America’s New Data Privacy Bills Won’t Protect Us
We need to have a much bigger conversation about privacy in relation to our increasingly digital lives
California. Hawaii. Maryland. Massachusetts. New Mexico. New Jersey. New York. North Dakota. Rhode Island. Washington. The last time I checked, each of these states had introduced draft “privacy legislation” to address the rights of consumers online. While Washington State has introduced a GDPR-style proposal, most states have put forth copycat legislation along the lines of the California Consumer Privacy Act. In addition to the draft state laws, there have also been a number of calls for comprehensive federal legislation. Yet, despite this deluge of draft “privacy” proposals, we are still not having a meaningful conversation about our privacy in an increasingly digital world.
While these measures represent a positive expression of consumer sentiment and political will, they do not approximate meaningful privacy protections for individuals because they only address data privacy. The difference between privacy and data privacy is not a question of semantics. To varying degrees, the proposals listed above address our rights in relation to data that we have shared “online,” requiring things like enhanced transparency in privacy policies, better notice and consent…
