Stronger data privacy laws may be coming to the US
Privacy
[SOUND] Senator Ron Wyden introduced a new bill this morning, I believe, called the Consumer Data Protection Act, which would impose harsher penalties for companies who violate your privacy.
Alfred, you wrote about this.
Tell us a little bit more about it.
It's important to note that this is still a draft, so this hasn't made it on the floor or anything like that.
No senators have offered their input on it.
But this is actually one of the first data privacy bills that has been introduced, at least in any way, shape, or form.
A lot of other lawmakers have been talking about wanting to draft their own, but the first one that's really come to light.
And there's been a big push for this for a long time coming after Equifax's breach and Facebook.
You know, issues with Google and privacy.
And one of the harshest things that they're doing here is that they're saying, they're bringing criminal charges to data breaches.
Wow.
In the past, all you could really do is sue them in a class action lawsuit or the FTC could fine them.
So in this scenario.
A company CEO, for example, if they purposely lied to the FTC, they could spend prison time for up to 20 years.
Whoa.
Which is, yeah, is pretty big.
So how similar is this to the GDPR in the EU?
Only in financial terms, not in criminal charges terms.
Because the GDPR doesn't bring You won't go to jail over that, this is yeah.
Interesting so in some ways it could actually be more harsher.
In some ways yeah.
Okay also check back on CNET to read more about these stories, as well as follow us today about the Google walk out That's going on I think right now.
I'm Ben Fox Reuben.
I'm Alfred Ang.
And I'm Marian Jo.
Thanks for listening.
[MUSIC]
