FIREWALL
Protecting Your Rights
In An AI World
AI data centers are in the headlines, but corporations, police, and health insurance companies are already using algorithms and AI technology to shape your life. We can’t turn back the clock on computer science, but we can pass the laws all of us need to protect our civil and consumer rights in the face of advanced technology.
Introducing FIREWALL, Francesca Hong’s package to protect your rights in a world of AI and machine learning.
People who want to violate your privacy and erode your rights move quickly and break things. We need to move faster, and more strategically, to address these tools before they become even bigger problems for more of us. This means getting AI out of your wallet, protecting your data privacy, ending social media manipulation, and holding law enforcement to a higher standard.
This package complements CONTROL-ALT-DELETE, Fran’s policies around data centers and utility costs, and LABOR SHIFT, Fran’s blueprint for workers’ rights under AI. FIREWALL is the next keystroke in the plan to keep you, your friends, and your family safe in the 21st century.
Remove from cart: Getting AI Out Of Your wallet
End Personalized “Desperation” Pricing
Companies use AI to engage in “surveillance pricing”—using personal data such as browsing history, location, demographics, and purchase history to charge different prices to different people. This means airlines jack up airfares if they know you’re traveling to a funeral. Grocery delivery apps are already charging some shoppers up to 23% more for the same items at the same store at the same time—an exploit that Consumer Reports estimated costs a typical family $1,200 a year.
When companies have access to your personal data, they know everything about you, but you have no idea you’re being targeted. Earlier this year, Maryland enacted the Protection from Predatory Pricing Act to ban surveillance pricing at grocery stores. Fran will do the same thing across all sectors of Wisconsin’s economy.
End Algorithmic Collusion on Rents
The 2025 federal antitrust case against RealPage brought attention to the practice of “algorithmic collusion.” By using real-time, confidential data from multiple landlords, RealPage allegedly helped them raise rents in a tight housing market.
But because the case was settled, the underlying practice remains unresolved and another company could come along and do the exact same thing. Fran believes we need to ban this practice permanently.
End Algorithmic Healthcare Claim Denials
When health insurance companies use AI to deny claims, patients get left holding the bag. If health insurance companies want to use AI to expedite approving prior authorizations or collect documents to review claims faster, that’s great. But humans must be the ones making any decisions to deny prior authorizations or claims.
Under FIREWALL, a human must independently justify and document any claim denial. That human must take accountability for their decision, so they can justify their work in an appeal–a process Fran has pledged to support and expedite.
Incognito Mode: AI & Privacy
Expand Privacy Protections to All Healthcare Data
Many people don’t realize that HIPAA only protects healthcare data that is managed by “covered entities” like hospitals and clinics. If you upload your medical records to ChatGPT or Claude, or use a wearable like Apple Watches, your data is not protected by the law.
Fran will close this loophole. If a tech company has personal healthcare data, it needs to be protected like HIPAA data, regardless of who generated it or who gained access to it.
Battle Bots: AI, Social Media, and Scams
Identify AI-Generated Content
Generative AI, like ChatGPT, is really good at creating images, videos, and audio that are difficult to distinguish from reality—leading to problems like scams, disinformation, and interpersonal abuse. We can tackle these problems at their common source: people should be able to easily identify deepfakes.
Under FIREWALL, Fran will require that disclaimers are clearly embedded in images and videos or audibly spoken throughout audio. This meaningfully raises the cost and effort of misuse, removes any plausible-deniability defense, and makes the problem immediately visible to ordinary viewers rather than dependent on content detection tools.
Distinguish Chatbots From Real People
We don’t need chatbots to be our friends, but chatbots and companion apps prey on users’ emotions. Computers aren’t equipped to handle emergency situations, and real harm can happen when people, especially children, don’t realize or remember that they’re interacting with just a computer.
Fran will pass rules requiring AI companies to make their companion chatbots:
- remind their users that they are AI, not human,
- identify suicidal ideation and redirect users to a crisis hotline, and
- stop encouraging continued use with subliminal techniques such as intermittent rewards or emotional manipulation.
Prime Directive: AI & Law Enforcement
STOP POLICE SURVEILLANCE ABUSE
Every few weeks, it seems, another police officer gets caught using an AI surveillance system to spy on an ex-girlfriend or abortion patient. Some uses of AI are dangerous encroachments on our civil rights. Fran supports a ban on the highest-risk AI tools available to law enforcement:
- live facial recognition in public spaces,
- individual-level risk scoring for pretrial detention and sentencing,
- AI-powered camera tools like Flock, and
- social media surveillance services.
DEMAND A HIGHER STANDARD FOR AI IN LAW ENFORCEMENT
Most AI technology today is developed by the private sector, which makes decisions and tradeoffs about security, stability, and safety. But the stakes are higher in criminal justice, so the standards must be too.
Fran insists that any algorithm-based or AI system used in policing should be open-source, independently audited, and not controlled by a private vendor with a financial interest in its continued use. Every use of AI in an investigation or prosecution must be disclosed to the defendant, and they must be provided with full technical details sufficient to mount a challenge. Trade secret protections will explicitly not apply to shield AI systems used in criminal proceedings.
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By submitting this form, you consent to receive donation asks, voter contact, and informational emails from Francesca Hong. Email frequency varies. You may unsubscribe at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in any email. Privacy Policy & Terms.