[HN Gopher] American Data Privacy and Protection Act
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       American Data Privacy and Protection Act
        
       Author : 1vuio0pswjnm7
       Score  : 346 points
       Date   : 2022-09-22 14:32 UTC (8 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.congress.gov)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.congress.gov)
        
       | gigel82 wrote:
       | Can't read legalese much, and -judging by how these things tend
       | to go- I bet it's butchered beyond recognition before it gets to
       | a vote (if at all). Instead, we should consider a constitutional
       | amendment that enshrines digital privacy as a fundamental human
       | right.
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | > digital privacy as a fundamental human right
         | 
         | Why would digital privacy be a fundamental human right before
         | normal privacy?
        
         | cvoss wrote:
         | > Instead
         | 
         | No way. The threshold of consensus required to put a
         | constitutional amendment through is far higher than that of
         | passing a bill (maybe too high, but that's another
         | conversation). The fact that such an ammendment would consist
         | of terse, high-level, abstract statements rather than pages and
         | pages concrete specifics would also make it harder to achieve
         | consensus because too many people would be afraid of it getting
         | read by SCOTUS in a way they didn't want.
         | 
         | We need to work on federal laws here and not wait for a pie-in-
         | the-sky constitutional ammendment. (State-by-state laws don't
         | make a whole lot of sense on this topic. Glad CA has been test-
         | driving some, but we need a unified approach.).
        
         | encryptluks2 wrote:
         | You do realize that you can waive your constitutional rights
         | like a jury trial, and that these companies would just make
         | that part of their standard terms of service... Right?
        
         | lolinder wrote:
         | Why would a constitutional amendment be less prone to getting
         | butchered beyond all recognition? An amendment may not have its
         | _text_ butchered, but there 's no guarantee at all that it will
         | be interpreted the way you hope.
        
           | seanw444 wrote:
           | It probably will be interpreted in all the wrong ways you
           | can't even anticipate. All you need for an example is 2A.
        
         | micromacrofoot wrote:
         | we don't even have food and shelter as a human right
        
           | carom wrote:
           | We do have food in a sense. I began cooking for the homeless
           | and quickly learned they all had EBT cards and didn't want my
           | bland cooking.
        
             | micromacrofoot wrote:
             | the comment I was responding to was specifically
             | referencing rights as outlined by the constitution
        
         | matai_kolila wrote:
         | For any enterprising young legal authors, I'm sure a "rewritten
         | for laypeople" paragraph-by-paragraph blog post would garner a
         | large volume of views and impressions to your site...
        
       | belkarx wrote:
       | The effort put in is commendable but this doesn't yet reach the
       | levels of GDPR and the US market is too large for it to be likely
       | to pass. Maybe eventually ...
        
       | lmkg wrote:
       | For those following along at home:
       | 
       | So far five states have passed local Data Privacy laws (CA, VA,
       | UT, CT, MA). They are all different. This situation makes it much
       | more likely that federal data privacy legislation will happen:
       | while companies wish they could have 0 laws, they would still
       | much rather prefer 1 law rather than 5 (trending towards 50)
       | different laws that contradict each other.
       | 
       | There's a whole buncha specifics about what data is covered and
       | what companies are covered and bleh blah bluh. _That 's not the
       | most important thing._ There are two things which are _more_
       | important than that. These two issues also happen to be the
       | topics most hotly debated between Dems  & Repubs.
       | 
       | 1. Private Right of Action, aka "Can I, a private citizen, sue
       | someone?"
       | 
       | Everyone violates GDPR a dozen ways to Sunday, and nothing
       | happens. Why? Because no one can actually _enforce_ the law
       | except for the local regulators who are underfunded. By contrast,
       | the ADA lets anyone sue over violations, and as a result
       | companies care a lot about handicap accessibility.
       | 
       | To my understanding the current negotiations are trending towards
       | a _limited_ Private Right of Action. Meaning it will exist for
       | some violations but not others. This is how CCPA works in
       | California right now: private citizens can sue over _data
       | breaches_ , but any other violation can only be enforced by the
       | Office of the Attorney General.
       | 
       | 2. Pre-emption, aka "Does this repeal CCPA."
       | 
       | Can states give additional protections to their residents, or is
       | the Federal government removing the ability of states to define
       | additional requirements for businesses. Again, the current state
       | of negotiations seems to trend towards partial, but not total,
       | pre-emption.
        
         | encryptluks2 wrote:
         | Partial preemption leads to supreme court decisions that lead
         | to near total preemption.
        
           | tomatotomato37 wrote:
           | Only if it's not a highly contentious issue. Otherwise the
           | bigger states just go "We control X amount of the American
           | population/economy, and thus we are going to enforce our own
           | law _anyway_ "
           | 
           | Granted they would be in the wrong since this is clearly and
           | unambiguously interstate commerce, but that hasn't stopped
           | them before
        
             | arrosenberg wrote:
             | Its not unambiguous. Google is based in CA, I am based in
             | CA. Packets may go across state lines, but the commercial
             | transaction (a search query) has occurred between two CA
             | entities and should fall under state law.
        
               | encryptluks2 wrote:
               | It doesn't work like that. Once Congress enacts something
               | then it can be preempted by federal law. Just because the
               | activity took place in a single state doesn't mean that
               | the Federal courts don't have jurisdiction. Erisa is a
               | good example.
        
               | arrosenberg wrote:
               | I wasn't arguing that, I was saying that it's not an
               | unambiguous case of interstate commerce. Congress
               | shouldn't be pre-empting the laws of California insofar
               | as they apply to intrastate commerce. You can set a
               | federal minimum and let each state enhance laws as they
               | see fit.
        
               | encryptluks2 wrote:
               | Agreed, but as we've seen with many other federal laws
               | once you have preemption then it is usually interpreted
               | to the broadest extent and not the minimum.
        
         | user3939382 wrote:
         | > they would still much rather prefer 1 law rather than 5
         | (trending towards 50) different laws that contradict each other
         | 
         | A perfect example of how these megacorps destroy the fabric of
         | our political process. The fact that dealing with state
         | regulations is a burden isn't our (the people's) problem, we
         | have a right to have our state's reflect our will. They want to
         | scale up to this massive size raking in billions of dollars,
         | that should come with the territory.
        
         | tzs wrote:
         | > Everyone violates GDPR a dozen ways to Sunday, and nothing
         | happens. Why? Because no one can actually enforce the law
         | except for the local regulators who are underfunded.
         | 
         | Individuals can enforce GDPR in court:
         | 
         | ---------------
         | 
         | Art. 79 GDPR
         | 
         | Right to an effective judicial remedy against a controller or
         | processor
         | 
         | 1. Without prejudice to any available administrative or non-
         | judicial remedy, including the right to lodge a complaint with
         | a supervisory authority pursuant to Article 77, each data
         | subject shall have the right to an effective judicial remedy
         | where he or she considers that his or her rights under this
         | Regulation have been infringed as a result of the processing of
         | his or her personal data in non-compliance with this
         | Regulation.
         | 
         | 2. Proceedings against a controller or a processor shall be
         | brought before the courts of the Member State where the
         | controller or processor has an establishment. Alternatively,
         | such proceedings may be brought before the courts of the Member
         | State where the data subject has his or her habitual residence,
         | unless the controller or processor is a public authority of a
         | Member State acting in the exercise of its public powers.
        
         | rawgabbit wrote:
         | Is there a right, as a private individual, to sue everyone who
         | has sent spam/fraud texts to me?
        
           | lmkg wrote:
           | Spam email, yes, due to the CAN-SPAM Act explicitly
           | authorizing it. I believe that at least one individual has
           | literally made a living out of pursuing such lawsuits.
           | 
           | Texts, nope.
        
       | Kalanos wrote:
       | anyone know the gist of what tech companies will have to do in
       | order to be compliant?
        
         | xbar wrote:
         | Less than they do now. This washes away CCPA protections that
         | are already nationalized-by-default.
        
       | prego_xo wrote:
       | > (B) any time beyond the initial 2 times described in
       | subparagraph (A), may allow the individual to exercise such right
       | for a reasonable fee for each request.
       | 
       | Paying any sum of money to receive a copy of or request to delete
       | my private data is unreasonable in nature.
        
         | drstewart wrote:
         | This is normal:
         | 
         | https://www.techrepublic.com/article/how-to-request-your-per...
         | 
         | >Although, the ICO also notes that a firm may charge a
         | "reasonable fee" when "a request is manifestly unfounded or
         | excessive, particularly if it is repetitive."
         | 
         | Privacy request shouldn't enable mechanisms of denial of
         | service type attacks against companies.
        
           | prego_xo wrote:
           | DoS is an understandable concern, but charging for a service
           | is probably one of the least sensible ways to prevent it. To
           | me, it just looks like the most profitable and impeding
           | hurdle that companies can set up to prevent users who want to
           | access their own data. I would be frustrated if any
           | application made me pay even a small fine because they
           | suspect a DoS attack. For example, entering my credit card
           | info because I've searched a phrase too much just isn't
           | efficient.
        
