U.S. Sen. John Kennedy is introducing legislation to protect the privacy of consumers’ online data after a massive data breach at Facebook by political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica.
Kennedy announced on Thursday that he would join Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar in introducing the legislation.
“The data breach at Facebook showed the world that the digital promised land is not all milk and honey. We’ve discovered some impurities in the punch bowl,” Kennedy says in a statement. “I don’t want to regulate Facebook half to death, but there are things that need to be changed. Our bill will help protect Americans’ online data fingerprint.”
The bill would:
- Give consumers the right to opt out and keep their information private by disabling data tracking and collection.
- Provide users greater access to and control over their data.
- Require terms of service agreements to be in plain language.
- Ensure users have the ability to see what information about them has already been collected and shared.
- Mandate that users be notified of a breach of their information within 72 hours.
- Offer remedies for users when a breach occurs.
- Require that online platforms have a privacy program in place.
Kennedy’s announcement comes just days after he told Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during a congressional hearing on the data breach that the social media company’s “user agreement sucks.”
Facebook says Cambridge Analytica, hired to work on President Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, improperly accessed the personal information on nearly 87 million users.
