Despite the defeat of data privacy legislation earlier this year, Florida House Speaker Chris Sprowls wants to resume the battle against “big tech” by giving consumers more rights to limit the use of personal information collected by companies.
Back in February, Sprowls hailed the introduction of consumer data legislation, saying that it would restore consumers’ faith in tech companies that currently have no interest in protecting private consumer information that they routinely collect. That effort would continue in the 2022 legislative session, he said.
“They don’t care about your personal information,” Sprowls said in a prepared statement in February. “They don’t care who gets ahold of your sensitive data. In the state of Florida, we care. It’s time to stop bad actors and help restore consumers’ trust in companies that hold the keys to their personal information.”
The data privacy bill that died in April raised concerns from business groups because it gave consumers the right to file lawsuits against companies that fail to abide by consumers’ directives about the sale, correction or deletion of their data. The inclusion of such private “causes of action” in a new data privacy bill will likely generate similar business opposition, observers say.
“There is no need to create a private cause of action to ensure businesses follow reasonable and secure consumer data privacy practices, and the cause of action proposed will benefit plaintiffs’ lawyers more than it will benefit consumers,” William Large, president of the Florida Justice Reform Institute, told the Florida Record in an email.
During the battle over the previous bill, SB 969, business groups such as the Associated Industries of Florida (AIF) fought against the bill’s overall burdens imposed on businesses, in particular potentially costly class-action lawsuits. But AIF also promised to work with the legislature to develop data-privacy policy recommendations.
SB 969 would have given Florida residents more control over their personal information collected by businesses, including rights to access the information collected, delete or correct the data, and stop the sharing or sale of the information to third parties.
It would have allowed the state Department of Legal Affairs to seek penalties against violators, in addition to giving consumers the right to sue over violations of the law in certain conditions.
The bill would have also added biometric information, such as DNA fingerprints or other biological identifiers, to the definition of personal information under the 2014 Florida Information Protection Act (FIPA).