Minnesota AG, Lawmaker Tout Consumer Data Privacy Act That Debuts July 31
The Minnesota Consumer Data Privacy Act, which goes into effect this Thursday, gives consumers new rights and requires that businesses follow stricter measures to protect personal data, said Attorney General Keith Ellison (D) and Rep. Steve Elkins (D), who authored the law.
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“If you feel like every interaction you have online or otherwise is being tracked or recorded, then you're not far off,” Ellison said during a press conference Monday. “The messages we send, the purchases that we make and the apps that we use," including where and when they're used, "all ... create the data that is being monitored and stored to build private profiles. Each individual data point may not seem like much, but when you add it all up, it's really staggering.”
Minnesota's new law creates “protections and more control over our personal data, including name, address, email credentials and your browser history,” he said. In addition, it includes "strong protections for sensitive data, a category that includes private information such as ethnicity, race, religion, mental or physical health, sexuality, specific location, as well as genetic and biometric information.”
Elkins said he sponsored a version of the bill in 2019, “and within days, I was besieged by every tech lobbyist under the sun around the country.” He amended the measure five times based on stakeholder feedback before crafting the final version.
“The most important innovation [in the Act] that other states are starting to copy is a provision that gives consumers the right -- based upon the rights we already enjoy under the Fair Credit Reporting Act federally -- to be able to question any profiling of our data,” Elkins said. If a consumer is turned down for an apartment or a job based on an algorithm, "they … should have the right" to "question the results of that and be told in plain English why that came out the way it did.”
In a release Monday, Ellison said, “We cannot and should not just think that violations and invasions of our privacy are just the way it is in this modern time.” He added, “We have a right to our privacy, and we have to protect it.”