Seen on Covington & Burling’s Inside Privacy:
Earlier this month, Maine’s legislature enacted a new statute granting broad privacy rights to internet users in the state. Hailed as “the strictest consumer privacy protections in the nation,” the statute places among the toughest burdens on regulated entities to protect the data of their consumers.
The statute applies only to broadband internet service providers (ISPs), defined as any “mass-market retail service by wire or radio that provides the capability to transmit data to and receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints.” According to the sponsor of the original bill, state Senator Shenna Bellows, the statute is intended to target companies with mass amounts of consumer data, such as Verizon and Xfinity. It excludes large technology companies such as Google and Facebook, which are still avoidable by consumers if they choose to do so.
Read more on Inside Privacy.