           | colpabar wrote:
           | > Privacy request shouldn't enable mechanisms of denial of
           | service type attacks against companies.
           | 
           | How would this even happen? I genuinely don't understand what
           | you mean.
        
             | emiliobumachar wrote:
             | When GDPR was new, several people sent "nightmare letters",
             | deliberately and publicly designed to cause as much cost
             | and hassle as possible. To my knowledge, no one was
             | punished or even inconvenienced for blatantly abusing the
             | law in this way.
             | 
             | https://duckduckgo.com/?q=gdpr+nightmare+letters
        
               | Nextgrid wrote:
               | The "nightmare GDPR letter" is trivial to deal with:
               | https://jacquesmattheij.com/so-your-start-up-receive-the-
               | nig...
        
             | michaelmior wrote:
             | Users don't like a company, they automatically spam the
             | company with large numbers of requests for personal
             | information which they would legally be required to
             | provide.
        
               | colpabar wrote:
               | Does the same logic apply to FOIA requests?
        
               | HideousKojima wrote:
               | Most FOIA requests involve a small fee as well for the
               | same reason.
               | 
               | https://www.hhs.gov/foia/faqs/what-is-the-cost-for-
               | getting-r...
        
               | Floegipoky wrote:
               | And those fees have been infamously exploited to
               | functionally deny access to material or financially harm
               | the requester. Perfectly illustrating why charging fees
               | for these things is such a bad idea.
        
               | olyjohn wrote:
               | Guess they'd better figure out how to get people their
               | data in a more rapid manner. I guess they could use a
               | computer or something to automate it so that users can
               | just click a button to download their data.
               | 
               | I mean, what year is this? We've been hearing "automate
               | it, automate it, etc" for years and years now. But to get
               | your personal data, these companies just throw up their
               | hands and say that it's too hard?
        
               | bpodgursky wrote:
               | When we implemented CCPA lookups, one of the many
               | necessary lookups was through a decade of glacier'd
               | request logs (necessary to hold onto for compliance).
               | 
               | Even ignoring implementation cost, there was a
               | significant computational cost that's pretty hard to
               | avoid.
        
               | colpabar wrote:
               | I couldn't agree more. Even if it does require a person
               | to do something that isn't automated, they should be
               | required to have people on staff whose first priority is
               | responding to these requests. It seems ridiculous to me
               | that people are claiming this is just too hard for a
               | company so they should get to profit off of it.
               | 
               | It's _our_ data, dammit!
        
               | drstewart wrote:
               | >that people are claiming this is just too hard for a
               | company so they should get to profit off of it.
               | 
               | Completely disingenuous argument. Literally nobody
               | claimed that.
               | 
               | By the same token of strawmanning, you're claiming that
               | businesses should do nothing than hire people to send
               | your data back to you. Why even have businesses if that's
               | the only thing you think they should do?
               | 
               | If you're so invested in "your data, damnit", then don't
               | give it to them in the first place.
        
             | legitster wrote:
             | For our company, all privacy requests are handled manually
             | by a team I am on. We manually do name searches in about a
             | dozen platforms to see if there are any matching records.
             | 
             | 4/5 times there aren't any - people doing the requests
             | often use services that submit blanket requests.
        
           | pooper wrote:
           | Strong disagree. There are already other options for
           | malicious actors, most notably Americans with Disability act.
        
           | thayne wrote:
           | So you could have something like each person is allowed two
           | free data requests per year, after that you can charge for
           | it, or something like that.
        
           | olyjohn wrote:
           | Maybe they should automate the requests then. There's zero
           | reason why they couldn't just write something where you log
           | into your account and click "download my data."
           | 
           | These companies are happy to harvest up all your data, run
           | all this crazy automation, spend millions analyzing
           | algorithms, setting up machine learning, NFTs, run
           | datacenters, networks, etc etc, but they can't figure out how
           | to automate GDPR requests? FUCKING BULLSHIT.
           | 
           | There is literally zero reason why a data request should add
           | any burden to a tech company.
        
           | nightski wrote:
           | I wonder if a company can be DoS'd via privacy request maybe
           | they are collecting more data than they can effectively
           | handle and that should be re-examined.
        
           | ortusdux wrote:
           | The problem is, "reasonable" is subjective. Things like this
           | need to be tethered to something. "The fee may not exceed 50%
           | of the hourly federal minimum wage."
        
             | smileysteve wrote:
             | Yes, what's reasonable to a company may not be reasonable
             | to a consumer. Ie, as a company can create process that
             | uses 10 man hours and my cheapest labor with overhead is
             | $50/hr, but we can find countless CNBC articles that say
             | the average consumer can't afford a $500 expense.
        
             | bin_bash wrote:
             | That's just not true. "Reasonable" is a binding term used
             | in contracts all of the time. The court system is extremely
             | experienced in determining what is and is not reasonable.
        
               | giantg2 wrote:
               | "The court system is extremely experienced in determining
               | what is and is not reasonable."
               | 
               | Almost always to the dismay of one party, and sometimes
               | to the dismay of the general public.
        
               | MerelyMortal wrote:
               | Not always. According to lemon law lawyer Mr. Lehto (who
               | runs a Youtube channel Lehto's Law), RVs are not covered
               | under most state lemon laws, and thus defers to the
               | federal Magnuson Moss Warranty Act which just says
               | repairs must be under a reasonable time frame, and the RV
               | companies say something like 10 repairs, 6 months each,
               | is the industry standard and thus reasonable, and judges
               | don't have anything else to base that on, so they agree.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | smileysteve wrote:
               | From a foia perspective the courts and government
               | agencies aren't great at "reasonable".
        
               | ortusdux wrote:
               | Leaving the fee uncapped creates an incentive for
               | business to put zero effort into making the reporting
               | process efficient. That way, they can demonstrate that
               | compliance requires 5 skilled hours (for example) and
               | "reasonably" charge $250 per report.
               | 
               | Courts rule on the evidence provided. If a user
               | challenges the fee, the company can easily document where
               | every penny went, and therefore claim it is a reasonable
               | charge. The user's only real recourse would be to prove
               | that company is over-billing, but that would require
               | evidence.
               | 
               | Pegging the cost to a set number of labor hours by law
               | signals to companies that part of the cost of collecting
               | this data is they must develop their internal systems in
               | a way that they can quickly and easily comply with
               | requests.
        
               | tbihl wrote:
               | Much like passing a bill to find out what's in it, going
               | to court to discover the rules is not a healthy way for
               | society to run.
        
               | bin_bash wrote:
               | Going to court to discover the rules is precisely how
               | common law systems work
        
               | riversflow wrote:
               | I don't want to have to go to court to not be extorted
               | over my data.
        
               | jdasdf wrote:
               | It's certainly experienced in making stuff up.
        
             | drstewart wrote:
             | GDPR is filled with "reasonableness" expectations and
             | unspecified guidelines that aren't tethered to anything.
             | Why the concern over this one specifically?
        
               | dsr_ wrote:
               | This one, I dunno.
               | 
               | But in general, EU/EC law is full of policy that gets
               | interpreted as human judgement calls, and US law is full
               | of details that are interpreted as badly-written code
               | with a choice of parsers. The two styles are not
               | compatible.
        
               | scarface74 wrote:
               | Yes because a 99 section 11 chapter law is really easy
               | for small companies to follow...
        
               | scsh wrote:
               | EU laws can often be written in such a way and are a bit
               | looser in their language in ways when compared to how it
               | may be written in the US. EU courts are more experienced
               | with dealing with interpretations of "reasonableness" for
               | a given law when compared to the US, so it's not really a
               | fair comparison.
        
           | rt4mn wrote:
           | I agree privacy request shouldn't enable mechanisms of denial
           | of service type attacks against companies. But I don't think
           | that justifies allowing companies to put in place fees to
           | access personal data.
           | 
           | If cloudflare required people to pay to bypass their denial
           | of service protections... well, I guess I dont know what
           | would happen, other then that I would hate them even more
           | then I already do for all the terrible things they do for my
           | experience as a default tor browser user.
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | I mean, at our company, GDPR requests _have_ to cost at least
         | $50 a pop. It goes to a human team to review and process with a
         | dedicated legal representative.
        
           | olyjohn wrote:
           | Not my problem. You're the one collecting the data. You pay
           | for the costs. Can't afford to collect my data? Go out of
           | business then.
        
             | legitster wrote:
             | We have to process the request regardless of whether we
             | actually have your data or not.
        
               | smileysteve wrote:
               | seems like you should either make the lookup automatable
               | or stop collecting. eu citizens wont have such a fee.
        
             | micromacrofoot wrote:
             | It's your problem until there's a law saying otherwise.
        
           | gbear605 wrote:
           | Sounds like an appropriate cost of doing business with data.
           | If you don't want to pay for it, collect less data.
        
           | prego_xo wrote:
           | Very fair point, and I understand the necessity of data
           | collection in some cases. I do feel like that's a cost that's
           | incurred voluntarily, though, and shouldn't fall on the
           | shoulders of users/customers. Some people might not want data
           | to be collected to begin with, so the cost ends up being your
           | company's fault and not theirs.
        
