Consumer Reports, the American Civil Liberties Union, the American Civil Liberties Union of Rhode Island, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), Restore the Fourth, and the U.S. Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) urged Rhode Island Governor Dan McKee to veto HB 7787 /SB 2500, consumer privacy legislation recently approved by the General Assembly.
The bill seeks to provide to Rhode Island consumers the right to know the information companies have collected about them, the right to access, correct, and delete that information, as well as the right to stop the disclosure of certain information to third parties. However, in its current form, it would do little to protect Rhode Island consumers’ personal information, or to rein in major tech companies like Google and Facebook.
We urged the Governor to return the bill to the legislature so that they could work on strengthening its protections, including by:
- Implementing strong data minimization rules to limit collection and use of personal data;
- Requiring companies to honor browser privacy signals as opt outs;
- Applying privacy notice requirements to all controllers;
- Fixing definitional inconsistencies; and
- Including strong civil rights protections.
To read the full letter, please see the attached PDF.