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.

Comments

Yeah, right

[melted]

Like the Bay Area billionaire owners of the Democratic party would allow any of that.

Re:Yeah, right

[pushing-robot]

Funny you mention California, since the state recently passed a sweeping data privacy law which is scheduled to come into effect at the end of the year.

This bill seems to be a reaction to that, though it remains to be seen if the bill is meant to extend such state laws nationwide, or gut them.

And I'm curious as to the constitutionality of 'preempting' state consumer protection laws.

Seems like an end run around states.

[Gravis Zero]

Under Rubio's legislation, any national regulations would preempt state laws -- even if the state's are more strict.

I seems like this is really just a way to prevent states from creating strict privacy laws and moor any possible advancements in partisanship.

I don't trust him

[rsilvergun]

This is the same guy that called the bribes he takes buying into his agenda.

Like TFS suggests this is most likely just to preempt stronger protections from the states, particularly California. We've been relying on CA to protect the rest of the country from this kind of bullshit by passing laws that end up affecting the other states. Don't think the folks in Congress and their donors haven't noticed that.

The solution is and always will be to stop voting for people like Rubio who take corporate PAC money. I keep on saying this but the Dems have a wing of the party that does just that. I know of no such animal on the GOP side but I'm happy to be proven wrong. In the meantime you can't serve two masters. If your politician accepts corporate PAC money they're not _your_ politician. They belong to the donors who bankrolled their campaign. Full Stop.

Re: I don't trust him

[astrofurter]

I don't trust Rubio one little bit. But I don't trust the Just-Us Democrats one bit more. Whenever so-called Progressives talk about "justice" it's code for fucking over the "deplorable redneck" working class.

Those Just-Us Democrats who care more about economic issues facing working people, and less about promoting racism and feminazism while disarming the masses, should drop that ugly Just-Us label. Maybe they could call themselves Roosevelt Democrats. Like many many people I would have voted for FDR - so I might be interested in what a Roosevelt Democrat has to say.

Corporate Payola

[sdinfoserv]

The key sentence "under Rubio's legislation, any national regulations would preempt state laws -- even if the state's are more strict."
This proposed legislation is nothing than a veiled attempt to eviscerate State and local privacy laws.

Kinda necessary. 50 different conflicting rules

[raymorris]

Unless you're going to have separate companies for each state, you kinda need a uniform set of rules for the country. That's what the EU has done with GDPR. Even with the uniform Privacy Directive providing uniform principles to be applied in each country, they found that wasn't sufficient; a uniform rule was needed across Europe.

There is plenty to debate about what the rules should *be*. There's no doubt that having 50 different conflicting sets of rules would be a mess. One state would require records be preserved for inspection by authorities, while another would require that data be deleted after it's no longer actively used, and it would be impossible to comply with both.

Re: Kinda necessary. 50 different conflicting rule

[AmiMoJo]

It would make it difficult for you to buy services from other states, bugger up interstate commerce. You would find companies saying "sorry, we don't ship to / provide services to your state".