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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) has proposed a federal privacy law that would preempt tougher privacy rules issued by states.
Rubio's announcement Wednesday said that his American Data Dissemination (ADD) Act "provides overdue transparency and accountability from the tech industry while ensuring that small businesses and startups are still able to innovate and compete in the digital marketplace."
But Rubio's bill establishes a process for creating rules instead of issuing specific rules right away, and it allows up to 27 months for Congress or the Federal Trade Commission to write the actual rules.
In addition, the bill text says it "shall supersede" any provision of a state law that pertains to the same consumer data governed by Rubio's proposed federal law. That includes names, Social Security numbers, other government ID numbers, financial transactions, medical histories, criminal histories, employment histories, user-generated content, "unique biometric data, such as fingerprint, voice print, retina or iris image, or other unique physical representation," and other personal data collected by companies.
[...] Rubio's bill wouldn't do much to protect Americans' data privacy, consumer advocacy group Public Knowledge said. The Rubio bill uses the Privacy Act of 1974 as its framework; the 1974 law applies to federal agencies, but Rubio's bill would apply similar rules to the private sector.
[...] The Act "can generally be characterized as an omnibus 'code of fair information practices' that attempts to regulate the collection, maintenance, use, and dissemination of personal information by federal executive branch agencies," the DOJ says in an overview last updated in 2015. "However, the Act's imprecise language, limited legislative history, and somewhat outdated regulatory guidelines have rendered it a difficult statute to decipher and apply."
Despite the DOJ saying the law is confusing, Rubio argued in an op-ed for The Hill that the Privacy Act of 1974 is "widely considered one of the seminal pieces of privacy law in effect today."
[...] Congressional Democrats recently proposed a much stricter privacy law, which could issue steep fines to companies and send their top executives to prison for up to 20 years if they violate Americans' privacy.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:15AM (35 children)
So what's the bit of the constitution that might allow the federal government to do this? Interstate commerce is a huge stretch given that not all websites are engaged in commerce at all.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:17AM (14 children)
Exactly what I was thinking.
These people are openly ignoring the chain of command: The People -> States -> Federal.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:23AM (13 children)
The constitution doesn't specify that unaddressed authority be reserved for the people over the states. It leaves the question open to each state to decide. By all rights, the states should have way more power than the federal government. Unfortunately SCOTUS doesn't like the taste of that idea and the feds have more armed forces than any individual state.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:31AM (9 children)
By all rights, the states should have way more power than the federal government. Unfortunately SCOTUS doesn't like the taste of that idea...
Yeah, well, you know, Jim Crow and all. And I wouldn't want to be under Sheriff Buford T Justice's thumb either. When the state goes crazy (stuff like dumping pig shit into the water), sometimes you have to call in the cavalry. Just wish people were more interested in keeping things honest.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:48AM (8 children)
Needs to be done legally or not done at all though. Giving the feds your approval to violate the constitution for any reason whatsoever is about the worst possible political position anyone could take.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:42AM (7 children)
But we have that power, by voting and active petitioning, call it abuse if you want, but one way or another we will (*sigh* if we only would) protect ourselves, through our reps and their big guns (just like Eisenhower sending in regular army to protect peoples' rights). We just have to be rational about it, with great oversight, and of course, that part is not happening now.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 4, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:48AM (6 children)
That was in fact legal. The constitution was amended to that effect, it just took a long time for enforcement to catch up.
No, being reasonable about when it's okay for the government to ignore the legal limits we have placed upon it is not in fact ever reasonable. Changing those limits is fine but you are either ruled by laws or ruled by tyrants. Because that's exactly what you call someone who can just do whatever they like without regard to any law. I prefer laws.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @07:57AM (5 children)
I prefer laws.
I would too, but, rational or not, the majority rules. The inmates run the asylum. That's what we are stuck with. It's on us.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1) by pTamok on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:53AM (1 child)
> > I prefer laws.
> I would too, but, rational or not, the majority rules. The inmates run the asylum. That's what we are stuck with. It's on us.
The majority may rule now, but if you can convince individual members of a majority that they may in future become members of a minority, then they are more likely to support minority rights.
