The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act, introduced by Reps. Anna G. Eshoo of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, aims to do exactly that.
Lawmakers have proposed new legislation that they say would ban surveillance-based advertising. The legislation would target the underlying practice of targeted or personalized ads that facilitates surveillance-based advertising itself.
“The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act does what its title suggests. The legislation prohibits advertising facilitators (e.g., Facebook, Google DoubleClick, data brokers) from targeting ads with the exception of broad location targeting to a recognized place (e.g., municipality),” a press release announcing the proposed legislation reads. “The bill also prohibits advertisers from targeting ads based on protected class information and any information they purchase. Violations can be enforced by the Federal Trade Commission, state attorneys general, or private lawsuits,” it adds. The legislation would also prohibit targeted advertisements based on protected class attributes such as race, gender, and religion.
Reps. Anna G. Eshoo of California and Jan Schakowsky of Illinois, and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey are the Democratic lawmakers behind the proposed legislation.
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“The ‘surveillance advertising’ business model is premised on the unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting. This pernicious practice allows online platforms to chase user engagement at great cost to our society, and it fuels disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses, and so many other harms. The surveillance advertising business model is broken,” Rep. Eshoo said in a statement.
The legislation is supported by a spread of organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC); companies such as search engine DuckDuckGo and privacy-focused services provider Proton; and academics including Shoshana Zuboff, author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, Joan Donovan, research director at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy; and Woodrow Hartzog, professor of law and computer science at Northeastern University and author of Privacy’s Blueprint.
Generally, tech companies such as Facebook argue that…
