Technology

We need more of this. Such as the legislation proposed in a couple of bills that this article mentions:

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/data-brokers-are-running-wild-and-only-congress-can-rein-them

Here's an excerpt with details:

*Over the past few years, lawmakers have sought to address the data broker problem, proposing bills that would limit the collection of location and health data and regulate the government’s purchases of data from third parties. Our resource highlights two legislative proposals that would constrain the government’s ability to acquire large swaths of personal information without legal process.

The first, the Fourth Amendment Is Not For Sale Act, takes an important step toward closing the data broker loophole and updating the Electronic Communications Privacy Act. The bill would bar law enforcement and intelligence agencies from purchasing certain communications-related information and location data.

But it could be stronger. The bill is still tied to outdated categories of communications service providers from the 1980s, and it would not cover similar information collected and sold by other companies, such as health and fitness apps. It also would not cover other categories of sensitive personal information like health, financial, or biometric information. Nor would it address the overcollection of data, or the trafficking of personal information to private entities or even foreign governments, practices that will likely intensify with the proliferation of AI models reliant on vast data sets.

The American Data Privacy and Protection Act takes a different approach. It is a comprehensive federal consumer privacy bill that promises to reduce the amount of personal information flowing into and out of the hands of data brokers. It would do this by restricting the collection of such information to only what is necessary to provide a service or achieve certain purposes specified in the bill and by placing additional limits on data transfers. This legislation is a promising template, but it, too, should be strengthened.

The bill has multiple exceptions that would allow government agencies to obtain a significant amount of personal data. These exceptions should be narrowed to prohibit transfers of data to law enforcement or intelligence agencies absent clear indications of a threat to public safety, a security incident, fraud, harassment, or illegal activity, or unless the government has followed the legal process required for compelled disclosure.

These bills, with the modifications we suggest, point the way forward. The data broker loophole is growing wider by the day, and it threatens to swallow the privacy protections provided in statutes and even in the Constitution. Congress must intervene to bring the law in line with the modern world and end the government’s all-too-common practice of buying its way around our privacy rights.*