The Senate Finance Committee is considering a bill that would reinstate privacy protections that President Donald Trump signed a law to eliminate just last week.
The bill, S.147, seeks to force Internet service providers to ask their customers’ permission before selling their personal information, such as their search history, to third parties, among other things.
The bill directs the Vermont attorney general’s office and the Public Service Department to write rules that mirror the Federal Communications Commission rules that Trump and Republican members of Congress overturned.
The members of the FCC who approved the rule in October were mostly Democrats. Republicans now hold a 2-1 majority on the commission. The Republican chair, Ajit Pai, is a critic of net neutrality, another issue championed by the Democrat-led FCC.
Sen. Virginia Lyons, D-Chittenden, is the lead sponsor of S.147. She said she has been working on the bill since finding out that lawmakers in Minnesota were also seeking to push back on Trump’s and Congress’ actions.
“This is an opportunity to keep private information from traveling beyond our iPads and our computers,” she said. “Whether we’re sending emails or we’re searching on the Internet for gifts or information — that’s no one else’s business except our own.”
Lyons said the privacy issue relates to the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure by the government. “I know these are private entities, but we didn’t sign onto the Internet to have our private information shared with other people,” she said.
“When (I’m) searching on the Internet, I don’t think I have an expectation that that’s going to become profitable — somebody’s gain — that they’re going to sell that so that I can get ads or lobbied for something,” Lyons said.
Maria Royle, a telecommunications lawyer for the Legislative Council, introduced the bill to the Senate Finance Committee on Friday. She said the privacy rules adopted in October were not scheduled to go into effect until the end of 2017.
Royle said Pai, the FCC chair, considered the Obama-era privacy rules an overreach. In a statement about the law Trump signed, Pai said Internet privacy should be the purview of the Federal Trade Commission, which handles consumer issues.
The FTC has oversight over firms like Google that also handle personal data, according to Royle, but she said that agency “tends to be less prescriptive,” relying on guidelines and recommendations. In contrast, the Federal Communications Commission has been regulating the Internet as a utility.
Internet service providers, Royle said, “feel like they’re competitively disadvantaged by having to go through an opt-in” process to sell personal information, such as search histories.
Sen. Brian Campion, D-Bennington, asked how urgent the bill was, given that the federal privacy rules were not scheduled to go into effect until later in the year.
Sen. Ann Cummings, D-Washington, the committee chair, added: “Nothing has changed from really one year ago or two years ago.”
Lyons replied: “All of the information that’s out there is fair game to be picked up and sold. There is urgency for that.”
Cummings said S.147 might be attached to H.347, this year’s telecommunication’s bill, which has already passed the House.
