WASHINGTON – U.S. Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-VA) released the following statement after Governor Ralph Northam signed the Consumer Data Protection Act into state law: 

“This is an important first step in providing vital privacy protections to Virginians. My hope is that Governor Northam and the legislature will improve this law in the near future in important ways, including incorporating my important bipartisan work on dark patterns and enhancing privacy protections around online advertisements, making it easier for Virginia citizens to invoke their privacy rights, such as through a global privacy control.”

Sen. Warner has written and introduced a number of bills designed to protect consumers and reduce the power of giant social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Google. Among these are the Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching (ACCESS) Act – a bill to encourage market-based competition to dominant social media platforms by requiring the largest companies to make user data portable – and their services interoperable – with other platforms; the Safeguarding Against Fraud, Exploitation, Threats, Extremism and Consumer Harms (SAFE TECH) Act – legislation to reform Section 230 and allow social media companies to be held accountable for enabling cyber-stalking, targeted harassment, and discrimination on their platforms; the Designing Accounting Safeguards to Help Broaden Oversight And Regulations on Data (DASHBOARD) Act – bipartisan legislation to require data harvesting companies to tell consumers and financial regulators exactly what data they are collecting from consumers and how it is being leveraged by the platform for profit; and the Deceptive Experiences To Online Users Reduction (DETOUR) Act – bipartisan legislation to prohibit large online platforms from using deceptive user interfaces to trick consumers into handing over their personal data.

###