             | legitster wrote:
             | But we have to process every request _even if we do not
             | find any of their data_.
             | 
             | A majority of requests are actually this way - people use
             | online services that submit blanket removal requests.
        
               | prego_xo wrote:
               | Yeah, that's definitely the case and I see where the
               | hassle is, but to restate my point, those costs are
               | simply a part of overhead and not the business of users.
               | Unless the users are given an opt-out first and foremost,
               | they're owed ownership over their personal data.
        
               | legitster wrote:
               | Again, the language of the proposed bill is requiring 2
               | free requests per person.
               | 
               | $100 for an occasional person? No biggie.
               | 
               |  _Potentially infinite_? That 's a bit more than normal
               | overhead.
               | 
               | While we haven't seen this sort of DDoS attack through
               | our GDPR process _yet_ , the potential is already there
               | if bad actors or competitors wanted to exploit it.
        
       | robust-cactus wrote:
       | Not sure what y'all are complaining about. The amount of privacy
       | work that happens with governments at big tech companies is
       | substantial. The language in this doc seems like a better, less
       | oppressive version of GDPR.
        
         | oaiey wrote:
         | I find the gdpr is much easier to read than this.
        
       | jdp23 wrote:
       | It's not clear that ADPPA will move forward. The current version
       | preempts California's CCPA/CPRA legislation, and (big surprise)
       | California doesn't like that. But, that's far from the only issue
       | with it. Here's an update from a couple of weeks ago which
       | discusses some of the problems, as well as potential next steps.
       | https://thenexusofprivacy.net/adppa-new-compromise/
       | 
       | And, here's EFF's position: " Americans Deserve More Than The
       | Current American Data Privacy Protection Act"
       | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2022/07/americans-deserve-more...
        
         | takeda wrote:
         | That's weird that it was implement to preempt. Normally bills
         | add on top of each other so why it is different here?
         | 
         | As a Californian I would prefer that bills add additional
         | protections especially when it comes to privacy.
        
         | nugget wrote:
         | Preemption would be an enormous mistake. Federal legislation
         | moves at a glacial pace. In a field like privacy, you may only
         | get to pass one substantial bill every 10 or 15 years.
         | Technology moves too quickly for lawmakers at the Federal level
         | to keep up. States can move much faster. Justice Brandeis
         | popularized the phrase that "[the] states are the laboratories
         | of democracy" and digital privacy law is a text book case of an
         | emerging field that will benefit enormously from iterative
         | experimentation at the state level.
        
           | JumpCrisscross wrote:
           | > _Preemption would be an enormous mistake_
           | 
           | It creates a national standard. If we're still debating the
           | solution, sure, devolve to states. But if we're near
           | consensus, preemption provides scale. This is American
           | strength in a nutshell.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | Yeah, nobody wants to have to constantly worry about
             | compliance with 50+ different required standards which may
             | or may not conflict with one another. Having one clear
             | standard for services to follow is absolutely preferred so
             | long as it actually does the job of protecting people's
             | data privacy.
        
           | yonaguska wrote:
           | Yep, I personally only want federal pre-emption for
           | restrictions on government. Shall not infringe type stuff.
        
           | phpisthebest wrote:
           | >>Preemption would be an enormous mistake
           | 
           | Preemption is always a mistake, i am not sure why everyone
           | wants federal laws for everything, without even touching the
           | fact that Data privacy is in no way even close to any of the
           | enumerated power of the US Federal Government
           | 
           | Federal Laws almost always favor large companies, the exact
           | companies these laws are needed to protect the consumer from
           | 
           | Facebook, Microsoft, etc would love nothing more than to have
           | the federal government take over because has "stake holders"
           | they will be called on to write their own legislation, and
           | will start the revolving door of hiring current, former and
           | future regulators to work in the very corporations they are
           | supposed to regulate.
           | 
           | Federal laws never work for the average citizen
        
             | hprotagonist wrote:
             | > Preemption is always a mistake, i am not sure why
             | everyone wants federal laws for everything
             | 
             | So that my marriage is recognized across state lines, for a
             | start.
        
               | pokey00 wrote:
               | eh poor example imo; that's guaranteed by the
               | Constitution, not legislation.
        
               | hprotagonist wrote:
               | oh? where, exactly? Is that why we needed Obergefell, and
               | Loving, and ... ?
        
               | klabb3 wrote:
               | Why would you the government to be involved in your
               | marriage?
        
               | agar wrote:
               | Isn't a better question: why would you want /any/
               | government involved in your marriage?
               | 
               | This argues for federal legislation that defines marriage
               | simply as a compact between two consenting adults with
               | some basic legal record keeping.
               | 
               | The /impact/ of that marriage can be both federal and
               | state (e.g., federal vs. state tax laws).
               | 
               | Individual state laws defining marriage could mean your
               | next of kin could change if you die in the wrong state.
               | That way lies dragons.
        
               | hprotagonist wrote:
               | Because that's what marriage _is_?
        
               | d4mi3n wrote:
               | I think the point GP is trying to make is that sometimes
               | _state_ governments try to get involved in marriage and
               | having a federal policy that preempts that can prevent
               | further meddling.
               | 
               | This cuts both ways--with preemption, you can provide
               | baseline rights or guarantees to citizens. The trade-off
               | is that you have federal legislation in the mix and you
               | then need to deal with laws that are slower/harder to
               | change; a big issue if the law was badly written or needs
               | to be changed in a timely manner.
        
             | nightpool wrote:
             | > without even touching the fact that Data privacy is in no
             | way even close to any of the enumerated power of the US
             | Federal Government
             | 
             | In what way is data privacy regulation for corporations
             | _not_ a regulation on interstate commerce? That 's like,
             | the whole deal. That's the entire internet. If anything,
             | Internet regulations applying at the state level is even
             | more insane, because of the inherently cross-state nature
             | of globally networked communication.
        
             | autoexec wrote:
             | > i am not sure why everyone wants federal laws for
             | everything
             | 
             | I'm not sure why anyone wants to be held to 50+ different
             | and conflicting privacy and data protection requirements
             | just to have a website or provide a service online because
             | that's what we'd be getting if we left online privacy
             | regulation up the states.
        
           | mc32 wrote:
           | In this case I think preemption gives you widespread
           | uniformity so it makes adherence easier to achieve and more
           | predictability. Is those island gonna come up with weird
           | stipulations, maybe Montana... uniformity in this case may be
           | better.
        
           | rt4mn wrote:
           | This is exactly why Microsoft has been throwing money at
           | lobbyists at the state level as well, pushing shitty
           | "consumer privacy bills", both because they don't like strong
           | legal privacy rights at the state level, but also in the
           | hopes of forestalling and kneecapping a strong federal
           | baseline privacy bill.
           | 
           | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/tech-lobbyists-are-
           | pus...
        
             | jdp23 wrote:
             | Yep. We've fought them off here in Washington ... but they
             | and Amazon just took it to other, more pliable states. Todd
             | Feathers and Albert Ng had a very good article on this in
             | The Markup a few months ago
             | https://themarkup.org/privacy/2022/05/26/tech-industry-
             | group...
        
               | encryptluks2 wrote:
               | Did we though? What bills does Washington have that could
               | compare to the CCPA?
        
               | jdp23 wrote:
               | None yet. Big tech companies have pushed various versions
               | of the Bad Washington Privacy Act, which is weaker than
               | CCPA. In 2021 and 2022, civil liberties, civil rights,
               | and immigrant rights groups have supported the People's
               | Privacy Act, which is a lot stronger than CCPA or ADPPA,
               | but tech lobbying kept it from even getting a hearing.
               | We'll see what happens in 2023 ... the Bad Washington
               | Privacy Act's sponsor is retiring from the Senate (and is
               | generally expected to become a full-time lobbyist), so
               | the landscape should be different.
        
           | jfengel wrote:
           | States move faster... so fast that a technology company would
           | be constantly chasing 50 different state laws.
           | 
           | The Internet is a global entity, and it doesn't strike me as
           | being well served by the "laboratory of the states".
           | 
           | Federal legislation is slow, but executive agencies can move
           | faster if they are empowered by legislation to make rules.
           | Congress sets broad principles, and it's not unreasonable
           | that those principles should stay the same for a decade at a
           | time, even in a fast-moving domain like privacy. And while
           | regulatory agencies can be their own pieces of work, it is
           | much easier to deal with one national agency's rules than 50
           | different ones.
        
             | abigail95 wrote:
             | If fewer jurisdictions = better, then just adopt the GDPR
             | as-is.
             | 
             | That seems obviously bad to me, having more jurisdictions
             | to work out what the best laws are seems like a better
             | idea.
        
             | takeda wrote:
             | > States move faster... so fast that a technology company
             | would be constantly chasing 50 different state laws.
             | 
             | As a person who's data is being sold I would one up it and
             | wish that each county would produce their own regulations.
             | That business is a cancer.
        
