Data privacy continues to be a focus for many businesses and lawmakers. Another politician has introduced legislation that would impose harsh penalties for data privacy violations. This interesting news came to us from CNet in their article, “Senator proposes data privacy bill with serious punishments.”
When the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) fined Facebook $5 billion over its data privacy violations this past summer, it set a record for the largest fine a US regulator ever imposed on a tech company. However, many saw that as too little too late.
The FTC set another record in September, fining YouTube $170 million in the largest penalty ever levied for violations of the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act. Again, considering we are talking about violating children’s privacy online, many found it lacking in severity.
Recently, Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon, proposed legislation he said would bring meaningful punishments for companies that violate people’s data privacy, including larger fines and potential jail time for CEOs. This proposed legislation is so strong that if the bill were a law during Facebook’s privacy scandals, Sen. Wyden believes Mark Zuckerberg would have faced jail time.
Melody K. Smith
Sponsored by Access Innovations, the world leader in thesaurus, ontology, and taxonomy creation and metadata application.