It is only the short-term thinkers who believe that majorities are permanent. Some try to ensure that a particular in-group will remain as a permanent majority, but history shows this is remarkably hard to do.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday January 20 2019, @06:22PM
I never said anything about a particular majority being permanent. On the contrary they are quite fickle and fluid. That's part of the problem. Yes, long term thinking goes out the window. However, the majority still decides where to point the gun.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:34PM (2 children)
No, the majority has no say at all in the matter. SCOTUS is the arbiter of that and they are unaccountable to anyone.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 21 2019, @12:26AM (1 child)
they are unaccountable to anyone.
Vee haf vays...
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 21 2019, @12:50AM
Vell, ve had better make use of zose vays soon, before ze court ends up 7-2 hardline Neocon und ve end up back in zer nineteenth century viz ze "Vhites Only" signs all over zer place again.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Sunday January 20 2019, @08:11PM (1 child)
Thanks, good clarification. Also yes, very much an instance of the people with the guns get to decide the actual hierarchy of power. A pretty good indication of why submitting to "gun control" is a bad plan for the people.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:36PM
You'd think that would be obvious what with not once in the history of the world has disarming a people been a precursor to their increased liberty. It's been the opposite every single time, usually with quite bloody results.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 21 2019, @01:44AM
"'specify that unaddressed authority be reserved for the people over the states"
The preamble defines both the origin of authority and the scope of the document when it says "We the people".
The 10th amendment says:
"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."
Since origin of authority is defined in the preamble, the delegation specified by the 10th amendment is redundant. In this case by saying "respectively" the 10th conflicts with the preamble. If the authority was originally derived from the people, then those rights were already with the people and require no articulation of order of precedence. So what you have hear is typical self conflicting circle jerk rhetoric dating all the way back to 1776.
This is doubly important when we consider that SCOTUS regards the dictionary act to have greater precedence than the preamble of the Constitution. I imagine they would interpret the preamble to be referring to people, but the 10th would be referring to corporations. Probably took em' a while to work that out in a bathroom stall, but we'll never know since they wiped their asses with the constitution so many times that no piece of paper in the building should be regarded as safe.
They don't respect their oaths. The only thing that obliges us to respect their titles is physical force. The problem is no longer rhetorical, political or even legislative. It really doesn't matter what Rubio does, since we aren't a nation of laws anymore. And that is on SCOTUS. It was their job, and they fucked it up.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:08AM
Census. They're just getting a head start on the details.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @04:18AM (1 child)
Pull the other one Buzzie. If the commerce power was a condom it'd be stretched from Anchorage to Honolulu already.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:49AM
I was asking about legitimate authority, not what they'd claim gave them authority.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:44AM (15 children)
My suspicion is that the driver is the political attacks by some states on unpopular businesses. For example, New York has a ridiculous amount of power because so many businesses are headquartered or publicly traded in the state (so anything material that affects your business anywhere in the world is a potential grounds for a New York lawsuit for the above companies). And when Exxon Mobil revealed that at one time they had done some climate change research, they were sued [wikipedia.org] by several states and a US territory (New York, California, Massachusetts, and the Virgin Islands), all for the same thing.
I think there's a case here that some potentially illegal activities shouldn't instantly result in potentially dozens of different court cases all for the same crime. But on the other hand, the federal government is notorious for passing regulations and then failing to police them. This would be a convenient way to void a lot of state law on privacy and data protection arbitrarily (possibly to be expanded in the future to a much wider scope). So while I see some bit of benefit to the proposed ideas, the implementation is a complete disaster and probably would eventually break the separation of power between state and federal government.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @05:53AM (14 children)
Could be but there needs to be an amendment if so. The commerce clause was written to keep say Virginia from slapping a tariff on Carolina tobacco or the like. It was never intended as a shoehorn the government could use for absolutely anything they wanted and that toy needs to be taken away from them badly.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 20 2019, @03:03PM (13 children)
An Amendment to the constittution that makes America an opt-in entity, whose membership is only allowed when both the state and federal budgets are passed on time and the each branch of government has signed renewal paperwork. If either state or federal government has not handled their business, the breaching party (whether state or federal government) may secede or throw out the other.
