What unites Republicans and Democrats? An unlikely duo of Washington state politicians teamed up in the name of data privacy.
“This bill would give Americans the right to control their personal information online by establishing uniform data privacy rights across the country,” Republican Representative Cathy McMorris Rodgers told Soundside. ” he said. “This gives Americans real control over where their information goes, who can sell it, and allows individuals to enforce their data privacy rights. It reigns supreme in the tech world.”
Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell has teamed up with Rep. McMorris Rogers to author a new law aimed at protecting personal data on the Internet: the American Privacy Rights Act.
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This legislation would establish data privacy laws at the national level, rather than the state-by-state legislation currently in place. Among its many features, it allows online users to opt out of targeted advertising, as well as correct, delete, and export information collected by the platform. It would also open the door for people to sue businesses for violating the bill.
McMorris Rodgers proposed a similar bill in 2022 that garnered bipartisan support, but Cantwell was not among its sponsors. The bill failed. Cantwell is also participating this time.
“AI is really here,” Cantwell said. “Large amounts of data will be removed from the internet for all kinds of reasons. We hope it’s for good reasons, like finding solutions around healthcare or making your business more competitive…but… We also know that malicious actors can use our personal information for bad things, such as online redlining and prejudice against us.In the places we visit. Or if someone buys it for insurance purposes and charges us a higher rate.”
It has been reported that insurance companies are already beginning to purchase personal driving data.
Senator Cantwell said he has spent years discussing data privacy issues and how best to approach them with Representative McMorris Rogers.
“We really just want to stop the bad actors, we want to denounce what we think is bad behavior, and we want someone to help us police it,” Cantwell said. “Enacting a law that says consumers' information must be protected is a very good basic law for the information age.”
Many U.S. technology companies have already developed privacy standards to accommodate this law, but the United States simply doesn't use them. Law professor Alex Alben said the companies developed their policies in response to data privacy laws passed in the European Union several years ago. California's privacy laws have a similar effect.
“People should understand that the United States is behind the curve when it comes to protecting privacy,” Alben said. “We are not only behind the rest of the world, but also behind other neighboring countries.”
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Alben served as the first Chief Privacy Officer for the State of Washington (2015-2019). He currently teaches cybersecurity at the University of Washington School of Law and his UCLA School of Law. He said he believes companies should be asking people to opt in to data sharing, not opting out of automatic sharing.
However, the new bill would maintain the status quo of a flood of pop-up screens asking you to opt out of “cookies” that collect data.
But first, Alben points out, the bill needs to actually become law.
“I think the real test is whether we can get it to a floor vote,” Alben said, adding that is not the case with the 2022 bill.
Alben is skeptical that the bill will get a vote in the House or Senate, but believes it should.
“We all care about our data and we all care about not being monitored by corporations or governments. So fundamentally, privacy seems to be a basic protection that both Republicans and Democrats can support. is.”
Click on the audio at the top of this article to hear the full conversation between Senator Cantwell, Congressman McMorris Rodgers, and Alben.