Democratic US Senator Ron Wyden has introduced new privacy legislation that aims to establish a national “Do Not Track” system empowering users to prevent organizations from tracking their online activities and profiting off of their personal data.
Under the bill, companies who violate user privacy could receive fines of up to 4% of their annual revenue, which is the same for violations of the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). However, Wyden’s bill goes a step further than the GDPR by also making it possible for the government to imprison executives who knowingly lie to the FTC about their company’s privacy practices. CEO’s like Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg could face 10 to 20 years in jail for this. Wyden said that “Mark Zuckerberg won’t take Americans’ privacy seriously unless he feels personal consequences. A slap on the wrist from the FTC won’t do the job, so under my bill he’d face jail time for lying to the government.”
Read more: New US Privacy Bill Would Intro Jail Time for CEOs
