Online Privacy Bill Clears Early Hurdle in House (wsj.com) 33
Bipartisan legislation to establish broad privacy rights for consumers won approval from a House subcommittee on Thursday, adding to its momentum. From a report: Lawmakers approved the bill, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, on a voice vote with no dissent. It now moves to the full Energy and Commerce Committee for a vote. The bill still faces a long and potentially difficult path, particularly in the Senate. Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.), the committee chairman and a sponsor of the bill, termed it "a massive step forward."
"Every American knows it is long past time for Congress to protect their data privacy and security," he said. "The modern world demands it." Republicans also praised the legislation, while suggesting more changes might be needed. "This bill protects all Americans, regardless of ZIP Code, and provides certainty for businesses so they clearly understand their obligations," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), the committee's top Republican. She said the legislation also would strengthen national security by requiring companies such as TikTok -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance -- to specify when they are transferring and storing consumers' data in countries such as China.
"Every American knows it is long past time for Congress to protect their data privacy and security," he said. "The modern world demands it." Republicans also praised the legislation, while suggesting more changes might be needed. "This bill protects all Americans, regardless of ZIP Code, and provides certainty for businesses so they clearly understand their obligations," said Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R., Wash.), the committee's top Republican. She said the legislation also would strengthen national security by requiring companies such as TikTok -- owned by Beijing-based ByteDance -- to specify when they are transferring and storing consumers' data in countries such as China.
And it will die a death by a thousand cuts.... (Score:1, Troll)
California couldn't pass right-to-repair. You think THIS is going to get through?
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Oh good... if it does pass, we can join the EU in having to click through a cookie acknowledgement on every single web site we visit... how fun!
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The cookies and their popups aren't the problem, it's the privacy rapist companies trying to be modern info brokers. That shit needs to be made fully illegal, and if The Internet looses +90% of it's content as a result, then so be it. The Internet will be better for it.
Re: And it will die a death by a thousand cuts.... (Score:1)
Nobody is preventing you from refusing to access sites by anyone you don't like, but what gives you the right to determine the web sites i want to visit are no longer allowed to function?
I don't recall giving the US government the authority to decide for me how my associations and interactions with others are going to work. Busybody nanny state folks like you can butt out and mind your own business, not mine
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Nobody is preventing you from refusing to access sites by anyone you don't like, but what gives you the right to determine the web sites i want to visit are no longer allowed to function?
The same right that all private third parties have to refuse service to others. See also 4chan, Zoom, YouTube, Twitter, etc.
I don't recall giving the US government the authority to decide for me how my associations and interactions with others are going to work. Busybody nanny state folks like you can butt out and mind your own business, not mine
When your actions affect my rights, it becomes my business. As you, presumably, are US citizen, that makes the US government the arbitrator of the dispute by definition. I cannot fathom why people like you cannot grasp something so basic.
If you decide to take my privacy away, that's my business. If someone else tries to take my privacy away it's my business. Because it affects ME.
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You aren't the private third party in question, though. You have nothing to do with my interaction with these sites, so by what right do you seek to interfere?
I'm not "deciding to take your privacy away". As I said, that's up to you to use sites which don't behave the way you'd like them to or not. What I object to is you, or a court, or anyone else, telling me I can't exchange data with someone else because it doesn't fit their notion of what I should be allowed to say to them or not. That's not a power wh
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What I object to is you, or a court, or anyone else, telling me I can't exchange data with someone else because it doesn't fit their notion of what I should be allowed to say to them or not.
If it's data solely about yourself then have at it. But the second that data includes information about others, it's their business and their rights you've implicated. And no-one granted you the right to trample on the rights of others without consequence.
That's also a pretty low bar to clear. For example, location data in a jpeg is fine if the image only contains you. But if someone else gets caught in that selfie that you uploaded to Facebook, you've just given Facebook their location at a specific tim
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No, much of what you're talking about is public info. And public info is by definition, public.
If you happen to be in public when I take a photo, there's no obligation to scrub that location data from a photo, for example. If you're publicly broadcasting an identifier from your device, then you're sending it out to everyone, it's not a secret. If you're making information available to anyone on the internet, like posting a comment, that's not "private" in any way.
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So your counter to "If it's in a public place, it's public" is that "there exist places which aren't public"???
Well sure, there are non-public places in existence. I don't see anywhere I stated anything differently...
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I believe that the cookie consent madness is a result of the data-raping industry trying to stipulate that "hey, if we can't grab your data, all sites will have to be defaced".
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"data-raping"? Nice work taking a minor issue and attempting to borrow the seriousness of an actually harmful crime.
Don't you think that practice diminishes actual rape by associating it with something as trivial as advertising cookies? Why are you against taking rape seriously?
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No. I believe that people are perfectly capable of keeping the two concepts apart, and that borrowing off the seriousness of the human crime gives light to the seriousness of the data practices rather than the other way around.
