicion or discrimination.”

The document includes body camera footage and orders from agents. In the text messages, the agents described the people as “tonks,” a derogatory term used by Border Patrol agents reportedly derived from the sound a heavy object, such as a flashlight, makes on a migrant’s skull.

The documents show new evidence that undermines the administration’s argument before the U.S. Supreme Court that agents relied on specific intelligence about individuals instead of race when deciding who to stop, according to the plaintiffs’ legal team.

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A new state Supreme Court ruling upholds limits on how much cashed vacation time state employees can count toward their pensions. Read more by Adam Ashton of CalMatter.