Today, Maine Governor Janet Mills signed a bill that would, among other things, ensure that broadband customers in the state have meaningful control over their personal information and a choice about how it is used. The bill is based on the broadband privacy rules adopted by the Wheeler FCC in 2016 and repealed by Congress in 2017. The bill passed the Maine House of Representatives by a 96-45 vote and by a unanimous (35-0) vote in the Senate.

This statement should be attributed to Gigi Sohn: 

The bipartisan passage of Maine’s broadband privacy bill demonstrates that when legislators listen to their constituents rather than big corporations, the public wins. 

The cable and broadband industry sent a parade of high-powered and highly-paid Washington, DC-based lawyers to Augusta in an effort to defeat this bill, using the same arguments they used to kill the FCC’s sensible and popular 2016 broadband privacy rules. But Maine legislators believed that protecting their constituents’ privacy was paramount and moved expeditiously to do so. 

When the federal government stands down, the states must step up, and that is what Maine has done here. If the passage of this bill lights a fire under Congress to pass long overdue comprehensive data privacy legislation, there will be even more reason to celebrate today’s accomplishment.

Gigi Sohn is a Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Institute for Technology Law and Policy and a Benton Senior Fellow and Public Advocate. She served as Counselor to Former FCC Chairman from November 2013-December 2016.  While at the FCC, she worked on the 2016 Broadband Privacy Rules. She testified before the Joint Committee on Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications of the Maine Legislature on April 24, 2019 in support of the bill. Her oral and written testimony can be found here and here.