Granted, I could be wrong, so thanks for the input.
Finally! (Score:1)
All of the consequences of "muh privacy" being invaded by me willy nilly putting "muh data", willingly, on the web will be fixed!
Now, what are those consequences you might ask? Well.. uhh.. You see... Uhh.. Muh Data! Muh Privacy!
Re:Finally! (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not "me" putting my data willy nilly online when my doctor and hospital REQUIRE me to make appointments online (excepting the ER of course).
It's not "me" putting my data willy nilly online when the meta pixel snatches that data off the web pages and begins building a profile and serving me personalized ads based on it.
And it's not "me" putting my data online when a background check run by a life insurance insurer checks one of the information clearing houses and gets my confidential data and uses it to deny claims.
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And HIPAA laws should already prevent your health insurance company from putting tracking bugs on their website in a way that could potentially leak your medical information to a third party. Medical companies ignoring their legal obligations is the fault of those medical companies, not the fault of the companies building the tracking technologies, for which probably 99.999% of usage is basically harmless.
What makes Facebook problematic is that they potentially integrate data from private conversations an
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When I had a FB picture to a private audience of me in a humidor, and a week later my insurance company sends me a letter demanding a physical with bloodwork, else I'd pay smoker's rates, that info is definitely being passed around without consent, much less even knowledge.
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You don't live in China, I presume. Or plan to go there (and back home again).
Re:Unconstitutional as per the Roe vs. Wade overtu (Score:4, Insightful)
That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works. They didn't rule abortion unconstitutional. They ruled that there is no Constitutional basis for claiming abortion is Federally protected, hence it's up to the states.
This was the correct ruling. And I'm very pro abortion. We need Federal laws or a Constitutional amendment to protect abortion. They didn't even say the Federal government couldn't regulate or require abortion rights - they just said there is no existing Consitutional mechanism preventing a state from banning it.
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That's an interesting perspective from a bunch of guys that said Roe v. Wade was "settled law" when interviewing under oath for their jobs and directly asked the question.
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They ruled that there is no Constitutional basis for claiming abortion is Federally protected, hence it's up to the states. This was the correct ruling. And I'm very pro abortion.
My understanding is that Constitutional protection against the government arbitrarily intruding into your medical records sits on the same basis as Constitutional protection for abortion. I guess that Constitutional protection is also now gone? In the absence of a federal law like HIPAA, it's a-okay for the government to go digging through your medical records for any reason whatsoever?
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Actually it's pretty succinct
The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey
are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the
people and their elected representatives.
It means that SCOTUS has no basis in the constitution to support the right to abortion. It now merely allows those elected officials to pass legislation allowing it or disallowing it. There isn't a right to it offered by the Constitution.
So, there's remedies:
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I'd argue (armchair Constitutional scholar that I am) that right to privacy is heavily implied by the 4th Amendment (not to mention the previous DCMA anonymity ruling).
And there is also The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people..
It is less their is no Constitutional right to abortion, but the court shouldn't have ruled on it at all (whether states have the authority is up for debate).
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It's such a complex issue on multiple levels but people like to pretend it's all black and white. I'm pro abortion - to a point. At some point, that "fetus" becomes a child. The debate is over when that is. At some point it can form memories, feel pain, and is "meaningfully human", as compared to a fetus which has no more sensation or sentience than a cow, considerably less actually.
So the right likes to pretend, because of something they imagine Jebus would want, that that clump of cells is meaningfully hu
Just in time (Score:1)
What is it we gain? (Score:3)
I'm a bit puzzled about what it is that we gain from bills like this. In particular, the dangers of companies having so much information about us isn't from targeting a few ads to us. That's really pretty innocuous.
The dangers all stem from these companies having so much information about us in the first place. However, as far as I can tell from the senate website on the bill it doesn't actually stop those companies from having all the raw information that could be analyzed to invade privacy (and is now being analyzed to target ads) in web server logs and other places. It just seems to stop companies from putting that information together into profiles they use to target ads to us. But, if the company has the raw information anyway, I'm not really sure I have any more privacy.. Law enforcement may not understand how to request and use that data now, but, it's just a matter of time before someone starts selling them services that help them request and aggregate that kind of information.
I fear that the real effect of this is just to obscure the fact that big tech has so much info and may make it harder to fund internet content.
It's really simple (Score:2)
My data is mine, any transactions I do with you or with your services are between me and you. I don't allow you to use or sell or in any way disclose my details, habits or transactions without my expressed written consent except as permitted by court order. Further, I may revoke my consent at any time as I see fit.
Now watch Facebook, Amazon, Google et. al. collapse.
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I agree completely!
Now all we have to do is get together and buy enough politicians in all relevant countries. I guess it will be somewhat expensive to outbid the large corporations though.