Virginia’s legislature has passed a bill meant to protect consumer privacy—but the bill, called the Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act, really protects the interests of business far more than the interests of everyday consumers.
Virginia: Speak Up for Real Privacy
The bill, which both Microsoft and Amazon supported, is now headed to the desk of Governor Ralph Northam. This week, EFF joined with the Virginia Citizens Consumer Council, Consumer Federation of America, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, U.S. PIRG to ask for a veto on this bill, or for the governor to add a reenactment clause—a move that would send the bill back to the legislature to try again.
If you’re in Virginia and care about true privacy protections, let the governor know that the VCDA doesn’t give consumers the protections they need. In fact, it stacks the deck against them, by offering an “opt-out” framework that doesn’t protect privacy by default, allowing companies to force consumers that exercise their privacy rights to pay higher prices or accept a lower quality of service, and offering no meaningful enforcement—making it very unlikely that consumers will be able to hold companies to account if any of the few rights this bill grants them are violated.
As passed by the legislature, the bill is set to go into effect in 2023 and will establish a working group to make improvements between now and then. That offers some chance for improvements—but it likely won’t be enough to get real consumer protections. As we noted in a joint press release, “These groups appreciate that Governor Northam’s office has engaged with the concerns of consumer groups and committed to a robust stakeholder process to improve this bill. Yet the fundamental problems with the CDPA are too big to be fixed after the fact.”
Consumer privacy rights must be the foundation of any real privacy bill. The CDPA was written without meaningful input from consumer advocates; in fact, as Protocol reported, it was handed to the bill’s sponsor by an Amazon lobbyist. Some have suggested the Virginia bill could be a model for other states or for federal legislation. That’s bad for Virginia and bad for all of us.
Virginians, it’s time to take a stand. Tell Governor Northam that this bill is not good enough, and urge him to veto it or send it back for another try.
VIRGINIA: SPEAK UP FOR REAL PRIVACY