             | seanw444 wrote:
             | After seeing how the ATF operates entirely autonomously to
             | nearly eliminate the right to bear arms through
             | increasingly more unnecessarily complex and ridiculous
             | "rules" that make you felon for things that were previously
             | (and should still be) totally legal, I have zero interest
             | in giving executive agencies autonomy to make laws.
             | 
             | And it doesn't matter that the rules can be ruled as
             | ineffective by a high court, because it takes ages to get
             | through the whole court process. So in the time that the
             | court took ruling something totally unconstitutional,
             | people's rights are squandered (especially without any
             | democratic consensus to enact it), and the people that
             | enacted and enforced the later-deemed-unconstitutional
             | rulings face zero repercussions. And guess what? They then
             | move on to the next unconstitutional ruling that squanders
             | as many rights as possible for as long as possible.
        
               | klabb3 wrote:
               | > unnecessarily complex and ridiculous "rules" that make
               | you felon for things that were previously (and should
               | still be) totally legal
               | 
               | Not going into the US-centric gun debate and assuming
               | that guns are simply tools, isn't it reasonable that gun
               | owners need to monitor the regulations? If you operate
               | heavy machinery or run a chemical lab, I'd expect you to
               | keep a close eye on upcoming legislation and rules. I'd
               | not be surprised if a food truck operator would need to
               | keep track of more rules than gun owners.
        
               | tekknik wrote:
               | Both of these examples are enterprises, not something a
               | private citizen does. I would also hesitate to say that
               | you can become a felon overnight with either of these
               | scenarios (remember all of the rights lost, including gun
               | ownership, by being labeled a felon). And a majority of
               | businesses shield themselves such that if they do violate
               | the law it's the business itself penalized, not the
               | workers. In the case of gun ownership it's the individual
               | being penalized.
               | 
               | To make your example equivalent, imagine if the food
               | truck or some piece of equipment in that truck was
               | suddenly made illegal. And if you're in possession of it
               | you are now a felon. Yesterday (literally) it was legal
               | and you were not given advanced notice anymore than
               | waking up this morning and receiving notice.
               | 
               | If heavy machinery and food industries operated this way
               | there would be much less competition and likely no food
               | trucks at all
        
       | encryptluks2 wrote:
       | Lol.. gotta love when they propose acts before even understanding
       | technology. Things like this need to be collectively written by
       | some of the best privacy advocates. Not a bunch of interns that
       | have no clue how technology works.
        
         | lolinder wrote:
         | If there's a piece of the bill that illustrates your objection,
         | please do share. As is this feels like a canned response based
         | on a stereotype, not a substantial objection.
        
       | donatj wrote:
       | Now if we could just get a bill that actually limited the
       | _governments_ ability to collect data on its citizens. I 'm not
       | really worried about targeted ads, I'm worried about targeted
       | assassinations.
       | 
       | You talk to people and ask them why they are worried about
       | companies collecting data, and a certain percentage will tell you
       | they don't like that the government could get it with a court
       | order. That'd be a HUGE improvement over the current situation
       | where they don't have to, they just collect it directly.
        
         | candiddevmike wrote:
         | This poses an interesting question: if the government mandates
         | a company to collect data, are they exempt from this? What's
         | stopping them from using that data for commerical purposes?
        
           | lmkg wrote:
           | Section 101 part b "Permissible Purposes," defines when data
           | is allowed to be collected. The sixth such purpose: "To
           | comply with a legal obligation imposed by Federal, Tribal,
           | Local, or State law..."
           | 
           | A close reading of the wording implies this only covers
           | requests _backed by a law_ , i.e. it does _not_ cover
           | "polite requests" from a government agency. However that is a
           | theoretic protection, practice could be different.
        
         | hot_gril wrote:
         | > I'm not really worried about targeted ads, I'm worried about
         | targeted assassinations.
         | 
         | Who's after you? I'm not making the lame "only wrongdoers have
         | something to fear" argument, just wondering what circumstances
         | you're dealing with.
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | They only need a court order (which can be from a secret court
         | providing secret guidance, and can be a infinite standing order
         | that covers vast amounts of arbitrary collection AUMF-style) to
         | _force_ companies to turn things over. Companies can just hand
         | your data over because they don 't want to be retaliated
         | against (or in return for favors), and nobody needs a warrant,
         | nobody ever has to tell anyone. Depending on agency internal
         | rules, they may not even have to keep a record themselves of
         | having done it (if they break their rules, they'll be
         | responsible for punishing themselves though, I'm sure they'll
         | be harsh.)
         | 
         | That's your targeted ads (and your cellphone tracking, and your
         | transaction records.)
        
         | carom wrote:
         | Hell, I'd be happy if the DMV, post office, and voter records
         | stopped publishing my address.
        
         | uni_rule wrote:
         | That is incredibly shortsighted considering one of the prime
         | ways the US Government skirts protections against domestic data
         | collection is by simply buying it from private entities.
        
           | legitster wrote:
           | There's a large difference though between what governments
           | could presumably buy from ad trackers or data warehouses and
           | what they can get by intercepting unencrypted web traffic at
           | the ISP level.
        
             | makeitdouble wrote:
             | Wouldn't it be the same if the ISP sold the gov. the
             | extracted info they want ?
             | 
             | In this setting the gov can hint at what data it wants, and
             | private parties will manage to get it for resale.
        
               | legitster wrote:
               | I think to OP's point, if we are worried about government
               | wrongdoing we should pass laws against government
               | wrongdoing. It really doesn't matter what the private
               | industry does or doesn't do if the government still has
               | the right to take it.
               | 
               | I am not afraid of my data being used against me to sell
               | products. I am afraid of the government abusing their
               | monopoly on violence. The first seems like misdirection.
        
               | always2slow wrote:
               | Technically we already have protection under the 4th
               | amendment, to me this falls squarely under "papers, and
               | effects" and is an unreasonable search. It seems that the
               | court doesn't agree though considering the current state
               | of things.
        
           | notinfuriated wrote:
           | Pretty sure everyone who wants gov data collection of private
           | individuals would want this to be illegal as well.
           | 
           | I'm disappointed to find most of the complaining on this
           | thread about businesses collecting personal data, rather than
           | the government. Even more so that the first comment's top
           | response regarding this is shooting it down because of an
           | imagined loophole.
           | 
           | It disgusted me about CCPA that a private company can have a
           | breach and be fined millions, but the CA govt is immune. Same
           | thing here, and it should disgust everyone who supposedly
           | cares about privacy.
        
         | Ragnarork wrote:
         | You need both.
         | 
         | Companies collecting data on you directly or indirectly is a
         | problem, even if they don't do anything malevolent with it (and
         | some already do). The issue is that eventually they'll be
         | breached, and then that data can end up in the hands of
         | malicious actors that might use it in a way that could harm you
         | (e.g. identity theft, compromising other accounts thanks to
         | peronal info, etc.).
        
         | micromacrofoot wrote:
         | A lot of the time they just buy it from data brokers.
        
         | kmeisthax wrote:
         | Fun fact: the lack of this is actually THE reason why Google
         | Fonts is banned in the EU right now
        
         | always2slow wrote:
         | Why would they need a court order when they are already just
         | buying the data with zero oversight? The panopticon works like
         | this: fund startups that will create a data treasure trove ->
         | legally buy / access the dataset and add it to xkeyscore.
        
       | justinzollars wrote:
       | Worst administration in History.
        
         | rt4mn wrote:
         | The Biden Administration? This is a bill introduced in an
         | entirly different branch of government. AFAIK Bidens got squat
         | to do with this
        
       | dcow wrote:
       | One of the logistical issues with a law like this, and with the
       | CCPA, is verification of the user requesting things such as
       | account deletion. How are people supposed to do that without
       | providing KYC-level details to every service provider?
        
       | billiam wrote:
       | The ADPPA seems like a great example of regulatory capture and
       | gridlock of the federal government by rich corporations and
       | individuals and how federalism (state's rights) is a crucial and
       | increasingly fragile element in holding our economy and our
       | society together. Privacy is a particularly fraught area. SCOTUS
       | says it's not a constitutional right at all (unless it's your
       | money, in which case it's speech), which means states will have
       | to define not data privacy and the limits of the surveillance
       | economy but abortion and marriage and contraception too.
        
         | jjtheblunt wrote:
         | ( typo : i think you meant "not only data privacy..." )
        
       | borbulon wrote:
       | If we can let lobbyists write bills, we should be able to let
       | privacy advocates write bills. We can do better than this.
        
         | ericb wrote:
         | Maybe something in the middle is nicest? I'm not looking
         | forward to every single website having _two_ cookie warnings I
         | need to close!
        
         | weberer wrote:
         | Privacy advocates such as the ACLU and EFF do have lobbyists as
         | well.
        
