Legislation preventing data broker sales to government agencies moves forward
cyberscoop.com
The bill may ultimately be included in a larger surveillance reform package aimed at reforming Section 702.

The House Judiciary Committee advanced the bill 30-0.

“This bill is the latest sign of bipartisan support in Congress to tackle the government’s warrantless purchase of American’s personal data, such as location information and internet records, in circumvention of the Fourth Amendment and statutory protections,” Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of EPIC wrote in a statement.

“We’re seeing some incredible leadership on the hill and off the hill,” said Sean Vitka, policy counsel for Demand Progress. “The House has made it clear they want to close the data broker loophole, full stop,” he said.

  • varsock@programming.dev
    1·
    1 year ago

    A step in the right direction but until there are more robust privacy laws in place, this will not go away.

    If their gov is restricted on buying from data brokers, are other governments, foreign entities?

    The inherit issue is the American’s data can be harvested and sold. Setting up legal restrictions toward certain entities will just cause those entities to “legally self identify” as another entity. Or do business with an entity that is allowed access to American’s data.

    • HubertManne@kbin.social
      1·
      7 months ago

      so much agree. Why do we even allow data brokers? How about something like an entitiy cannot collect information that is not necessary to conduct the business it is in and cannot sell or provide that information to any other entity outside of the one they collected the information from which must be provided free upon request.

      • varsock@programming.dev
        1·
        7 months ago

        wow 10 months flew by since this was posted and since then the United States had a surprise privacy bill that is bipartisan that sort of addresses the issues you and I mentioned. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2024/04/07/congress-privacy-deal-cantwell-rodgers/

        This bill was proposed around the same time the TikTok ban was announced. I speculate that law makers had a difficult time framing the arguments against TikTok when “the data of citizens have no protections so there was no easy legal grounds to forbit the likes of TikTok to harvest it”

        From what I’ve heard, this bill is pretty good. I need to educate myself more on it, however.