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Marco Rubio Introduces Privacy Bill To Create Federal Regulations On Data Collection (fortune.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Fortune: Senator Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) introduced a bill Wednesday aimed at creating federal standards of privacy protection for major internet companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google. The bill, titled the American Data Dissemination Act, requires the Federal Trade Commission to make suggestions for regulation based on the Privacy Act of 1974. Congress would then have to pass legislation within two years, or the FTC will gain the power to write the rules itself (under current laws, the FTC can only enforce existing rules). While Rubio's bill is intended to reign in the data collection and dissemination of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix, it also requires any final legislation to protect small businesses from being stifled by new rules. The caveat comes when one considers states' rights to create their own privacy laws. Under Rubio's legislation, any national regulations would preempt state laws -- even if the state's are more strict. "While we may have disagreements on the best path forward, no one believes a privacy law that only bolsters the largest companies with the resources to comply and stifles our start-up marketplace is the right approach," Rubio wrote in an op-ed for The Hill, announcing his bill.
Keep in mind that the lawmakers (super majority Democrats) in California did not want a privacy bill, or more specifically the money behind the lawmakers didn't want such a bill. However they were forced to act because a ballot initiative was poised to make a stricter law and the polling numbers showed it would pass overwhelmingly
"The so-called California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 (AB 375) was introduced late last week by state assemblymember Ed Chau and state senator Robert Hertzberg, in a rush to defeat a stricter privacy-focused ballot initiative that had garnered more than 600,000 signatures from Californians. The group behind that initiative, Californians for Consumer Privacy, said it would withdraw it if the bill passed." - Wired magazine
And of course the one thing that is bi-partisan are lobbyist dollars, so this privacy bill passed unanimously both Dems and GOP.
Likewise last year when there was a proposal for a Net Neutrality bill for the state, the Democratic led committee tried to quietly quash it, led by the telecom-funded committee members. Only after the dirty trick was made very, very public did it go through. I expect the State Senator who made the fuss will need to be watching his political back for some years to come.
As many have said in /. be wary of being a party-first sort of voter.
Also ISPs. Remember that Rubio cosponsored the resolution to strip away privacy protections which limited ISPs from spying on you and selling your data. And he did so with the excuse that these protections were "unfair" since the they didn't apply to other unrelated tech companies like Google / Facebook / Apple, etc.
Now here he is introducing "privacy protections" (never mind that this actually reduces your effective privacy, since it stops states from introducing real protections) which would limit only Google / Facebook / Apple, etc. and would not apply to ISPs.