           | guerrilla wrote:
           | but not tens of billions of dollars between them.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | You can help them if you want! :)
             | 
             | https://supporters.eff.org/donate/
        
               | rt4mn wrote:
               | The ACLU also does a lot of great privacy work, so
               | donating to them is also a good idea if you care about
               | this stuff. National ACLU does a lot of great work, but I
               | personally suggest giving to your local affiliate
               | https://www.aclu.org/about/affiliates, as they are often
               | the ones who work on local issues that are likely to
               | directly impact you. We do privacy lobbying at the
               | municipal and state level and our local ACLU affiliate
               | has been a huge, huge ally.
               | 
               | There are also other great privacy orgs that are not
               | quite as big but are also fantastic in their own ways,
               | like Restore the Fourth (which also has local chapters
               | like shameless plug) rt4mn) Fight for the Future, Demand
               | Progress, Cato, and Privacy International
               | 
               | Also, If you want to do more then just donate, you can
               | help the EFF with its lobbying efforts by joining the
               | Electronic Frontier Alliance https://www.eff.org/fight We
               | participate, its pretty great.
        
               | SV_BubbleTime wrote:
               | You have not been paying attention to the ACLU.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | rt4mn wrote:
       | Always good to see links to direct text of bills.
       | 
       | Reading the tea leaves a bit, Speaker Pelosi seems dead set
       | against it and I dont think will allow it to be moved as is. she
       | has publicly stated that "states must be allowed to address rapid
       | changes in technology", IE, the bill preempts to many state
       | privacy regulations, esp in California. But as a rule my default
       | assumption for the "real reason" why Pelosi is against something
       | is because she thinks it will harm chance of caucus holding
       | majority in house.
       | 
       | https://pelosi.house.gov/news/press-releases/pelosi-statemen...
       | 
       | Skeptical as I am of her motives / methods, I'm inclined to agree
       | with her in this case. Act should be a floor not a ceiling.
        
       | tempie_deleteme wrote:
       | because of the "war on drugs" was supposed to be about the health
       | of americans, which turned out to be a lie...
       | 
       | I think this is not about protecting the rights to data and
       | privacy of american indivudal citizens...the other kind of
       | american citizen, the american corporation, on the other hand,
       | stands to gain a lot from this.
       | 
       | > _To provide consumers with foundational data privacy rights,
       | create strong oversight mechanisms, and establish meaningful
       | enforcement._
       | 
       | ah, so corporations can well-foundedly and meaningfully consume
       | the data of 'consumers' (an euphenism for fuel) in a way such
       | that the historic shadow suckers of everything's energy (banks)
       | can continue to partake on the sucking down of everybody's
       | data/information (with real time measurements, which is a novelty
       | in this ancient system build around trade, commerce, insurance,
       | and power-authority concentration).
        
       | greyface- wrote:
       | SEC. 203. INDIVIDUAL DATA OWNERSHIP AND CONTROL.            (e)
       | Verification And Exceptions.--            (1) REQUIRED
       | EXCEPTIONS.--A covered entity shall not permit an individual to
       | exercise a right described in subsection (a), in whole or in
       | part, if the covered entity--            (C) determines that the
       | exercise of the right would require access to or correction of
       | another individual's sensitive covered data; or
       | 
       | Simple: store all your user data in an intermingled fashion, such
       | that a read or update of any individual record necessarily
       | involves a read or update of one or more unrelated records. Now
       | you don't need to act on data access requests.
        
         | etchalon wrote:
         | Doubtful any court would accept that practice.
        
           | reeboo wrote:
           | I chuckled at the thought of U.S. judges being forced to have
           | opinions on software design principles.
        
       | unknownaccount wrote:
       | Why on earth would we want MORE restrictions and government
       | interference / intrusion in our affairs? Especially in this era
       | of worldwide creeping authoritarianism?
       | 
       | The only way implement these sorts of mandates is stomping all
       | over a developer's right to freedom of expression. I'm a firm
       | believer that code is speech and that limiting what a developer
       | can do is infringing on his own right to free speech.
        
       | chronotis wrote:
       | Ten years or so ago, I was participating in a small business
       | roundtable discussion with one of our state senators. At the
       | time, I ran a consumer research agency and would often have
       | multinational projects involving consumer data collection in both
       | the US and EU; this is before GDPR had become ratified, but Safe
       | Harbor was failing and there was ambiguity about what the future
       | state would look like.
       | 
       | Of the 15 or 20 business owners in the room, I was the only "pro
       | privacy" voice. People were very focused on what would be the
       | perceived additional cost of complying with any GDPR-style rules
       | in the US, and weren't yet thinking about the negative effects of
       | having different privacy rules in different markets. "Different
       | markets have different rules all the time," in short.
       | 
       | I maintain that it would be less complicated, less expensive, and
       | more human-friendly to use data privacy rules as globally
       | universal as can be achieved. There will always be capitalism
       | leeches that drain money through arbitrage between the policy
       | gaps, yes, but it would help.
       | 
       | (Also: there is zero chance this gets through the current US
       | Senate. Would never clear filibuster.)
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | > Would never clear filibuster.
         | 
         | A filibuster by who? Neither party would support any privacy
         | rules that placed any undue importance on privacy.
        
           | chronotis wrote:
           | I'm mostly just projecting based on the current 48+2+50 state
           | of the Senate where virtually everything gets held up. If the
           | Democrats brought it forward, I would expect the Republicans
           | to filibuster just on principle.
        
         | rt4mn wrote:
         | I would be interested to hear why you think it has no chance in
         | Senate.
        
         | legitster wrote:
         | > I maintain that it would be less complicated, less expensive,
         | and more human-friendly to use data privacy rules as globally
         | universal as can be achieved.
         | 
         | I think this is a bit naive. As someone who has had to dwell a
         | lot on the specific nuances of German privacy laws vs GDPR or
         | South Korea's, I have come to the conclusion that conflicting
         | privacy laws are a designed feature.
         | 
         | I think lawmakers certainly have consumer protection as _one_
         | of their goals, most privacy legislation has many features
         | intended to benefit domestic industries at the expense of
         | foreign ones. Or to benefit national security in some way (such
         | as requirements for certain types of data to be stored on
         | servers inside the country).
         | 
         | Even if the US was to homogenize with GDPR in some way, I
         | wouldn't doubt that the EU would fast follow with a _slightly_
         | different spin on it just to give US tech companies an extra
         | set of hoops to jump through.
         | 
         | In a way, this is already how safety regulations work in the
         | automobile industry.
        
           | chronotis wrote:
           | I agree that we're not going to see a US privacy framework
           | that's identical to GDPR and where all players have the same
           | obligations and enforcement mechanisms. What is extremely
           | problematic, IMHO, is the US having _no_ privacy framework to
           | speak of while the rest of the world does. Beyond HIPPA and
           | COPPA (and CCPA if you happen to live in Cali), there's
           | really not much recourse for US citizens besides their
           | collection of company-paid credit monitoring after each
           | security breach.
           | 
           | If one outcome of GDPR is that 10-15 years later, the US
           | adopts some sort of national privacy framework that motivates
           | industry to reevaluate their data monetization business
           | models, that's a good outcome.
        
       | weberer wrote:
       | You can also see which companies sent lobbyists to work on this
       | bill.
       | 
       | https://www.opensecrets.org/federal-lobbying/bills/summary?c...
        
         | laweijfmvo wrote:
         | The first thing to know about US Laws/Bills is that whatever
         | they name it, it typically achieves the opposite
        
           | rolph wrote:
           | this is because the title of a bill has very little to do
           | with the function of the bill turned law.
           | 
           | obfusication of a bills content and intention by using a
           | dissociative title must stop
        
           | paparush wrote:
           | Sadly true.
        
           | mdip wrote:
           | Completely, _especially_ if it has the words  "Digital",
           | "Online" or "Data". I haven't read the bill or read about the
           | bill but I'd wager a coffee there's also some form of
           | entertainment/copyright industry hostility in there.
           | 
           | I'm _really_ trying not to be cynical here, but I started so
           | I might as well finish. Step #2 is if it _does_ happen to
           | pass, the parts of the bill that _are_ actually consumer
           | protections will be unenforceable, be ruled unconstitutional
           | or have unintended negative consequences. The bad parts of
           | the law will have no issues in the courts or with
           | enforcement. They, too, will have unintended added negative
           | consequences.
        
             | roamerz wrote:
             | You forgot the words "Inflation", "Equality",
             | "Infrastructure", "Dream", "People", "Save", "Health",
             | Budget" or "Climate".
        
               | Consultant32452 wrote:
               | Patriot
        
           | classified wrote:
           | I assume "Data Privacy" means privacy for the company that
           | collected the data and "Protection" means protection from the
           | people they collected it from.
        
             | water-your-self wrote:
             | The U.S. government makes often use of the data that many
             | companies keep about us. Android geofencing is my clasic
             | example for non tech.
        
           | hot_gril wrote:
           | Or something unrelated. The "infrastructure" bill got renamed
           | to "inflation-reduction" bill despite its contents not
           | changing much. If the pandemic were still a massive concern,
           | I'll bet it'd be called the "covid19 relief" bill... oh
           | right, there was one of those, and it included foreign
           | military aid.
        
         | guerrilla wrote:
         | That is a lot worse than I imagined. So basically this would be
         | terrible or meaningless for workers/consumers?
        
           | noasaservice wrote:
           | So basically, this is a mostly toothless law, that requires
           | small companies to follow to the extreme detriment of the
           | large companies... which already likely do the bare minimum.
           | 
           | I'm not sure of the term. It's like a regulatory legal
           | barrier that keeps new companies from entering the market.
        
