US Senators Introduce ‘Privacy Bill of Rights’ in Wake of Facebook Data-Harvesting Scandal
Two US senators have introduced a bill that seeks to establish a “privacy bill of rights” for American consumers and prohibit social media platforms and other websites from sharing or selling personal data without explicit user consent.
The Customer Online Notification for Stopping Edge-provider Network Transgressions (CONSENT) Act, sponsored by Senators Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), mandates that the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) establish and maintain privacy protections for customers of “edge providers” like Facebook and Google.
“America deserves a privacy bill of rights that puts consumers, not corporations, in control of their personal, sensitive information,” said Sen. Markey in a statement. “The avalanche of privacy violations by Facebook and other online companies has reached a critical threshold, and we need legislation that makes consent the law of the land.”
Specifically, the CONSENT Act would force edge providers to “obtain opt-in consent from a customer to use, share, or sell the sensitive proprietary information of the customer,” and they would not be allowed to bar users from services for refusing to agree to the opt-in provisions.
Protected data would include a broad swath of content, including personal information, information about family members, health information, Social Security numbers and financial information, geolocation data, communications data and call details, browsing and application usage history, and any other personal information the FTC classifies as sensitive.
Additionally, providers would be required to inform users about any collection, use, or sharing of their personal information.
The timing of the bill’s introduction — April 10 — was scheduled to correlate with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s Capitol Hill testimony on the social media conglomerate’s numerous abuses of user privacy, the latest of which being that it shared the private data of 87 million Facebook users with a political consulting firm.
“Our privacy bill of rights is built on a simple philosophy that will return autonomy to consumers: affirmative informed consent,” said Sen. Blumenthal. “Consumers deserve the opportunity to opt in to services that might mine and sell their data – not to find out their personal information has been exploited years later.”
As Ars Technica notes, the CONSENT Act in its present form would place stricter rules on edge providers than those to which internet service providers (ISPs) themselves must submit currently submit. Lawmakers have previously proposed placing similar opt-in requirements on ISPs, but industry lobby groups have resisted their passage.
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