A few provisions of the proposed Online Privacy Act might do some good.

Of the provisions described there, the two that would restrict what companies can do are:

• Creating User Rights – The bill grants every American the right to access, correct, or delete their data. It also creates new rights, like the right to impermanence, which lets users decide how long companies can keep their data.
• Placing Clear Obligations on Companies – The bill minimizes the amount of data companies collect, process, disclose, and maintain, and bars companies from using data in discriminatory ways. Additionally, companies must receive consent from users in plain, simple language.

The right to "access, correct or delete" your data won't do much good if you can't tell what conclusions the system draws from the raw data. The sheer volume of data will defeat attempts by users to look for errors in it.

Requiring consent will have little effect. Companies will simply say. "No consent, no service." The site that the user sees will ask for consent on behalf of the data-accumulating companies they use, such as Google, or give personal data to, such as Sift.

Limiting what data companies could collect or hold might do some good. How much good would depend on details.

If passed, this bill might curb some abuses, but it won't make us safe from surveillance.

Israel keeps on seizing Palestinian land in the West Bank, a little at a time.

1000 dunams amount to one square kilometer — a tiny fraction of the West Bank. But one square kilometer now, and another in a few weeks, adds up across the years to lots of land.

Israel has arrested Palestinian elected official Khalida Jarrar. She may be arbitrarily imprisoned again.

The CEO of Boeing was personally and directly responsible for the careless approach that led to the two fatal crashes of 737 Max aircraft.

The deregulationism that the FAA practiced was also directly responsible, and some high official that approved the deregulation should resign for that.

With systems designed for reliability, a disaster typically happens because several things go wrong together. Thus, it is normal that different people are responsible for different layers of unpreparedness.

Shutterstock censors image searches coming from China.

I think the root of this danger is the existence of large multinational companies for which exclusion from the Chinese market is so terrible that they will comply with whatever China demands. It is exacerbated by allowing the company to know which country a customer is in.