Strict new rules for social media and people’s personal data in North Carolina won approval at a state House committee hearing Tuesday, putting the bill on track for a vote as soon as this week.
House Bill 462 frames itself as a pro-privacy bill, due to parts of it that would broadly crack down on companies’ ability to sell their customers’ information. The bill would give people the right to stop companies from selling their data, as well as to see what data the companies are collecting on them, and to require the companies to delete or alter certain pieces of information about them.
Rep. Terry Brown, D-Mecklenburg, is the bill's lead sponsor. He said he envisions a system for people to check their data that's similar to how credit reports allow people to see what datapoints financial institutions are using to determine their credit score.
"They would have to tell North Carolinians how their data’s being used, where it’s being utilized at," Brown said, adding that a small number of other states have passed similar laws in recent years.
The bill also proposes that anyone who wants to use social media while in North Carolina would be required to tie their social media accounts to their driver’s license or other forms of identification.
Other states have proposed similar rules making people connect their social media accounts to their ID, and they have been met by critics who say anonymity is crucial to many people’s online presence. No one spoke about the North Carolina version of the proposal Tuesday other than Brown, however, either in support or opposition. It passed the committee unanimously and with little discussion.
The ID requirements are proposed as a way to enforce yet other rules in the bill, which would ban anyone under the age of 18 from having a social media account without parental permission. This bill is separate from another proposal advancing in the legislature also focused on making it harder for teens to set up social media accounts.
The bill's proposed rules for data privacy would apply not just to social media companies — which make large profits selling their users’ information — but also to a broad range of other companies that collect data about their customers.
Banks would be exempted, as would companies that deal with people’s medical information. But generally speaking, companies that collect data on their customers would have to:
- Tell people their data is being collected, and seek permission.
- Take steps to collect only relevant information.
- Allow people to review and change what’s in that data, and request certain things be changed or deleted.
- Implement internal security measures to protect people’s information from hackers.
Companies often collect sensitive data on their customers — not just which brands they tend to buy or which sports teams they follow, but also their sexual orientation and activity, religious beliefs, mental health issues and other information that people might not want to be sold to marketers.
Marketing companies can buy that information to be able to target people with relevant ads on their computers, phones, streaming services and more. House Bill 462 takes the view that any collection or sale of such information should happen under far stricter rules than currently exist.
The European Union has similar rules involving a requirement of consent around collecting people’s personal private data.
In North Carolina, the proposal has bipartisan sponsors. Brown pointed to Colorado, Utah and Delaware as examples of other states with similar laws already in place within the U.S.
