Yesterday was Constitution Day, in honor of the signing of the Constitution on September 17, 1787. And even though the Bill of Rights wasn’t approved by Congress until September 25, 1789 (and ratified two years later), the Fourth Amendment is on my mind.
The Fourth Amendment, which is our guarantee of basic privacy rights, has been under assault by the Trump administration, and especially by ICE.
The Trump administration has been doing an end run around the Fourth Amendment by purchasing our data from the shady data brokers who make a profit off of buying and selling our data. You don’t need a warrant when you can buy something on an open market.
Massachusetts has an opportunity to fix this by passing a strong data privacy bill this session, protecting us from both corporate and government surveillance.
A strong data privacy bill is one that completely bans the sale of sensitive data and location data, creates strong statutory limits on data collection and processing, and includes a private right of action to hold companies accountable. That last part is key: if you can’t sue when your rights are violated, then how real are those rights?
Legislators on Beacon Hill are negotiating a final data privacy bill. You can be sure they are hearing from Google and Facebook lobbyists, who want to water down the bill to line their own pockets. Make sure they hear from you about passing the strongest bill possible.
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