An Act Ensuring Less Privacy of Massachusetts Residents' Data: Part 5 of 5

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Kevin Whitaker

Massachusetts Senate Bill No. 173 (PDF file or see full text below) introduced this year, would amend M.G.L. 93H and effectively water down the Office of Consumer Affairs and Business Regulation's (OCABR) authority on a few fronts. I've addressed a few of these in past posts.

After a short vacation, today I'll briefly be addressing the fourth proposed change, but more importantly the sum of all the proposed changes, because I fear they fail to protect consumers and their privacy rights, but instead seem very good at protecting certain business interest aided by powerful lobbying efforts

Briefly, under the fourth proposed change, employees could be terminated for willful violations of the law, regulations, or written information security plans.

While I'm not going to attack this language (although you can see the proverbial passing of the buck coming here), it make me ask, "As a group, did any of the four proposed changes help consumers while guarding individuals' privacy rights?"

Let's review a summary of the three changes I've previously discussed:

  1. Businesses would not have to comply with any Massachusetts state regulations with stricter standards than federal law
  2. Ensures OCABR is prevented from requiring specific technology or methods be employed. Thus, the proposed amendment effectively guts OCABR's encryption requirement (and its power to do so in regulations).
  3. The law would not apply evenly, but would depend on the size of the business and require separate standards be promulgated for small businesses, thus implying a person's privacy rights matter less depending on who is allowing them to be infringed upon. This would also add more delay as more layers of regulations are adopted.

The answer to my earlier question, I'm afraid, is a resounding "No," none of the four four proposed changes help consumers while guarding individuals' privacy rights--thus the title of this series of posts, "An Act Ensuring Less Privacy of Massachusetts Resident's Data" which is a play on the proposed act's title "An Act Ensuring the Privacy of Certain Data."

As stated in other posts, privacy rights simply aren't being treated as rights held by individuals but rather as things or issues to be regulated. With economic considerations, lobbying, and political influence guiding the outcome, it appears that short-term economic arguments may continue trumping individuals' privacy concerns. In the end, so long as economic incentives and business interests are placed before individuals' rights, then privacy rights can't really exist, no matter what we call or title them.

The full text of Senate Bill 173, An Act Ensuring the Privacy of Certain Data, is below. Funny, I don't think this is available anywhere else on the web except in PDF. Why is that?

 

SECTION 1. Section 2 of Chapter 93H of the General 1 Laws, as appearing in the 2006 Official Edition, is hereby amended by striking out subsection (a) and inserting in place thereof the following:(a) The department of consumer affairs and business regulation may adopt regulations relative to any person or agency that owns or licenses personal information about a resident of the commonwealth. Such regulations shall be designed to safeguard the personal information of residents of the commonwealth and shall be consistent with the safeguards for protection of personal information set forth in the federal regulations by which the person or agency is regulated. The objectives of the regulations shall be to: insure the security and confidentiality of customer information in a manner fully consistent with industry standards; protect against anticipated threats or hazards to the security or integrity of such information; and protect against unauthorized access to or use of such information that may result in substantial harm or inconvenience to any consumer. The department shall not in its regulations, however, require covered persons to use a specific technology or technologies, or a specific method or methods for protecting personal information.

The regulations shall take into account the person’s size, scope and type 15 of business, the amount of resources available to such person, the amount of stored data, and the need for security and confidentiality of both consumer and employee information. Notwithstanding the rules adopted by the department pursuant to the provisions above, said department shall create separate regulations for small businesses covered by this chapter that reflect said small businesses unique situation and resources.

Any person who is required to comply with federal laws, rules, regulations, guidance, or guidelines safeguarding personal information is deemed to be in compliance with this chapter.

SECTION 2. Section 6 of Chapter 93H of the General Laws is hereby amended by adding at the end thereof the following: A willful violation of this chapter or regulations implementing this chapter, or a written information security plan issued by a person covered by state or federal privacy laws shall provide just cause for the termination of an employee, whether the employee is employed by a private person, public agency or political subdivision of the state.

 

For more posts from this Series see:

If you are interested in tracking Senate Bill 173 or others, perhaps this resource from the University of Iowa law library may be helpful. Here are a few of the helpful offerings or resources available there.
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