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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.
Like the Bay Area billionaire owners of the Democratic party would allow any of that.
Nah. The key line is “Under Rubio's legislation, any national regulations would preempt state laws -- even if the state's are more strict.” That eliminates the need to buy state legislatures; all you have to buy is Congress and get them to draft some watered down laws.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Don't they know that mass data collection is for the FBI, CSI, NSA, IRS, DHS, DMV, Customs and Border Protection, Department of State, Department of Defense, National Counterterrorism Center and any local police departments that care to get in on the party?
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.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
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.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
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.
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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.
He should have named it the American Data Security Act, otherwise known as the ADS Act.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
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.
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.