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posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 27 2019, @01:15PM   Printer-friendly
from the only-have-to-win-once dept.

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

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.


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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @05:03PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @05:03PM (#925383)

    There is a legal tactic where you talk past a crime to give the impression it is legal. If you look at what this bill talks past, this bill is horrible.

    For example, it says more or less that carriers can do anything they want with data that they "de-identify". The problem with that, is that to de-identify data you first have to capture it, and then process it against a complex set of rules. Which is to say before you even get to the point where this piece of legislation applies, the carrier has ALREADY committed felony wiretapping. And who among Congress are going to audit those processing systems, and ensure that it isn't processing for business purposes during the "de-identifying" process?

    All information exchanges on the Internet are contracts; mostly regarding the dissemination of intellectual property. The "privacy" of the communication, is a question of how many people are privy to that contract, and whether or not disclosure was consensual.

    When Comcast data mines your DNS, they have interfered with a private communication of a lawful contract between two parties. This is not different than compiling and selling a list of every phone call that comes and goes from a law office. Further the parties may be of a protected legal status such as children.

    There are certain ideas that do not compile in English. Which is why the tech sector invented reams of new definitions to describe what they do. The above law tries to describe things without actually using any of the terms that were coined for the purpose of describing them.

    Think for a moment about the person who looks at something as complicated as the Internet, and thinks that they don't have to adapt themselves (at least a little) in order to understand it. The authors would probably say: "its all greek", when looking at technical documentation. What they aren't getting is that when it comes to tech, English is the Greek, not the other way around. Our stuff is more logical than your stuff is.

    This bill is the equivalent of a literature professor writing a paper on astrophysics, while consulting with the Pope as a primary source. The only rational motive for such a thing, is to obstruct justice and reasoned debate.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @07:32PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @07:32PM (#925430)

    This bill is the equivalent of a literature professor writing a paper on astrophysics, while consulting with the Pope as a primary source. The only rational motive for such a thing, is to obstruct justice and reasoned debate.

    I call bullshit on your "analysis."

    The bill provides enormously more protections for Americans than currently exists. Is it perfect? No. Does it do everything I'd like it to do? No.

    It does require opt-in, or at least prominently displayed opt-outs for many types of data.
    It requires documentation and reporting on how data is collected and used.
    It restricts how companies can use or sell data.
    It requires companies to delete your data upon request.
    It allows you to sue, *in any court* if your data has been misused. None of that arbitration crap.
    It forbids companies from requiring you to waive your rights to opt-out, sue, have your data deleted, etc. in order to use whatever service they provide.
    There's much more, as you well know (if you actually read the bill past the definitions, I have my doubts about that).

    It's not perfect. It's not even great. But it's much better than what we have now.

    Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @10:28PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 27 2019, @10:28PM (#925473)

      All of the stuff your talking about isn't defined in a way that can be clearly compared against evidence.

      A lot of people will look at this law and think they know what it says. But they won't know how it translates into telecom regulations or tort law. My initial impression is that just getting lawful standing for litigation based on this law will be extraordinarily difficult. This law is not written like commercial law. It isn't written like telecommunications law either. But it presumes to speak authoritatively about both. Which is why it is confounding to the purposes to which it is authored.

      So yeah. The law says sort of what you said. But you probably said it better than the law does. I read it thinking to myself: "What cases would this law support?". I got to the end of the document without tallying a single one.

      "Let's not let the perfect be the enemy of the good."

      I guess we define "good" differently. In my mind "good" would mean that the law would be useful for the purposes of civil rights litigation. I can think of a couple of ways this law would confound a claimant. I can't think of any where this law would measure clearly against presented evidence. It is possible to deny ground, while conceding even more ground somewhere else.