http://legislature.maine.gov/LawMakerWeb/summary.asp?ID=2800...

The summary: "This bill prohibits a provider of broadband Internet access service from using, disclosing, selling or permitting access to customer personal information unless the customer expressly consents to that use, disclosure, sale or access. The bill provides other exceptions under which a provider may use, disclose, sell or permit access to customer personal information. The bill prohibits a provider from refusing to serve a customer, charging a customer a penalty or offering a customer a discount if the customer does or does not consent to the use, disclosure, sale or access. The bill requires providers to take reasonable measures to protect customer personal information from unauthorized use, disclosure, sale or access. The provisions of the bill apply to providers operating within the State when providing broadband Internet access service to customers that are billed for service received in the State and are physically located in the State."

People who use apps that sell their data should be bombarded with requests to use that data each and every single time, until they either decide the app isn't worth it or the app decides they should try a different business model.

And ad targeting should be included in that. Add a new notifications button to FB - companies that have requested advertising access to me. If I decline or don't answer, I never see their ads.

It would be like police setting up cameras and using them to train a machine learning model on drunk driver detection. It's not collecting who is driving, just observing how normal cars subtly drift in and out of a lane and brake vs. intoxicated drifting/braking and using that to train a DUI detection model.

This might make it worth having me park a server in the state and get my internet feed through a VPN to that server.

"To advertise or market the provider's communications-related services to the customer;"

With ISPs that own networks, e.g. Comcast -> NBC, would a service like NBC Sports be considered a communication-related service of Comcast's? If yes, then could they feed that customer data into NBC's advertising infrastructure? If so, could NBC then sell that data?

Do Maine judges tend to honor the spirit or the letter of the law more often?

She'll sign it. Mainer here who's been following what's been going on (she's our first female governor), she's been very committed to making sure our state is modernized. She quoted Kurt Vonnegut in her inaugural speech.

They already know all the tricks to stop people getting out of their contracts, they're just going to start applying that to this kind of opt-out situation too.

Actually I wonder, have there been any major decisions since Roe v Wade that have affirmed a right to privacy?

It is much easier to just assume these third parties will do whatever they want and either not share the data or accept that it will be used in ways you can't control.

I couldn't quite work out of this campaign was done out of legitimate concern or was a cynical attempt to derail it? I mean, I agree with them that privacy legislation should apply broadly, but then I'm happy to at least start somewhere.

[1] https://privacy.mainechamber.org/

The bill prohibits a provider from refusing to serve a customer, ... if the customer does or does not consent to the use, disclosure, sale or access.

So if they do as you say, they will be in violation of the law.

  "The 'opt-in' nature...would set it apart from other
  state internet privacy laws...
  
  the proposed Maine law also would prohibit any [ISP] from
  making the sale of customer data part of its mandatory
  [TOS]. It also could not charge higher fees to customers
  who refuse to opt in"

Yes, there are analysts sifting through your browsing data (if you're lucky, vaguely anonymized). Yes, I heard countless stories of this data being abused and misused. I simply can't imagine it has gotten much better by now.

What's really great is that it can really help small businesses and startups over large corporations. Brands like Coca Cola can afford to canvas the world with their logo, but a business with a handful of employees must use their marketing budget very carefully. User data and profiling makes it realistic to find those people naturally through their internet habits.

Even if this is being used by politicians, I don't see the harm. If you think people can't think for themselves in the face of political advertising campaigns, then I don't see why you'd also believe that those same people can be trusted with the responsibility of the vote.

I can understand the need for treating data carefully and making sure the data is sufficiently scrubbed for personal identification, but this issue is something different.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mann_Act

[0]:https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-privacy/anonymous-...

In this day and age when correlating and analyzing data from a wide variety of sources is commonplace, the only effectively "anonymized" data is data that has been discarded.

Apparently it's opt-in.

It's like bad drivers. If you have more and more people cutting cars exiting a freeway exit, people at the end will never make it off the freeway in a timely manner. Thus, people have to start being bad drivers themselves or else they will never get to their destination on time.

WTF is "consent" doing here? Why would ISP ever need to sell someone's data in order to operate? Do they also plan to explicitly prohibit ISPs from torturing customers and selling their organs? From selling illegal drugs to minors? Dear state of Maine, I too would like to waive all my legal liabilities by making my victims sign a bunch of paperwork!