Strict 'Do Not Track' Law Proposed By US Senator

This week a Republican senator "unveiled a 'Do Not Track' bill with tough penalties for companies who break its protections," reports The Hill. Trailrunner7 shares more information from the security news site Decipher:Senator Hawley's bill makes the Federal Trade Commission the enforcement authority for the system and any person who violates the measure would be liable for penalties of $50 per user affected by a violation for every day that the violation is ongoing. "Big tech companies collect incredible amounts of deeply personal, private data from people without giving them the option to meaningfully consent. They have gotten incredibly rich by employing creepy surveillance tactics on their users, but too often the extent of this data extraction is only known after a tech company irresponsibly handles the data and leaks it all over the internet," Hawley said. "The American people didn't sign up for this, so I'm introducing this legislation to finally give them control over their personal information online.... [The bill] just says that a consumer can make a one time choice to not be tracked. I think we should make it compulsory and give it the force of law and give consumers real choice and force the companies to comply." DuckDuckGo's founder had proposed similar legislation, and the Hill reports that he's since been approached by "a few other" U.S. lawmakers. They also remind readers that a 2010 push for Do Not Track legislation "never panned out amid enormous pressure from industry representatives, who could not come to an agreement over what 'tracking' means in the first place... "Consumer advocates and tech industry critics say Hawley's bill could find better traction amid a larger backlash against tech behemoths including Google, Facebook and Amazon."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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