Don't Gut Mass. Privacy Bill: Civil Liberties Groups

Privacy groups urged Massachusetts legislators to dismiss industry concerns about a possible state privacy law. In response to industry warning about high compliance costs at a hearing last month (see 2110130060), AccessNow, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, American Civil Liberties Union Massachusetts and other bill supporters wrote Wednesday to the Joint Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity. The measure applies to “large-scale, for-profit corporations,” they said. The law would contain several exceptions and fines would be scaled by company size, they added. Voluntary commitments to privacy are insufficient, the consumer privacy groups said. Don’t wait for federal law, which doesn’t seem likely anyhow, they said. “Any potential future federal law should be the floor and not the ceiling of privacy legislation ... The U.S. is a vast country with many significant variations in state-level consumer protection laws, and companies can and do comply.”