This would result in a few years to decades of shakeup which might be better or worse for the US than the situation is right now, but at the same time it would rein in the budgetary abuses going on each year by partisans pushing an agenda, offer a clear road to secession for any state entity or the federal government to remove a party who is breaching their obligations to state or country, and would provide the foundation necessary to clear the way for constitutional congresses at both the state and federal levels, something that is fervently needed in order to clear up ambiguities, obsolete rules or interpretations, and help update legal foundations to match a number of unexpected realities of the modern world ranging from identity/voter fraud to clarified and enumerated privacy protections for all Americans at the local, state, and federal levels.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Sunday January 20 2019, @10:46PM (12 children)
I can't help feeling that your suggestion would wind up with Americans killing each other in quite large numbers again.
I imagine the Deep South would be among the first to secede, and when their wobbly economies collapsed without their current source of subsidies, then their corrupt leaders would be forced to manufacture some sort of casus belli to keep power.
Just a shower thought.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 20 2019, @11:44PM (11 children)
What do you mean "again"? You're far more likely to be murdered today than you were in the actual wild west. Doesn't say much for the usefulness of having all these police around constantly invading our privacy and infringing on our liberties, does it?
It's kind of odd that you'd think the states that control the food and water of the rich states would be in the disadvantageous position. Even if it were so, all the open borders people would suddenly find themselves flooded with tens of millions of people who were formerly sucking up federal assistance. You don't think it'd happen? How do you think the blues moved from the Mississippi delta to Detroit and Chicago?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 21 2019, @12:07AM (7 children)
If you just calmed down for a second, you might have realized I meant the Civil War you guys had not so long ago when I put "again".
The states you claim control the food and water of the rich states only do so because of the massive subsidies they are paid to do that farming.
The rich states would spend the billions they save on importing food from other countries.
You know, like everyone else in the world does.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:59AM (5 children)
Those subsidies are there to keep food from commanding market value and starving those in cities who have no means to produce their own. No other reason.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 21 2019, @01:26AM (4 children)
That is the exact opposite of what farming subsidies are for.
They're actually to give the farmers a margin on the cost of production.
Have you never wondered why farmers protest when anyone ever talks about taking their "incentives" away?
If the farmers could make more money without the subsidies, don't you think they'd be blocking the main street of the capital city with their tractors to demand their removal?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @12:55PM (3 children)
I see that you don't understand even the most basic supply and demand dynamics. I'd explain it but I get the impression you're not inclined to learn them.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Monday January 21 2019, @07:22PM (2 children)
You're delusional if you think farmers are anything other than price takers. Any search will explain it to you.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday January 23 2019, @12:03AM (1 child)
And you're mistaken if you think economics are that simple and lack any feedbacks.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday January 23 2019, @01:33AM
Farm subsidies have nothing to do with economics, despite what your farming neighbours tell you, they're political.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:13PM
today I learned 2 centuries ago is "not so long"
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Monday January 21 2019, @12:40AM (2 children)
The 'blues' from Mississippi are nothing like the 'blues' from Hollywood. And thought they won't admit it, the reds suck more money from the feds than the blues. That's a big part of the national paradox. What color is the biggest welfare state?
And open borders are a two way street. It's always about the money. I still don't know why a caribou, or even chimney smoke has more freedom of movement than a human.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:09AM
I've heard that argument before and it doesn't float any better now than it ever has. They keep voting to turn off the Open Wallet policy and the blues keep telling them no. I see no fault in trying to get a bit of your tax dollars that you had to pay for programs you don't want back through those very programs.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday January 21 2019, @01:12AM
Oh, I was talking about the musical style rather than state colors, by the way. People got tired of staying where they couldn't make ends meet and headed upriver, which is how we got the all that fine electric blues coming out of Chicago and Detroit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Tuesday January 22 2019, @05:09PM
Couldn't this basically be the motto of Congress the last 100 years? But they do it anyway.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"