The Massachusetts House of Representatives will be voting TODAY, on a data privacy bill.
Your precise location data – showing which doctor’s office you visited last month, which NO KINGS rallies you’ve attended, and when and where you drop your kids off every day – is currently for sale on the open market. The shadowy collection and processing of your data by Big Tech and data brokers consistently exposes your private life to bad actors, including Trump’s ICE — just one of many buyers of our precise geolocation data.
Over the past year, civil liberties advocates have been pushing for a robust data privacy bill that does three things:
- Data minimization: Organizations should only be able to collect, use, and retain the minimum amount of personal information necessary to fulfill a specific, authorized purpose (Lay terms: If it’s not essential, you can’t collect it, and you certainly keep it.)
- Ban on the sale of sensitive data: This includes location data, but also health data, data on immigration status, data on gender identity and sexual orientation, biometric data, etc.
- Private right of action: If your rights are violated, you should be able to sue.
The House bill contains some major wins, but also some clear areas for improvement.
What’s good in the bill: strong protections to ban the sale of location data; private right of action
What needs improvement: data minimization language; protections for sensitive data other than location data
Can you write to your state rep today about the importance of passing a strong bill? Read on for what that means.
Here’s what a strong bill looks like.
Join us in supporting the following amendments backed by our allies in the civil liberties, civil rights, and labor advocacy community:
- #3 to reiterate that use of employer owned devices is a mandatory subject of collective bargaining, filed be Rep. Field
- #7 to restrict employer ability to disclose employee data without express employee consent, filed by Rep. Montaño
- #8 to limit the transfer of employee data outside of operationally necessary reasons, filed by Rep. Montaño
- #10 to ban surveillance pricing for groceries, filed by Rep. Sabadosa
- #13 to strengthen the definition of “affirmative consent,” filed by Rep. Sabadosa
- #16 to fix the data minimization language, filed by Rep. Decker
- #21 to strengthen the private right of action, filed by Rep. Cataldo
- #33 to clarify the definition of “transfer,” filed by Rep. Rogers
- #36 to protect LGBTQ youth data, filed by Rep. Montaño
- #38 to strengthen the data minimization language, filed by Rep. Kilcoyne
- #40 to strengthen the data minimization language, filed by Rep. Owens
Join us in opposing the following amendments:
- #11, which weakens privacy notification, filed by Rep. Phillips
- #15, which creates a wholesale exemption to the bill for banks and financial institutions, filed by Rep. Chris Markey
- #17, which creates a wholesale exemption for insurers, filed by Rep. Biele
- #18, which eliminates the PRA, filed by Rep. Biele
- #19, which creates an exemption to the LSA for “mobility” data, filed by Rep. Kilcoyne
- #20, which creates a loophole in the non-discrimination protections, filed by Rep. Cusack
