In a direct rebuke to the Republican Congress, one California lawmaker is pushing legislation that would limit what Internet providers can do with customer data in the nation’s most populous state.
Assemblyman Ed Chau, D-Monterey Park, unveiled legislation Monday that would restore federal Internet privacy rules that Congress recently overturned.
At issue is whether Internet service providers — such as AT&T, Verizon and Comcast — should be allowed to track customer searches and sell that information. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) under the Obama administration had issued a rule that would have required Internet providers get customer consent before selling their personal information.
But Congress this spring overturned the proposed rules before they went into effect, and President Trump signed the reversal into law.
Chau, who chairs the Assembly Committee on Privacy and Consumer Protection, said Congress acted against the will of most Americans, and he pledged “to restore what Washington stripped away.”
“The idea that a person should have some say about how their Internet service provider can use, share or sell their personal information is not a controversial question for everyday consumers — it is common sense,” Chau said in a news release.
Chau’s AB 375 seeks to protect a customer’s personally identifiable information through an opt-in consent requirement for the use, sale and sharing of personal information. It would also prohibit pay-for-privacy practices and customers who do not consent to unnecessary uses could not be penalized.
Nineteen other states have taken steps to reinstate the privacy rules, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation, one of more than 25 civil rights, consumer advocacy, technology and nonprofit groups that support Chau’s bill.
“Unwanted surveillance for commercial gain has an immediate chilling effect on local voices and harms many aspects of modern life,” Sean Taketa McLaughlin, executive director of Access Humboldt, said in a statement. “Health, public safety, education, commerce and civic engagement all suffer when our freedom of information and expression is suppressed.”
Internet service providers have described their critics as misleading the public. For example, in a blog post before the FCC rules were overturned, Comcast made clear it has never sold its customers’ Web browsing history and had no plans to do so.
“At Comcast, we respect and protect our customers’ personal information. Always have, always will,” Gerard Lewis, Comcast’s chief privacy officer, wrote in a March 31 blog.
