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Senate takes another stab at privacy law with proposed COPRA bill
Perhaps the third time's the charm: a group of Senate Democrats, following in the recent footsteps of their colleagues in both chambers, has introduced a bill that would impose sweeping reforms to the current disaster patchwork of US privacy law.
The bill (PDF), dubbed the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA), seeks to provide US consumers with a blanket set of privacy rights. The scope and goal of COPRA are in the same vein as Europe's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which went into effect in May 2018.
Privacy rights "should be like your Miranda rights—clear as a bell as to what they are and what constitutes a violation," Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), who introduced the bill, said in a statement. Senators Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) also co-sponsored the bill.
The press release announcing the bill also includes statements of support from several consumer and privacy advocacy groups, such as Consumer Reports, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, and the NAACP.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fadrian on Wednesday November 27 2019, @01:56PM (7 children)
Sadly, the list of D's following the co-sponsors names will ensure this legislation dies a speedy death in front of Moscow Mitch's committees. And, if by some miracle it happens to get past those hurdles, it will never get to the floor for a vote.
Wake me up when the Democrats retake the Senate.
That is all.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Wednesday November 27 2019, @02:10PM (1 child)
Also, any supporters could be branded as "COPRAphiliacs" (don't Google that at work).
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by J_Darnley on Wednesday November 27 2019, @02:13PM
Dammit. You beat me to the joke.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @02:14PM (1 child)
And don't forget that the Mitchster [twimg.com] has held up something like 400 bills [nationalmemo.com] passed by the House [thehill.com] since the beginning of 2019.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @05:00PM
That article is disingenuous in at least two ways.
The first is that it lies about the bill count. Here [congress.gov] is a list of all bills introduce by the house. The exact count, as of now, is 335. Unfortunately there's no clear date filter but it's pretty safe to say the number was significantly lower 2 months ago when that article was written. 300 is an absurd number of bills, well over 1 per day. There's no reason to exaggerate, but sensationalists can't resist sensationalizing even when the truth itself is already pretty absurd!
The second, and more important, are the bills themselves. Look through the bills listed in the above link. You'll find some genuinely good bills that have not made their way through the senate yet, but they're vastly outnumbered by a large number of bills that clearly have no chance of passing along the lines of the 'let's take in a bunch of syrian "moderate rebels" as refugees act.'
Democracy doesn't work when people don't work together. I think the behavior this paper references is not only unproductive but actively counterproductive. How is introducing on the order of tens of laws per day (that 335 is a small subset of all bills introduced) conducive to creating a society that has any clue whatsoever what's going on with their nation's legal and political systems? I think it also even shows a disinterest in actually trying to get these things passed. Both parties want various things. They could compromise and make a deal. Instead we just get rampant trolling.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @05:34PM
Yup, like climate change protecting privacy is now going to be a "liberal issue."
We can't protect your privacy because then those damn commies win!
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 27 2019, @08:56PM
I remember a time when they did have control of the senate, and they let everybody spy on us back then too, did nothing about the Patriot Act, let the telcos and NSA spy like crazy, etc, etc. Going back to the same democrats will not help one bit. They are passing this feel good bullshit, as a form of campaigning, knowing it will die, because they don't really want to protect our privacy.
If you want change, then independents will have to take over the senate, and the house of course.The DNC/GOP will only give you more of what you already have
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 28 2019, @08:53AM
Watching US politics from EU, you seem to be under some false impression that in that case the democrats would actually propose this legislation again.
Neither party proposes good bills for the public good when it actually has a chance to pass. Now, they will probably do something to try and catch up with GDPR, but it will be much more corporate friendly than what they are proposing kowing its dead in the water.