Location tracking on cell phones means your everyday movements are not your own.
Take for example an investigation that found that a nonprofit founded by Wisconsin Right
to Life aimed targeted ads to people who visited abortion providers, including 14 million
such ads in Wisconsin.
Data privacy laws are being passed in states across the country and in Europe.
Here in Wisconsin, the state assembly unanimously passed the Data Privacy Act.
It awaits Senate action.
Its author, Representative Shannon Zimmerman of River Falls, joins us now and thanks
very much for being here.
My pleasure.
Thank you for the invitation.
So how urgently do you want the Senate to take this up?
As soon as possible, I view this as one of the most important bills and I come from the
technology sector.
I've spent my 25 year career in tech and the position I've taken with my colleagues
is that we've never before lived in a time of innovation like we are right now.
Most of the world is just awakening to this thing called artificial intelligence.
AI is pretty simple in this regard.
It builds its capabilities off of what's called large language models.
Large language models are data.
And so when individuals personal data becomes a part of that training material that can
maybe be unnerving and or not what they would have wanted.
So in this era of innovation, which is great for a lot of reasons, I think the protection,
the individual's right to protection of their data has never before been as important
as it is right now.
What does the Data Privacy Act call for?
The bill essentially has three components and a moment ago, you made reference to the
fact that other states have done this.
And in fact, other continents, Europe, for example, in 2018, incorporated what's called
GDPR, the global data protection regulation.
GDPR is a very robust set of regulations focused on privacy, cybersecurity, et cetera.
This bill is a small subset of that rather than try and boil the ocean and get nothing
done.
Let's be specific was my thought and focus on three things.
Number one, individuals in the state of Wisconsin would have the right to say to any data collector,
what do you have on me?
Number two, to whom have you shared or sold that information?
And third and finally, you have a right to say, no, delete it, please remove it.
I'm uncomfortable with that.
Those are the three main pillars of this legislation.
Describe what kind of personal data is being captured and how?
It would be probably almost impossible to capture and give you a full definition and
scope.
Let me give you some examples.
We have in its simplest form information that we willingly provide to collectors for loyalty
programs, right?
This could be your quick trip rewards card, which is great, right?
I spend, I buy these products and I get some Karuba coffee.
Probably not something that people get too worked up about, but you are many times being
tracked, listened to, information is being collected on you that maybe you're not aware
and literally this could span any form of digital data that would exist on you.
You mentioned geolocation data at the start of this segment.
That's one example of data that can be collected on individuals.
And so my thinking here is that in many cases, a person willingly makes that exchange.
They say, yes, I'm okay with you tracking that because maybe I get a discount reward
again, a quick trip.
However, in other examples, there may be situations where absolutely not.
I don't want that sensitive personal information.
I mean, can you imagine, and I'm not using Alexa as a specific example of this, but that
type of device, people have devices in their homes that are listening all the time and
information, conversations that are shared in the privacy of your living room, right?
Your kitchen table.
I think there's an expectation of individuals that that, in fact, is private because we wouldn't
let somebody just walk in to our home, sit there and listen and then use that information.
So it really is a broad, broad array of data.
So how is it used then?
Oh, well, if you think about the past couple election cycles, there have been numerous
news articles and reports where data on individuals can be used to maybe persuade you or sway
you a certain way.
Let me give you a very specific example.
We conducted exhaustive research in anticipation of this bill.
And just to be clear, this is the third session I've run this bill.
So this is not something new that just came up.
And I have gone out of my way to make sure that any stakeholder, any interested or vested
party was at the table and had a chance to weigh in on this.
But during the research, a social media company conducted an experiment, okay?
So let's just use a simple example and we'll say that let's conclude and I'm acknowledging
I like to fish.
I'm a sportsman.
I like to go fishing.
What in this social media company knew this?
So what they did over a 16 week period is they steadily fed me knowing all of the things
I care about, the things I click on, information they've collected on me, they know what moves
me, what motivates me, what I'm emotionally triggered on, they steadily fed me information
and the idea was can we move this individual from being an advocate for, let's just in
my example, he's fishing, to not and to no longer being an advocate for fishing.
And they were successful in doing that because they would feed news articles, they would
use information that was, again, personal to me, information that I regularly clicked
on to slowly change my position.
Maybe it's unhealthy, maybe it's bad for the environment, maybe it's bad for my body,
et cetera, et cetera.
Those are the types of scenarios where people don't want to be manipulated.
They shouldn't be manipulated.
And those are the nefarious examples where data collectors can use that information in
ways that you would not be comfortable.
Do you expect the Senate to take this up and pass it?
I am imploring the Senate to please take this up and pass it at this point in time.
I appreciate the fact that the legislature is made up of individuals from all walks of
life, different backgrounds, farmers, lawyers, technology people, teachers.
And we all bring something to this thing called the Wisconsin legislature.
I have done my very best to try and impress upon them the sheer importance of this right
now for so many different reasons.
Very happy.
As received bipartisan support in the assembly committee, unanimously voted on in the assembly,
it received bipartisan support in the Senate committee, which is a great indicator.
Now to be candid, there's a couple groups right now that are working really, really
hard to make sure this bill doesn't get to the Senate floor.
I am super hopeful that the Senate does what's right here for Wisconsin residents and pushes
this thing across the finish line to the governor's office.
And those groups are business groups, including Wisconsin manufacturers and commerce.
What are their objections?
So WMC, and I have a high degree of respect.
I've worked a lot with WMC in the past, and they do a great job for small businesses,
large businesses across the entire state of Wisconsin.
But initially they had one primary argument, which was, hey, Shannon, this really should
be taken up at the federal level.
If the United States doesn't need is a tapestry of different legislation similar, but not exactly
the same, this should be taken up at the federal level.
I agree.
I 100% agree with WMC on this.
The challenge that we have is that the federal government seems nearly incapable of doing
anything these days, getting anything done.
So the options before us and our do nothing, and then Wisconsin residents data is at risk.
They are at risk.
There can be harm there, or we do something, and I will tell you, the legislation that
we authored here, that I put together, we drew from other states.
We looked at other states and what and how they did it so that we're not creating something
radically different.
So my contention is that, yes, I think the Fed should take it up, but they're not.
The second argument that they make is that it's going to be burdensome and costly.
I've seen some estimates suggesting over a billion dollars in cost of businesses to
comply with this.
I'm just going to call bunk on this one.
And here's the gut check, right?
You're telling me that the over 10 states in the United States that have passed this,
the entire European Union has implemented this since 2018.
Are people conducting business in those areas?
Absolutely they are.
So I think that the protection and the benefit from the protection, far outweighs those exaggerated
arguments.
All right.
Representative Shannon Zimmerman, thanks very much.
Thank you.
Well, we could have talked about that for a lot longer, but thank you so much.
Really appreciate it.
Interesting.
Yeah.
Will track it.
Okay.
Well, thank you so much for your time today.
No pun intended.
Yeah.
Sorry.
Yeah.
Good one.
Have a nice weekend.
Thanks.
You too.
Bye-bye.