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Maine Governor Janet Mills (D) enacted legislation on one of the country's toughest privacy laws on Thursday, banning Internet service providers from using, selling or selling to distribute consumer data without their consent.
The Act to Protect the Confidentiality of Online Consumer Information would prohibit any Maine ISP from refusing to serve a customer, penalizing it or offering a discount, in order to put pressure on consumers to allow them to sell their data. The law will come into force on July 1st.
Maine is one of the first states to take this step after California passed its own strict privacy law last year, sparking a wave of industry lobbying and praise activists for the protection of privacy.
The Maine law, adopted in the wake of criticism from major Internet service providers, is aimed at companies such as AT & T and Spectrum. California law, for its part, also applies to technology companies such as Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook.
Some privacy activists have described Maine's law as being even stricter than California's because it requires ISPs to explicitly ask the customer to sell their personal data, while the law of the US California requires consumers to demand that their data not be sold on their own.
Mills called the new law "common sense," adding that "Maine residents attach importance to protecting their privacy, online and offline."
"The Internet is a powerful tool and, as it becomes more and more connected to our lives, steps must be taken to protect the personal information and privacy of the people of Maine," he said. she declared. "Thanks to this common sense law, people in Maine can access the Internet knowing full well that their personal information can not be bought or sold by their Internet service providers without their express permission."
The bill was approved unanimously last week by the Maine Senate and was sponsored by Senator Shenna Bellows (D). Bellows said in a statement that the law made Maine "the first and best country in the country to protect consumers' privacy online."
Bellows has already announced that it is considering introducing a privacy protection bill on the Internet at the next session, which would also target companies like Google and Facebook.
The Maine law is modeled on an earlier Federal Communications Commission (FCC) measure that was rescinded by President Trump
Donald John TrumpKey figures that the report Mueller related to Russia was a source of information of the State Department De Blasio: We talk too much about the dismissal of Democrats De Blasio: We talk too much about the removal of Democrats MORE in 2017. It prevents Internet service providers from selling the personal data of customers to third parties, which is not currently prevented by the federal government.
Proponents of the bill have reported instances in which major internet service providers have sold real-time location data of their customers to third parties, claiming that companies should be better regulated.
Maine's privacy law comes as legislators at Capitol Hill seek to develop the first comprehensive privacy bill. Republicans and major lobbyists in the sector have argued that any federal bill should take precedence over state laws to avoid a "mosaic" of privacy laws in which technology companies would be difficult to navigate.
Democrats have said they are open to anticipating state laws as long as the national bill provides strong protection for privacy.
In a statement, Gigi Sohn, a former FCC advisor under the Obama administration, applauded the Maine law.
"The bipartisan adoption of the Broadband Privacy Bill in Maine shows that when the legislature listens to its voters rather than big business, the public wins," Sohn said. "The cable and broadband industry has sent Augusta a run of senior, well-paying Washington-based lawyers to thwart this bill, using the same arguments as those used to Eliminate the FCC's 2016 FCC Respectful and Popular Broadband Privacy Policy. "
"When the federal government pulls out, the states will have to step in and that's what Maine has done here," she added.
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