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At the same time, even some titans of technology have been sounding alarms. Prominent engineers and designers have increasingly spoken out about shielding chil- dren from the habit-forming tech products they helped create.
And then there’s Microsoft President Brad Smith, who in December called for regu- lating facial recognition technology so that the “year 2024 doesn’t look like a page” from George Orwell’s “1984.”
In a blog post and a Washington speech, Smith painted a bleak vision of all-seeing government surveillance systems forcing dis- sidents to hide in darkened rooms “to tap in code with hand signals on each other’s arms.”
To avoid such an Orwellian scenario, Smith advocates regulating technology so that anyone about to subject themselves to surveillance is properly notified. But privacy
advocates argue that’s not enough.
Such debates are already happening in
states like Illinois, where a strict facial recog- nition law has faced tech industry challenges, and California, which in 2018 passed the na- tion’s most far-reaching law to give consum- ers more control over their personal data. It takes effect in 2020.
The issue could find new attention in Con- gress next year as more Republicans warm up to the idea of basic online privacy regula- tions and the incoming Democratic House majority takes a more skeptical approach to tech firms that many liberal politicians once viewed as allies — and prolific campaign donors.
The “leave them alone” approach of the early internet era won’t work anymore, said Rep. David Cicilline, a Rhode Island Dem- ocrat poised to take the helm of the House’s
antitrust subcommittee.
“We’re seeing now some of the conse-
quences of the abuses that can occur in these platforms if they remain unregulated without meaningful oversight or enforcement,” Cicilline said.
Too much regulation may bring its own undesirable side effects, Cerf warned.
“It’s funny in a way because this online environment was supposed to remove fric- tion from our ability to transact,” he said. “If in our desire, if not zeal, to protect people’s privacy we throw sand in the gears of ev- erything, we may end up with a very secure system that doesn’t work very well.”
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AP Technology Writer Michael Liedtke in San Jose, California, contributed to this report.
New year, higher pay: 2019 changes affecting small business
By JOYCE M. ROSENBERG, AP Busi- ness Writer
NEW YORK (AP) — Many small busi- nesses will see their labor costs increase in 2019.
Seventeen states are raising their mini- mum wages Jan. 1, and a number of others will follow suit later in the year. Some of the increases were scheduled by legislation passed in the last few years. Others are in response to the rising inflation rate. The minimum is also going up in some major cities, among them Oakland and other California cities.
Many owners with minimum-wage workers also give raises to their other em- ployees when there is a government-man- dated increase. Bosses need to avert any resentment that could arise when some staffers get a bump-up and others don’t.
Pay is also expected to be rising, possibly later in the year, for some salaried workers. The Labor Department is expected to issue early in 2019 its regulations on which em- ployees must be paid overtime, and which are exempt. The Trump administration is rewriting rules written during the Obama administration that would have doubled the pay threshold at which workers would
be exempt from overtime, to $47,476 from $23,660. An estimated 4.2 million people would have been able to begin earning OT under the rules. The new rules are expect- ed to raise the threshold — the question still is, by how much?
The overtime rules are most likely to affect workers with jobs like shift super- visor or assistant manager at restaurants and retailers or manufacturing companies. Many owners have already thought about how to protect their margins from a surge in labor costs. Some have said they plan to give affected staffers raises that would put
them above the Labor Department thresh- old. Others have said they will pay these staffers hourly but limit how many hours a day or week they work.
MILEAGE RATES GOING UP
The IRS has raised its standard mileage rate for deducting the cost of using a car for business during 2019; it will be 58 cents per mile, up 3.5 cents from 2018. The stan- dard mileage rate is one of two methods for owners to account for how much they spend when they use a car for business; the second is based on actual expenses. Under that method an owner must calculate the percentage of miles the car is driven for business, and apply that percentage to expenses like lease payments, fuel, mainte- nance, repairs, insurance and depreciation.
Under the new tax law, employees can- not claim a deduction for the use of their own cars on behalf of their companies.
For more small business news, insights and inspiration, sign up for our free weekly newsletter here: http://discover.ap.org/ssb
Follow Joyce Rosenberg at www.twitter. com/JoyceMRosenberg . Her work can be found here: https://apnews.com/search/ joyce%20rosenberg
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