CDT, Civil Society Oppose Inadequate West Virginia Privacy Bill
This week, CDT joined a civil society letter opposing an industry-friendly privacy bill in West Virginia. The letter states the bill does not provide adequate protections for consumers, particularly around data minimization, targeted advertising, and enforcement.
From the letter:
The American Civil Liberties Union of West Virginia, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America, and the Center for Democracy & Technology write in respectful opposition to H.B. 2987, relating to the Consumer Data Protection Act. The Consumer Data Protection Act seeks to provide to West Virginia consumers the right to know the information companies have collected about them, the right to access, correct, and delete that information, as well as the right to stop the disclosure of certain information to third parties. However, in its current form, it would do little to protect West Virginia consumers’ personal information, or to rein in major tech companies like Google and Facebook. The bill needs to be substantially improved before it is enacted; otherwise, it would risk locking in industry-friendly provisions that avoid actual reform.
Consumers currently possess very limited power to protect their personal information in the digital economy, while online businesses operate with virtually no limitations as to how they collect and process that information (so long as they note their behavior somewhere in their privacy policies). As a result, consumers’ every move is constantly tracked and often combined with offline activities to provide detailed insights into their most personal characteristics, including health conditions, political affiliations, religious beliefs, and even their precise geolocation. This information is sold as a matter of course, is used to deliver targeted advertising, facilitates differential pricing, and enables opaque algorithmic scoring.
At the same time, spending time online has become integral to modern life, with many individuals required to sign up for accounts with tech companies because of school, work, or simply out of a desire to connect with distant family and friends. Consumers are offered the illusory “choice” to consent to company data processing activities, but in reality this is an all-or-nothing decision; if you do not approve of any one of a company’s practices, your only choices are to either forgo the service altogether or acquiesce completely.
