Democrats Draft an 'Internet Bill of Rights' To Regulate Big Tech (geekwire.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from GeekWire: Democrats in the House of Representatives are promising to push for federal regulation of tech companies if they retake the House in November. Rep. Ro Khanna, who represents Silicon Valley, has drafted an Internet Bill of Rights and shared it with influential tech journalist Kara Swisher. It includes liberties like the right to access and transport personal data collected about you, an opt-in framework for data collection, and net neutrality protections. Rep. Nancy Pelosi charged Khanna with drafting the principles, according to an essay by Swisher published in the New York Times.

The list includes the right to obtain, correct, or delete personal data "where context appropriate and with a fair process." That's not nearly as sweeping as the "right to be forgotten" included in Europe's landmark General Data Protection Regulation, which took effect earlier this year. The Bill of Rights would also require companies that collect personal data to notify users of breaches in "a timely manner" and mandate "reasonable business practices and accountability to protect your privacy." Swisher calls it "an admirable list" but is concerned that codifying the principles "will be like pushing back the ocean." Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.

Comments

Free speech

[jez9999]

I don't see anything there about requiring free speech on major platforms that form the de facto public space today. The Democrats not enforcing free speech. I wonder why that might be?

Yes and no

[rsilvergun]

the employees goals aren't necessarily aligned with management, and a highly educated workforce generally knows this. That's why CA is in general more liberal. They don't trust their management.

At the end of the day the only thing big enough to stand up to a Mega corp is a central government. Yeah, it's a risk, but without organization we just get picked off by robber barons.

If they retake the House...

[GlennC]

This tells me that this is a typical campaign promise which will be quickly forgotten once the D's and R's have maintained their duopoly. Can't have any of them outsiders messing things up now, can we?

if you can't ...

[Anne Thwacks]

Many big tech companies have business models built entirely on collecting as much user data as possible.

Many criminals have build a career of committing crime. If caught they are expected to be punished. Companies should expect the same - and the punishment should be served by the directors.

Baby steps

[holophrastic]

(I'm a small web developer, self employed for 25 years and counting, and obviously a general web consumer. )

I think there's a much simpler way to start this mayhem.

I'd be happy with two buttons:

1. show me everything you have on me, one big single-web-page human-readable/printable/migratable dump of information.

2. delete it all. please and thank you.

I think everything else can either be added much later, or will work itself out with market forces. Today, the trouble is that people don't know what's known about them, and can't do anything about it anyway. These two buttons solve the problem.

And with #2 being so readily available, you'd see just how quickly big companies apologize and make-things-right in the hopes of not losing huge swaths of their user data.

Compared to the GDPR (which is phenominal, but also a phenominally big step to take all at once), the above two are relatively easy for almost any company to implement.

(N.B. if you've read the GDPR thoroughly, and I mean the actual document, my #2 is the short-circuit way out of about 95% of the technical requirements that the GDPR puts on businesses.)