US Lawmakers Call for Privacy Legislation After Reuters Report on Amazon Lobbying

Five members of Congress called for federal consumer-privacy legislation after a Reuters report published Friday revealed how Amazon has led an under-the-radar campaign to gut privacy protections in 25 states while amassing a valuable trove of personal data on American consumers. From a report: "Amazon shamefully launched a campaign to squash privacy legislation while its devices listen to and watch our lives," U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, a Connecticut Democrat who has been involved in bipartisan negotiations on privacy legislation, wrote Friday on Twitter. "This is now the classic Big Tech move: deploy money and armies of lobbyists to fight meaningful reforms in the shadows but claim to support them publicly."

The revelations underscored the need for bipartisan action on stronger privacy protections, he wrote. No major federal privacy legislation has passed Congress in years because members have been deadlocked on the issue. U.S. Senator Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat who has introduced several privacy bills in recent years, said in a statement that the Reuters story showed how companies including Amazon are "spending millions to weaken state laws," and hoping Congress will also water down federal legislation "until it's worthless."

The gov't doesn't like competition

[Virtucon]

I find it hypocritical that the US gov't being the information vacuum device that it is would have representatives calling for privacy legislation. Maybe if we got rid of the FISA courts, the USCBP (DHS) confiscating electronic devices at border entries, the NSA doing wholesale electronic surveillance on everything, and the IRS via Yellen trying to track every dollar in cash that you spend for a start?!?!?

Let's not forget the DOJ and FBI used the FISA courts to obtain warrants and the basis was a political scam-funded dossier that was 100% bogus.

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[DarkRookie2]

Nah. They are just mad they aren't first anymore.
They have been real jealous of all the big tech companies ever since they were able to make walled garden phones that people just accepted and want more of.

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[shanen]

Interesting FP branch, but I think y'all are reversing cause and effect. Big companies WANT big government. Concentrated source of profit. Or the biggest teat to suck, if you prefer that terminology. (Also, many of the too-big-to-fail fakers NEED that government socialism for the saving throws after their all-too-frequent fatal blunders (always driven by boundless greed). (Amazon is not yet in this parenthesis, as far as I know, but I'm sure Bezos wants to get there. (Perhaps indirectly via AWS or his rocke

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[mjtaylor24601]

Saying that you want "smaller companies" is all well and good, but as is usually the case the devil is in the details.

• How do you measure company size? Gross revenue? Net revenue? Total market cap? Number of employees? No matter which one(s) you pick there are lots of ways for companies to game the numbers
• How big is too big? Is the same threshold used for every industry / kind of company. It seems unrealistic to hold an oil company and a plumbing company to the same standard. But if you try to use d

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[Otis B. Dilroy III]

There is an easy and effective way to measure the size of a company. The number of lobbyists they employ.

I don't care if a company has 5 employees. If all 5 are lobbyists, bye bye.

Especially if that company's main business is lobbying.

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[mjtaylor24601]

And you think it's reasonable that Northrop Grumman employs the same number of lobbyist as a Mom & Pop grocery store? What do you do if a company outsources their lobbying to a third party company or changes the job title to "government liaison"?

Again, easy to say at a high level. Hard to implement in practice.

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[shanen]

Interesting branch, though y'all are skipping "pro-freedom". To me freedom is about choice. Rational, non-manipulated, and, dare I say, informed choice. (The polar opposites of what Amazon seeks.) Therefore to me the critical metric for "too big" is the loss of freedom when a company (like Amazon) destroys the other choices.

As I fantasize it, the tax rate for market domination would become so high that the natural path to higher retained earnings would be to divide the dominant company into smaller competin

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[Otis B. Dilroy III]

I was mainly being facetious, but I must point out that every state in the union has some sort of registration requirement for lobbyists. Most require that lobbyists disclose who they are representing. Most lobbyists do not work for the companies they represent, they work for legal firms hired by corps. Either way, the information on whom they represent is generally going to be available.

Also, if "Northrop Grumman employs the same number of lobbyist as a Mom & Pop grocery" the country would lik

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[Ostracus]

Ah, but business is doing it to get our money. What is government doing it for? Plus, so far none of the government has electronic listening devices in every American household. Businesses darn near.

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[Virtucon]

I don't care what flag the feds are draping themselves in this month to surveil us, they need to stop and these tech companies need to follow suit. I'm for priavcy legislation but that'll get Google, Facebook and Twitter in a tizzy because that's how they're making the big money, on your data. The thing with Amazon and Alexa is no different than Bixby (Samsung) or Siri on Apple. Having open microphones in your home or on your person isn't smart if you value your privacy. If you'd rather tell Alexa to turn o

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[nomadic]

"a political scam-funded dossier that was 100% bogus"

Utterly false. It was raw intelligence, so some things were likely to end up uncorroborated. But there was plenty in there that was accurate.

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[Virtucon]

keep up. [nytimes.com]

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[nomadic]

Oooh, Trump-appointed hatchet man indicts someone, shocking.

And from your own article:
Most of the important claims in the dossier — a series of reports written by Mr. Danchenko’s employer, Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent — have not been proven, and some have been refuted, including by Mr. Mueller. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Danchenko several times in 2017 when they were seeking to run down the claims.

Hmm

[DarkRookie2]

The history shows that Amazon will just pay them off.
Maybe that the point of the announcement?

Sound and Fury, Signifying Nothing

[GlennC]

This is just "Team Red" and "Team Blue" bickering in public about things their employer ordered them to do together.

Re: Privacy is very important

[IdanceNmyCar]

He signs them and sends them to his fan club because you all want to fuck him so badly.

How to get away with bribery....

[Reiyuki]

...just call it 'lobbying'.

Or maybe it's lobbying generally...

[argStyopa]

...and that fact that congressional members are APPARENTLY whores who do literally whatever anyone tells them to do that shows up with a big enough box of cash? ....No, no, I'm sure it's Amazon that's at fault here.

What a joke when

[oldgraybeard]

these lawmakers and their extended family and friend networks are the ones raking in the millions from these corps and the rich.
Everyone acts like they have no idea who is getting the money.
The criminal cartel model for influence peddling is deeply entrenched in government.

Yea who pays gets to write the rules.

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[ayesnymous]

You mean embarrassing stuff they bought on Amazon?

Next steps

[endus]

What will happen now is that Google will lobby in favor of the law, which their lobbyists will then write on behalf of representatives who don't even read it before voting for it. The law will allow them to continue doing what they're doing and expand while creating bigger barriers to entry for small companies trying to build a business.

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[schwit1]

This is what Amazon did in Virginia. The recent passed privacy legislation has no teeth, it doesn't give individuals private right of action. Only the state's AG can sue Amazon or other offenders. It was written BY Amazon FOR Amazon.

Legalized bribery is a problem ?

[sir_smashalot_3rd]

Who would have expected that allowing politicians to receive money from companies in order to create legislation that is opposed to the interests of voters would be a problem ?