• by Wendy Davis , Yesterday

Lawmakers in the Massachusetts House have unanimously approved a privacy bill that would restrict data collection, ban the sale of precise location data, and allow consumers to sue over violations. 

If enacted, the measure (H. 5479) would require companies to obtain consumers' affirmative consent before collecting or processing many forms of sensitive data -- including information regarding a consumer's health, race, religion, citizenship status and biometrics.

The bill would completely prohibit companies from selling location data that pinpoints a consumer within a 1,750-foot radius.

The proposed law, passed last week by the House, also would require companies to allow people to opt out of targeted advertising -- meaning that ads based on data obtained or inferred from people's activity over time and across non-affiliated sites or apps -- and says companies must honor opt-out preference signals.

The best known opt-out preference signal is the Global Privacy Control, which essentially sends opt-out requests to every site consumers visit.

Other provisions restrict companies from collecting more personal data -- meaning information that's linkable to an identifiable individual -- than what's needed for a particular purpose, and requires companies to obtain the consumer's consent before processing that data for a different purpose.

The bill differs in a few key ways from the version advanced last year by the Senate (S. 2619).

Among other differences, the House's version has a consumer-friendly provision that would allow individuals to sue "large data holders" over violations.

The House bill generally defines "large data holders" as companies that process or sell personal data of more than 2 million consumers, or collect or sell the "sensitive" data of more than 200,000 consumers.

But the House version's treatment of "sensitive" data is in some ways more industry-friendly than the Senate bill, which would have prohibited data controllers from collecting, processing or transferring consumers' "sensitive data" unless doing so was necessary to provide a service or product requested by them, and would have banned the sale of sensitive data.

The House bill now returns to the Senate for reconciliation.

Privacy advocates including the Electronic Privacy Information Center cheered news that the House passed the bill.

"Every day, companies profit from collecting more information about us than they need and using it in ways we don’t expect. This bill changes that,” Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director at the watchdog stated.

Major ad-industry groups previously opposed the Senate bill, arguing last year that it would "severely restrict data collection and processing."