Andrew Orlowski writes:
Privacy campaigners have long advocated that we should own our data, and we should be able to do what we like with it. So why has an attempt to put this into law caused a minor panic?
A Michigan Senator has introduced a Bill giving individuals the right to request the removal of personal data from websites. Last week, Facebook unilaterally exposed the “interests” – the likes and dislikes – of hundreds of millions of its users, data they had previously thought was private. The Cyber Privacy Bill (HR 5108) would give users some redress. In fact, Facebook wouldn’t even have dared try it.
HR 5108 is as brief as it gets. It obliges websites to remove “personal information” which it defines as “any information about an individual that includes, at minimum, the individual’s name together with either a telephone number of such individual or an address of such individual”.
Read more in The Register.