             | root_axis wrote:
             | > _So basically, this is a mostly toothless law, that
             | requires small companies to follow to the extreme detriment
             | of the large companies_
             | 
             | The bill outlines exemptions for business making less than
             | 40 million annually. I haven't read the whole thing so it's
             | possible I missed something, could you point out which
             | sections you're referring to to draw that conclusion?
        
             | onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
             | Small companies are exempt from CCPA?
        
             | rabuse wrote:
             | Yep, always used to stifle competition. Regulate the hell
             | out of it, so new companies can't even begin without
             | millions up front.
        
             | jedberg wrote:
             | Regulatory capture.
        
               | tomatotomato37 wrote:
               | It's almost like blindly calling for regulation without
               | accounting for the political/monetary influence of those
               | being regulated is a bad idea or something
        
               | ahtihn wrote:
               | > blindly calling for regulation [...] is a bad idea
               | 
               | What do you expect people to do instead?
        
               | water-your-self wrote:
               | Call for individual protections, possibly with a solvent
               | soaked rag in a bottle, typically.
        
               | tomatotomato37 wrote:
               | It's like a genie wish. You have to be _very_ specific in
               | what you are asking for.
        
             | zeruch wrote:
             | The term is probably "regulatory capture"
        
             | guerrilla wrote:
             | > It's like a regulatory legal barrier that keeps new
             | companies from entering the market.
             | 
             | barriers to entry [1]
             | 
             | 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barriers_to_entry
        
         | yumraj wrote:
         | Great, we have the usual anti-privacy companies there as well
         | as ByteDance .. what can go wrong.
        
           | chitowneats wrote:
           | It's insane enough letting Big Corps lobby your legislature
           | and even write language that eventually gets enshrined as
           | law.
           | 
           | It's even more insane we allow the state-affiliated entities
           | of our adversaries to do this.
        
             | randomdata wrote:
             | _> It 's insane enough letting Big Corps lobby your
             | legislature_
             | 
             | Well, it would be rather pointless to elect to hire a
             | representative to represent you and then not take time to
             | make your position known with them. They certainly are not
             | mind readers.
             | 
             | And you can't realistically remove big businesses from
             | citizenry as those who are stakeholders in big business are
             | going to bias their position to what benefits their
             | business. Business _is_ people, after all. ByteDance
             | certainly has stakeholders who are American citizens.
             | 
             | So we make a best effort to register those biases for the
             | sake of transparency. The only real alternative, short of
             | abandoning democracy entirely, is to leave it a mystery who
             | talked to their representatives.
        
               | vinay_ys wrote:
               | Isn't it the job of the representatives in a
               | representational democracy to have working mechanisms to
               | understand what their constituents' demands are?
               | Shouldn't such mechanisms be equally accessible to all
               | constituents irrespective of their ability to spend $$?
               | 
               | Also, don't the representatives have pre-election issues
               | based manifesto when they are seeking votes to get
               | elected? Shouldn't they stay true to the promises they
               | made?
        
               | randomdata wrote:
               | _> Isn 't it the job of the representatives in a
               | representational democracy to have working mechanisms to
               | understand what their constituents' demands are?_
               | 
               | The advantage big business has is scale. Big business, by
               | definition, has many more stakeholders. This means that
               | big business will be disproportionately represented by
               | the constituents. If those biases weren't made clear, and
               | each constituent's position was taken at face value, then
               | the unified front would appear stronger than it would
               | actually be if each actor were acting without those
               | biases.
               | 
               |  _> Shouldn 't they stay true to the promises they made?_
               | 
               | I'm not sure why you'd want them to. The state of the
               | world is constantly changing and new information
               | continues to flow in. You will be constantly reevaluating
               | your position in the face of new information. A
               | representative will respond to that.
               | 
               | Representatives know that some segment of the population
               | honestly believe that they are mind readers and will
               | offer up some examples of how they might try to read the
               | minds of those who buy into that witchcraft to attract
               | their vote, but marketing and reality are quite
               | different.
        
               | takeda wrote:
               | I have a representative who I agree pretty much on all
               | issues. The problem though is that he is one of 435
               | people in the House. He can just vote for, against, or
               | propose changes. But then will have to fight against
               | those who will easily accept money to ruin it.
               | 
               | I'm glad that Pelosi is using her position to impose some
               | changes on the bill so maybe something good will come out
               | of it, but I really can't stand that in US bribery is
               | essentially legal.
        
             | elashri wrote:
             | What is more insane is that this is not considered
             | corruption. Usually if this happens outside US, the US
             | government itself will call that corruption.
        
             | 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
             | Freedom of speech. All they do is pay people to speak for
             | them. They have money to do that. Gifts and other
             | tomfoolery is obviously no good but I'm not sure how you
             | could gate this without running afoul of the first
             | amendment.
        
               | carom wrote:
               | It's pretty simple, you pass an amendment that says
               | corporations are not people for the purpose of political
               | spending.
        
         | water-your-self wrote:
         | Alphabet and amazon are on the last page, alphabet having spent
         | ~3mil and amazon ~5mil
        
           | hot_gril wrote:
           | I think the theme is just that they're big companies.
        
         | nixass wrote:
         | *briberies
        
         | jdp23 wrote:
         | There's been some good reporting on the lobbying on ADPPA
         | 
         | What Microsoft, IBM and others won as the privacy bill evolved
         | - https://www.protocol.com/newsletters/policy/cloud-
         | enterprise...
         | 
         | Privacy bill triggers lobbying surge by data brokers - Privacy
         | bill triggers lobbying surge by data brokers
        
           | rt4mn wrote:
           | Microsoft has been a particularly bad actor in this space.
           | They have been hiring lobbyists to advocate at the state
           | level for shitty "consumer privacy bills", specifically
           | because they want to forestall and kneecap federal
           | legislation.
           | 
           | https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/tech-lobbyists-are-
           | pus...
        
             | vinay_ys wrote:
             | What's Microsoft's interest in this? They don't have a big
             | search or ads business. What are they doing with Consumer
             | data?
        
               | rt4mn wrote:
               | Their interest is in their bottom line and avoiding
               | regulation. Pretty much any company that has a lot of
               | users creating accounts will be impacted by even the most
               | milquetoast privacy regulation to some degree or another,
               | and I guess microsoft sees the cost of hiring a bunch of
               | lobyists as cheaper then having to deal with the
               | regulation that might come about if they dont.
        
       | donjorgenson wrote:
       | Giggety
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | 2nd rate claptrap of a bill. Just make the CCPA national.
        
         | criddell wrote:
         | I kind of wish they would just copy the EU rules. Once set of
         | rules for the US and all of Europe would be pretty nice.
        
       | jesuspiece wrote:
        
         | MerelyMortal wrote:
         | Maybe politics would be better if people didn't jump to
         | stereotypes (which don't always hold true, as evidenced by your
         | comment and the replies pointing out your error), and instead
         | of blaming/attacking each other, we could focus more efforts on
         | making things better.
        
         | rabuse wrote:
         | "It's a big club, and you ain't in it" - George Carlin
        
         | lolinder wrote:
         | 2 out of 3 sponsors are Republican, and not the kind that
         | typically cross the aisle.
        
         | weberer wrote:
         | >Cosponsors:
         | 
         | >Rep. McMorris Rodgers, Cathy [R-WA-5]
         | 
         | >Rep. Schakowsky, Janice D. [D-IL-9]
         | 
         | >Rep. Bilirakis, Gus M. [R-FL-12]
        
       | say_it_as_it_is wrote:
       | This is the proverbial shaking of the tree, whereby elected
       | officials will ask (threaten) tech lobbyists for campaign
       | contributions in exchange for their vote against the act
        
         | pessimizer wrote:
         | It's also potentially a huge score for some Democratic
         | politicians, because for every Republican that supports the
         | bill, they're going to need a Democrat to defect.
        
       | ck2 wrote:
       | Just a reminder any email you have online that is over six months
       | old can be read without a warrant.
        
         | pacija wrote:
         | Hm, I have 10 years worth of emails in my dovecot, on my metal,
         | in my basement, online. Can you please describe how can it be
         | read without a warrant by people who don't have my imap
         | password or wheel ssh key to my server?
        
           | unionpivo wrote:
           | Unless you are just emailing yourself on your server, chances
           | are that 80% of your email is searchable between Google,
           | Microsoft or Amazon.
           | 
           | I just checked on my mail (look at headers, for smtp hosts
           | not just senders and receivers).
           | 
           | For me its 76% for the past 7 years, that either originated
           | or ended in one of the big three silos.
        
           | pessimizer wrote:
           | Can you describe how it could be read _with_ a warrant, or
           | how it 's relevant at all to people who have email accounts
           | with online services?
        
           | criddell wrote:
           | Do you ever send email to other servers? If so, there are
           | copies out there.
        
