Privacy bill would give FTC actual authority, land lying executives in jail

Enlarge / Sen. Ron Wyden questions witnesses during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing on social media influence in the 2016 US elections in Washington, DC, on Nov. 1, 2017. (credit: Andrew Harrer | Bloomberg | Getty Images )

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) would like tech and data companies to mind their own business and get their noses out of yours. To that end, he has introduced a bill that would penalize them, potentially with jail time for executives, for not doing so.

The proposed bill (PDF), actually called the "Mind Your Own Business Act of 2019," is in many ways an updated version of a discussion draft Wyden published last November.

The draft does not name any company specifically, instead focusing on the general concepts of personal data and company responsibility. That said, Wyden did name names in a statement, and Facebook is clearly front and center on his radar.

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