Consumer Reports, Consumer Federation of America, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), and U.S. PIRG write in respectful opposition to LB 1188, which is based on the Uniform Law Commission’s Uniform Personal Data Protection Act. We recognize the challenges in devising legislation that adequately protects consumers without creating unworkable requirements on industry. But enacting this will would be worse than doing nothing at all. This bill would do little to reform companies’ inappropriate data collection and sharing behaviors. It explicitly exempts behavioral advertising from the protections in the bill, does not provide data deletion rights, has significant loopholes for data brokers, and doesn’t give actionable rights to consumers. It could also forestall future privacy legislation that is more beneficial to consumers and holds companies accountable
American consumers are subject to constant and intrusive data collection practices and have few legal protections for their personal information online. There is no comprehensive federal privacy law providing baseline protections over data privacy and security. Consumers need a strong privacy law that limits the processing of their personal data to what is reasonably necessary to provide the services they request online. And the law needs strong enforcement to back it up.
For the full letter, please see the attached PDF.