Online privacy

Reps Anna Eshoo (D-CA) and Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) introduced the Online Privacy Act of 2019 (HR 4978), sweeping legislation that creates user rights, places obligations on companies to protect users’ data, establishes a new federal agency to enforce privacy protections, and strengthens enforcement of privacy law violations. The Online Privacy Act protects individuals, encourages innovation, and restores trust in technology companies by:

Mozilla is urging Congress to reject the broadband industry's lobbying campaign against encrypted DNS in Firefox and Chrome. The Internet providers' fight against this privacy feature raises questions about how they use broadband customers' Web-browsing data, Mozilla wrote in a letter sent to the chairs and ranking members of three House of Representatives committees.

When I was a young scientist working on the fledgling creation that came to be known as the internet, the ethos that defined the culture we were building was characterized by words such as ethical, open, trusted, free, shared. None of us knew where our research would lead, but these words and principles were our beacon. We did not anticipate that the dark side of the internet would emerge with such ferocity. Or that we would feel an urgent need to fix it. How did we get from there to here?

1969 was the year that saw the first host-to-host communication of ARPANET, the early packet-switching network that was the precursor to today’s multibillion-host internet. Heading into the network's 50th anniversary, Pew Research Center and Elon University’s Imagining the Internet Center asked 530 of technology experts how individuals’ lives might be affected by the evolution of the internet over the next 50 years. Some 72% of these respondents say there would be change for the better, 25% say there would be change for the worse, and 3% believe there would be no significant change.

Comcast is lobbying lawmakers against plans to encrypt web traffic that would make it harder for internet service providers (ISPs) to determine your browsing history. The plan, which Google intends to implement soon, would enforce the encryption of DNS data made using Chrome, meaning the sites you visit. Privacy activists have praised Google's move. But ISPs are pushing back as part of a wider lobbying effort against encrypted DNS, according to a lobbying presentation.

Forty-six attorneys general have joined a New York-led antitrust investigation into Facebook, raising the stakes in a sweeping bipartisan probe of the tech giant that could result in massive changes to its business practices.

The Federal Trade Commission’s $5 billion settlement with Facebook over the company’s deceptive privacy practices made a big splash, raising questions about the role the FTC should play in enforcing US privacy laws. While some observers criticized the FTC for not going far enough, others felt the record fine demonstrated the FTC’s willingness to set new precedents for punitive actions—and its unique ability to serve as the cop on the beat. But that isn’t the end of the conversation.

Sen Ron Wyden (R-OR) introduced sweeping new privacy legislation, the Mind Your Own Business Act, to create the strongest-ever protections for Americans’ private data and to hold accountable the corporate executives responsible for abusing our information. Wyden’s bill contains the most comprehensive protections for Americans’ private data ever introduced, and goes further than Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).