           | ck2 wrote:
           | Well that's the "proper" version of the clinton email server
           | in the basement.
           | 
           | But I meant the major services all must give access to
           | virtually any federal government entity on request,
           | warrantless. I think they even have portals, imagine how that
           | is abused by anyone and everyone.
           | 
           | Not sure how it would be enforced but I would guess if the
           | feds wanted access to your server, even without a warrant,
           | you'd be forced to give it to them.
           | 
           | https://www.wired.com/2010/04/emailprivacy/
           | 
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electronic_Communications_Priv.
           | ..
        
       | asow92 wrote:
       | Could they have picked a better sounding acronym? Maybe APPA
       | (American Privacy and Protection Act)?
        
       | jawadch93 wrote:
        
       | cyral wrote:
       | I see they are also annoyed at cookie banners:
       | 
       | > SEC. 210. UNIFIED OPT-OUT MECHANISMS. For the rights
       | established under sections 204(b) and (c), and section
       | 206(c)(3)(D) not later than 18 months after the date of enactment
       | of this Act, the Commission shall establish one or more
       | acceptable privacy protective, centralized mechanisms, including
       | global privacy signals such as browser or device privacy
       | settings, for individuals to exercise all such rights through a
       | single interface for a covered entity to utilize to allow an
       | individual to make such opt out designations with respect to
       | covered data related to such individual.
        
         | shishy wrote:
         | Was scanning for this thanks for pointing it out. Some of these
         | banners are infuriating, and if I use firefox containers
         | sometimes I see them over and over, especially if I'm clearing
         | my cookies. It is insane to me that this isn't already a
         | standard.
        
           | shadowgovt wrote:
           | Standardization was attempted.
           | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Not_Track
           | 
           | the tl;dr for that story is that it wasn't mandated to be
           | honored, the industry didn't voluntarily adopt it widely, and
           | when IE 10 tried to turn it on by default and the standard's
           | lead supporter responded by submitting a patch to Apache web
           | server to ignore the DNT signal coming from IE 10 because
           | "does not protect anyone's privacy unless the recipients
           | believe it was set by a real human being, with a real
           | preference for privacy over personalization," that situation
           | pretty much killed it in the crib.
           | 
           | The problem is technologically simple to solve; all the
           | challenges are social and legal.
        
             | m463 wrote:
             | I believe DNT was used for better browser fingerprinting.
        
             | cphoover wrote:
             | I wonder if a browser plugin that utilizes AI would work as
             | a sidestep to a standardized cookie dialog. Granted someone
             | would have to build such a tool and standardization seems
             | inevitable at some point. Shouldn't be too difficult to
             | build something like that.
        
               | weberer wrote:
               | There's a browser plugin called uMatrix that lets you
               | block cookies and javascript on a per-site basis. I just
               | have it blocking all cookies by default unless its a site
               | I need to log in to.
        
             | Dalewyn wrote:
             | It's kind of hilarious that of all the datapoints websites
             | will gorge upon, DNT is the one thing they all toss out.
        
           | tagawa wrote:
           | There is a standard that has some recognition and uptake
           | (though needs more) - Global Privacy Control. It's been
           | adopted by some browsers and publishers, and IIRC is a
           | requirement for CCPA (California Consumer Privacy Act)
           | compliance. https://globalprivacycontrol.org/
        
             | hunterb123 wrote:
             | They'll just make it so complicated where you have to use
             | an embed from Google or something to implement it properly,
             | similar to CCPA.
             | 
             | In the end Google ends up in a script on the page somehow
             | in the name of privacy.
        
         | Spivak wrote:
         | halle-fuckin-lujah please don't make it some bullshit
         | centralized service where you have to have a specific cookie
         | from a random website to actually use it. please just expand
         | DNT.
        
           | bdougherty wrote:
           | More likely it will be GPC
           | (https://globalprivacycontrol.org).
        
           | user3939382 wrote:
           | In the sick world we live in, ad companies would love a more
           | granular DNT response from your browser so they can use it to
           | fingerprint you.
        
         | hedora wrote:
         | They need to specify that this has to work in an anonymous, per
         | device way (like DNT).
         | 
         | Otherwise, google could claim its current policies are
         | compliant. ("Just log in if you want to be 'anonymous'...")
        
           | stvswn wrote:
           | Google does not rely on a user being logged in. Go to
           | adsettings.google.com in a logged out state, for example. I'm
           | not sure what you're referring to.
        
             | singron wrote:
             | That's only for ad personalization. If you want to turn off
             | web and app activity, you have to be logged in.
             | 
             | The ad industry has had these opt-outs for a while, but you
             | have to set opt-out cookies on about 500 sites, so it's not
             | practical. DNT solves that problem, but the industry won't
             | voluntarily adopt any solution that has any realistic
             | chance of making a difference.
        
         | hot_gril wrote:
         | Sigh. I have my cookies enabled because I want to use them. If
         | I didn't, I wouldn't enable them. I wish there were a "fuck
         | GDPR, I agree to whatever terms" browser setting.
        
           | klabb3 wrote:
           | GDPR doesn't disallow cookies, it disallows tracking cookies,
           | afaik. Tracking data is not yours too see, so how could you
           | _use them_? Do you mean that you want personalized ads?
        
             | hot_gril wrote:
             | I want to use the site without getting a banner. Some
             | require me to agree to cookies. I don't care what they do
             | with the cookies. Almost nobody does.
        
       | yrgulation wrote:
       | Will you guys get to click popups on every.single.site.? If so
       | believe it's annoying. There must be a better way.
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | macns wrote:
       | Maybe I'm too romantic, but I'd like to see an american GDPR (not
       | saying that the eu name or the bill itself is better), and then
       | an Asian and so on till we have one global GDPR protecting all
       | consumer data.
       | 
       | </daydream>
        
         | ThomPete wrote:
         | GDPR is a horrible horrible solution and only helps the big
         | corporations who can afford all the extra work to ensure that
         | users who actually end up agreeing to the terms are locked in.
         | 
         | It helps no one besides politicians who now have create more
         | work for them selves, and is an abomination just like the
         | cookie policy.
        
       | hatware wrote:
       | Bills are always named so you think they're good! We are not too
       | far from 1984 now.
        
         | macintux wrote:
         | Can you expand on what you feel is wrong with the bill?
        
           | hatware wrote:
           | Feel free to read up on the last 20 years of US politics.
           | Same shit, different day.
        
             | macintux wrote:
             | The point of HN is not to make winking, snide comments
             | about how things are broken, but to actually
             | discuss/document what's good or bad.
             | 
             | You're not adding any value without diving into details.
        
               | hatware wrote:
               | And you're not adding any value by staying ignorant to
               | history.
               | 
               | It's not my job to spoon-feed you the problems and
               | solutions.
        
         | dekken_ wrote:
         | Always? Unlikely, can be sure, but I doubt it's always.
        
           | hatware wrote:
           | Boot taste good.
        
             | dekken_ wrote:
             | Nah I just know the difference between reality and
             | generalizations.
        
               | hatware wrote:
               | You'd be surprised.
        
         | matai_kolila wrote:
         | I can't remember the last time I saw a non-iroinic reference to
         | 1984.
         | 
         | Have you read the book? It's nothing at all like how we live
         | today, and (as far as I can tell) this would do nothing towards
         | making our lives more like how the lives of Winston and Julia
         | were in the novel.
        
           | bdougherty wrote:
           | Telescreen, newspeak, mass surveillance, perpetual war,
           | "officials" acting as if what they are saying now is always
           | what they said, etc. It's almost easier to list the things
           | that we _don 't_ have in common.
        
             | matai_kolila wrote:
             | Literally none of those things are real as actually
             | described in the novel.
             | 
             | Keeping a diary is punishable by _death_ (that 's the
             | premise of the entire story), it's kind of silly to compare
             | that with our lives today.
        
               | rt4mn wrote:
               | 1984 was published in 1949. It is partially _science
               | fiction_. Tricorders are not literally the same as cell
               | phones, either, but if you ignore the parrelels you are
               | doing a disservice to the important role and lessons of
               | good sci-fi.
               | 
               | The thing I tell most people is that we currently live
               | under more surveillance then folks in 1984. "You had to
               | live--did live, from habit that became instinct--in the
               | assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and,
               | except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." nowadays
               | your movement is not safe even in darkness.
               | 
               | We would be even more screwed then folks living in that
               | fictional regime if we backslide away from rights based
               | democratic rule of law.
        
               | matai_kolila wrote:
               | I couldn't disagree more strongly; the fact that you can
               | write this and not worry for the rest of your life about
               | being killed is the whole point.
               | 
               | I urge you to reread 1984, and focus on how people who
               | broke the rules were treated. People weren't deplatformed
               | or cancelled, they were murdered.
        
