Senate Democrats debut privacy bill that lets users stop their personal information from being sold

On Tuesday, Democratic senators unveiled a new online privacy bill, the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act (COPRA), that could seriously strengthen protections for digital consumers. Sen. Maria Cantwell, a Democrat from Washington state, compared the proposed legislation’s purpose to “Miranda rights” for our digital existence. While online privacy (and how much power big tech should have) is certainly not a new topic in the Senate or the House, bipartisan efforts haven’t made much movement. Cantwell’s proposed bill is particularly interesting to many because of her high status on the Senate Commerce Committee.

“You have to start saying these aspects of your life belong to you, and you have the right to decide how they’re used,” Cantwell told The Washington Post in an interview before the bill’s release.

In practice, the bill would offer users the opportunity to request their sensitive personal information from companies. People would then have the right to ask for that data to be corrected or outright deleted. And speaking of data, as the bill proposes, companies would not be allowed to collect more information than is actually needed. The risk? Facing big fines and penalties.

So, what does this look like? When it comes to an app harnessing your location or facial scans, for instance, you’d need to give explicit permission for that to be collected and shared. If a third-party has accessed your personal information and you are not OK with that, you could contact them and have it deleted. What’s the big picture? The proposed bill would allow people to prevent the sale of their personal information that has been stockpiled by companies.

Another interesting component of this bill is that, once a year, company CEOs would have to certify to the FTC that they are using the appropriate “internal controls” to comply with the law. Obviously, this applies to companies that have a lot of user data.

The bill permits states to issue their own privacy laws. This is likely to receive some backlash from big tech, which generally seeks to have one federal privacy law. Notably, this bill also allows citizens to initiate their own lawsuits against online businesses.

Another provision of the bill calls for forming a new bureau at the Federal Trade Commission—one that’s directly focused on privacy. The bill calls for that new bureau to be fully operational within two years of its creation.

In addition to Cantwell, the bill is sponsored by 2020 presidential hopeful and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Massachusetts Sen. Ed Markey, and Hawaii Sen. Brian Schatz. These three are all members of the Senate Commerce Committee. At this point, this bill is the ideal world for Democrats—Republicans still need to get on board.