Massachusetts lawmakers have voted in favor of a privacy protection measure that gives state residents new rights to access and delete their data held by big tech giants. The bill also prohibits companies from selling their users’ precise location data.
Lawmakers in the Massachusetts House passed the state Consumer Data Privacy Act in a unanimous 146-0 vote Thursday, months after all 40 members of the Senate voted to advance her bill in September. Now, the bills will be combined in the Senate and sent to the state governor’s office, where they are expected to be signed into law. It’s not immediately clear when that will happen.
The move makes Massachusetts the latest US state to push for stronger consumer privacy rights after years of documented abuses by the broader tech, advertising and social media industries. While the United States does not have a national privacy law, unlike many of the world’s largest democracies, US states have filled the legal gap by bringing their own patchwork of privacy rules that apply to their states.
The bill, if passed into law, would apply to companies that handle or process personal data of more than 100,000 consumers. It will greatly impact mid-sized startups as well as the tech titans of Silicon Valley.
The law would prevent sharing or selling sensitive information without the user’s express consent. This data includes biometrics (such as health data, genetic information, and fingerprints), their precise geolocation data, and other indicators about their religion, immigration status, and sexual orientation.
The collection and sale of people’s location data has been a major flashpoint in privacy debates for years. Data brokers have for years relied on app developers selling their users’ location data to repackage and sell it to anyone who can pay, including stalkers, governments and the military. In many cases, the government says it does not need a warrant to buy data that is commercially available on the open market.
The Biden administration came close to banning the sale of Americans’ sensitive data at the federal level, but the Trump administration has since reversed the change.
By applying the location data ban to both residents and visitors, the Massachusetts law will effectively ban the sale of location data across the state. The bill is expected to have a broad impact on startups that collect, share and sell location data in Massachusetts, and advertising companies that use location data to target people with ads.
According to local media WBUR and the Massachusetts Gazette Lynn Journalstate legislators worked across party lines with the belief that privacy is a fundamental right for residents of the state of Massachusetts.
The bill was generally praised by privacy groups and advocates.
Evan Greer, director of the advocacy group Fight for the Future, said the Massachusetts bill “took an important step toward cracking down on Big Tech’s surveillance abuses,” while the ACLU praised the landmark bill as positioning the state as “a leader in protecting personal privacy and limiting digital surveillance.”
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