               | rt4mn wrote:
               | I do worry about being killed by the government. I worry
               | about everything related to government abuse of power and
               | surveillance. I wear my tinfoil with with pride, thank
               | you very much.
               | 
               | On a more serious note (in case it was not clear that I
               | was being facetious), you are absolute correct that an
               | important theme (and, arguably, the primary / key
               | message) of 1984 is to highlight the horror and dangers
               | of a totalitarian government, and to push back against
               | the very, very pressing danger of Nazi Germany and the
               | Soviet Union.
               | 
               | But one of the great things about sci-fi / dystopian /
               | utopian fiction is that it lets us look at a potential
               | future, ask ourselves if thats a world we want to live
               | in, and if its not, we can think about what it might take
               | for us to go down that path, and what steps we should
               | take if we want to avoid it.
               | 
               | You are right to point out that we dont live an a
               | totalitarian surveillance state run by elites without
               | respect for the rule of law. But my point is that we
               | _could_ , and that we currently do live in a
               | _surveillance state_. It just happens to be a democratic
               | surveillance state run by elected representatives of the
               | people with a strong culture of respect of the rule of
               | law. But its a surveillance state nevertheless.
               | 
               | I wont suggest you re-read 1984, but I would suggest
               | taking a look at this opinion piece by Pussy Riot's Nadya
               | Tolokonnikova: https://www.nytimesn7cgmftshazwhfgzm37qxb4
               | 4r64ytbb2dj3x62d2l... (or i guess
               | https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/26/opinion/navalny-
               | russia.ht..., but I suggest the onion link)
               | 
               | Or at least the last paragraph: "Our president has only
               | just recently had the law changed so that he can stay in
               | power until 2036, but his program of repression didn't
               | start out this blatantly. These things happen in pieces,
               | bit by bit, small acts. And each one may even seem
               | relatively benign at first, perhaps bad, but not fatal.
               | You get angry, maybe you speak out, but you get on with
               | your life. The promise of our democracy was chipped away
               | in pieces, one by one: corrupt cronies appointed,
               | presidential orders issued, actions taken, laws passed,
               | votes rigged. It happens slowly, intermittently;
               | sometimes we couldn't see how steadily. Autocracy crept
               | in, like the coward it is."
               | 
               | Persistent mass surveillance is not mentioned. Abusive
               | government surveillance tends to fly under the radar. But
               | one of the lessons of 1984 is that you ignore it at your
               | peril.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | matai_kolila wrote:
               | I don't disagree or agree with what you've written
               | generally here, but specifically speaking 1984 is not a
               | reflection of current reality for Americans, and you seem
               | to agree with that.
               | 
               | That's an important point, and I think there are a lot of
               | folks who would try to disagree. There are people in this
               | very comment thread that believe 1984 is not a work of
               | fiction, and that's silly. Those are the people I'm
               | disagreeing with.
               | 
               | I'm not really interested in generic, "society is falling
               | apart" conversations, as every society ever has been
               | saying that about different things, and yes they even
               | followed up with, "No but for us it's real!"
        
               | rt4mn wrote:
               | > specifically speaking 1984 is not a reflection of
               | current reality for Americans, and you seem to agree with
               | that
               | 
               | Of course 1984 is not a reflection of current reality. it
               | was not a reflection of current reality back when it was
               | written. Science fiction is not a fun-house mirror
               | reflecting back a warped version of the present, its a
               | kaleidoscope looking into the future.
               | 
               | I have not seen anyone in this thread say "1984 is
               | totally real and not a work of fiction", or confusing
               | that world with reality. I've only seen people using the
               | novel as it was intended to be used (as a rhetorical and
               | persuasive tool) and pointing out: "There are a number of
               | very real parallels between the world we live in and the
               | world of 1984, and the number of parallels is increasing.
               | This is a giant blinking warning light, and we should
               | change course"
               | 
               | > I'm not really interested in generic, "society is
               | falling apart" conversations, as every society ever has
               | been saying that about different things, and yes they
               | even followed up with, "No but for us it's real!"
               | 
               | I sympathize with your lack of interest in that
               | conversation, its not a fun one, but its important and
               | your rational for avoiding it is flawed. True, very
               | society every has had its doomsayers, and they were very
               | often wrong. But a lot of them were right, too. Progress
               | is not inevitable. Societal backsliding has happened many
               | times throughout the course of human history, and
               | democratic / rule of law backsliding has happened a lot
               | in very, very recent history. Back when that opinion
               | piece I linked too was written, the new york times had
               | reporters based in russia. Now they don't.
               | 
               | Judge Doomsayers like me based on the specific doom we
               | forsee, not on the fact that we are doomspeaking. (and
               | now I promise I'm done editing, even for spelling, since
               | thats gotten me hooked two bloody revisions ago)
        
               | matai_kolila wrote:
               | > Telescreen, newspeak, mass surveillance, perpetual war,
               | "officials" acting as if what they are saying now is
               | always what they said, etc. It's almost easier to list
               | the things that we don't have in common.
               | 
               | > The thing I tell most people is that we currently live
               | under more surveillance then folks in 1984.
               | 
               | > In ~20 years you'll see how silly you are for welcoming
               | totalitarianism. You won't care until it effects you.
               | 
               | Three examples from this thread (one by you) of folks
               | claiming "1984 is totally real and not a work of
               | fiction", at least to the degree of what I originally
               | said (you're misconstruing what I wrote for rhetorical
               | value, but if you look at what I _actually_ claimed,
               | these quotes fit).
               | 
               | There are not "a number of very real parallels between
               | the world we live in and the world of 1984", this is a
               | misremembering of the content of the novel. You don't get
               | to just hand select a few things from the novel and say,
               | "Look, 1984!" in the same way you don't get to cite "well
               | the humans in Lord of the Rings breathed air so it's the
               | same as today!"
               | 
               | For example, without the critical, "or else you die"
               | consequences of misbehavior in the 1984 novel, none of
               | the "scary" things in the novel carry anything remotely
               | approaching the weight or meaningfulness.
        
               | pessimizer wrote:
               | > Three examples from this thread (one by you) of folks
               | claiming "1984 is totally real and not a work of
               | fiction",
               | 
               | I'm not sure that you can accuse anyone of misconstruing
               | anything unless you can find this quote in another
               | comment, or anything resembling it.
        
               | matai_kolila wrote:
               | I'm not really interested in playing the semantics game,
               | I concede all points to anyone who wants to try.
        
               | hatware wrote:
               | I like how calling you out somehow implies 1984 was not
               | fiction. What a set of hoops!
               | 
               | Then when _others_ call you out, you call it semantics
               | games. Rich.
        
               | hatware wrote:
               | In ~20 years you'll see how silly you are for welcoming
               | totalitarianism. You won't care until it effects you.
               | 
               | And then it will be too late for you to do anything about
               | it.
        
               | [deleted]
        
               | matai_kolila wrote:
               | Welcoming, not welcoming; you don't know my position on
               | totalitarianism, you just know I've read 1984 and have
               | opinions about the validity of parallels with modern day.
               | 
               | For all you know I prefer "Brave New World" analogies!
        
               | hatware wrote:
               | > you don't know my position on totalitarianism
               | 
               | We all know your position, and you're not on the right
               | side of history. Period.
        
             | pessimizer wrote:
             | Speakwrites are coming. It'll be no time at all until your
             | computer changes what you're typing to something more
             | appropriate, or throws up a modal that reads:
             | 
             | "Most writers don't write things like this. You should
             | consider for a moment whether this is how you want to
             | present yourself to others. Press [suggestions] for
             | alternate ways to express a similar idea, or press [submit]
             | to become legally and socially liable for the consequences
             | of your actions."
        
             | [deleted]
        
           | throwaway71271 wrote:
           | when people say '1984' they dont always mean Winston and
           | Julia, sometimes they mean the Proles.
           | 
           | > If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
           | 
           | https://www.abhaf.org/assets/books/html/1984/47.html
        
           | hatware wrote:
           | > Have you read the book?
           | 
           | Have you...? Imagine being this far away from the truth.
           | Yikes.
        
         | hallway_monitor wrote:
         | If it has anything about protecting children in it or it has to
         | do with limiting encryption you are correct.
        
           | viridian wrote:
           | > limiting encryption
           | 
           | You mean stopping online crime, identity theft, and
           | cyberbullying. Going after encryption is the goal, the stated
           | goal is usually about more tangible, friendly concepts.
        
           | antonymy wrote:
           | Well...
           | 
           | >SEC. 406. COPPA.
           | 
           | >(a) In General.--Nothing in this Act shall be construed to
           | relieve or change any obligations that a covered entity or
           | another person may have under the Children's Online Privacy
           | Protection Act of 1998 (15 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.).
           | 
           | >(b) Updated Regulations.--Not later than 180 days after the
           | enactment of this Act, the Commission shall amend its rules
           | issued pursuant to the Children's Online Privacy Protection
           | Act of 1998 (15 U.S.C. 6501 et seq.) to make reference to the
           | additional requirements placed on covered entities under this
           | Act, in addition to those already enacted under the
           | Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 that may
           | already apply to some of such covered entities.
           | 
           | Not exactly new rules, but they're making sure this doesn't
           | overwrite anything they already enacted "for the children".
        
             | kevinventullo wrote:
             | Also, my understanding is that COPPA is actually pretty
             | well-scoped to legitimately protecting children. I say this
             | as someone who works on a product that is affected by
             | COPPA.
        
       | kornhole wrote:
       | The corporate captured government will only protect their privacy
       | and profits. The quicker people realize this, the better.
        
       ___________________________________________________________________
       (page generated 2022-09-22 23:00 UTC)