Senator Ron Wyden Introduces New Personal Information Protection Bill

• U.S. Senator Ron Wyden proposes a new, stringent, and sweeping legislation to deal with data hoarders.
• The FTC will be empowered to review the data collection and sharing that is carried out by corporations.
• Executives who lie to the FTC will now face penalties of up to 20 years in prison.

U.S. Senator Ron Wyden has introduced a new citizen data privacy legislation which is named “Mind Your Own Business Act” (MYOBA). This new bill is the first one to introduce strict penalties such as prison sentences imposed on executives working for tech companies who manage user data irresponsibly. Compared to GDPR, “MYOBA” is a lot stricter and harsher, and aims to put an end in the vicious circle of large business doing what they want with their customer data, and then the FTC slapping them on the wrist about it.

The new bill that Senator Ron Wyden claims to have developed very meticulously is based on the following three pillars:

• Consumers must be able to control their own private information.
• Companies must provide vastly more transparency about how they use and share our data.
• Corporate executives need to be held personally responsible when they lie about protecting our personal information.

In this context, the FTC will establish minimum privacy and cybersecurity standards, and a clearly defined context that will forbid any form of tracking people on the web, selling or sharing their data, or using it for targeted advertising. The algorithms that companies use for the above purposes will have to be transparently shared with the FTC for review, while the organization will hire 175 experts who will help carry out the additional duties.

If a company lies to the FTC in any stage, they will receive fines that correspond to 4% of their annual revenue, while their senior executives will face criminal charges and 10 to 20 years of imprisonment. This applies to first-time offenders, so it wouldn’t apply to Facebook, for example, who have already repeatedly lied to the FTC.

The above is unquestionably ground-breaking, but what do experts make of it? Robert Cruz, Senior Director of Information Governance at Smarsh, provided us with the following comment on the new “Mind Your Own Business Act”:

“An increased focus on data privacy is a very good step forward. It will cause individuals and businesses to use data privacy as a differentiator, and place a more explicit value on transparency. Ultimately, some companies have invested to implement controls and consider data privacy “by design and default” – and there are those that will look at it as simply another business tax. This gives very useful information to individuals who are deciding who they want to do business with. For regulated corporations, the biggest change will likely be to create additional pressure to finally delete data that is redundant or outdated and that has outlived its business purpose.”

What is your opinion on the “Mind Your Own Business Act”? Let us know in the comments section down below, or on our socials, on Facebook and Twitter.