Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) writes this opinion piece for Wired about his proposed bill, the Data Accountability and Transparency Act of 2020.
The proposed bill defines privacy harms; outlines permissible and illegal data collection, aggregation, and use practices; makes use of facial recognition technology illegal; creates a disparate impact liability for data aggregators; and imposes algorithmic accountability requirements.
The proposed bill also elevates Fair Information Practices to individual rights to one’s own data (access and portability), transparency, accuracy, correction, and deletion; and right to appeal automated decisions for human review.
To administer these requirements, the bill proposes creating a new independent executive branch agency, the Data Accountability and Transparency Agency.
It’s not only the specific companies you sign away your data to that profit off it—they sell it to other companies you’ve never heard of, without your knowledge. And all of that data flowing through online stores and social media sites can be harvested by the government too. There’s no check box to opt out of that. When you sign away your privacy rights to a corporation, you’ve basically given the government permission to sift through your secrets as well.
Brown, S. (2020, June 29). Privacy isn’t a right you can click away. Wired. https://www.wired.com/story/privacy-isnt-a-right-you-can-click-away/