Online privacy

Two House lawmakers looking to craft a consensus data privacy bill found themselves on opposite sides of an emerging debate: whether legislation should create a new privacy division at the Federal Trade Commission. Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), who heads the House Commerce Committee's Consumer Protection Subcommittee, said she’ll pursue that option.

Gov Janet Mills (D-ME) signed the nation’s toughest internet privacy protection bill into law. The new law requires customers to proactively allow internet service providers to use their personal data. It prevents the use, sale or distribution of a customer’s personal information by providers without the express consent of the customer. Other states have internet privacy laws, but they require customers to opt-out of having their personal data used by internet service providers.

Apple is leveraging its platform's market power to help users protect their privacy. The new "Sign In with Apple" service aims to offer apps and websites a privacy-protecting alternative to using Google or Facebook as a means of authenticating user logins. Apple will require iOS app developers that offer Google, Facebook or any third-party authentication to also offer Sign In with Apple.

The New York Times Company is urging a judge to order the Federal Communications Commission to disclose information about network neutrality commenters, despite the agency's objections that doing so could compromise people's privacy. “The FCC’s claims dramatically overstate the potential for harm,” the Times writes in court papers filed May 23 with the US District Court in the Southern District of New York.

A growing tech-skeptic chorus is drawing attention to the ways in which information technology disrupts democracy. No country is immune. With a better understanding of the principles undergirding both foreign and domestic responses to the threats posed by big tech, each subsequent section in this paper will lay out the specific dimensions of the political and economic problems that have arisen in the digital age, the policy responses and proposals pursued abroad, and the ideas guiding debate in the US.

When I was invited to join you today, and learned more about this gathering and its goals, I immediately thought that this would be a perfect opportunity to lay down a marker about what I think is one of the most important issues facing America – and I will say it plain, that is getting the internet everywhere.

Among the mega-corporations that surveil you, your cellphone carrier has always been one of the keenest monitors, in constant contact with the one small device you keep on you at almost every moment.