Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill

https://techcrunch.com/2026/06/08/massachusetts-votes-to-pass-new-privacy-rights-bill-that-bans-sale-of-precise-location-data/

by 01-_- • 1 month ago

369 62 1 month ago

techcrunch.com

mc32• 1 month ago

This is good and all States should adopt some. Eventually I’d like to see one at the federal level that supersedes state level ones so that we don’t have to deal the the mess that is taxation across 50 states. A nice uniform privacy bill at the Fed level would be nice.

yndoendo• 1 month ago

This seems more symbolic since I don't see were the law has any teeth.

There is no fine nor imprisonment for failing to follow the law.

kmeisthax2• 1 month ago

No, we specifically DO NOT want uniformity. We want a minimum that states can go beyond.

In the current environment, tech companies have to bribe 50 states plus the federal legislature in order to block privacy bills. If you have federal preemption, then you just have to bribe Congress, because states can't pass ANY privacy laws whatsoever. And we already know the feds do not want a privacy law: the entire legality of the federal surveillance apparatus hinges on the fact that buying your data from third parties does not trip constitutional scrutiny. Preemption freezes the requirements in time so they will always be a few steps behind the TLAs[0].

The ideal is that every sovereign entity passes their own privacy law that applies to their territory, with a private right of action, and adtech companies are forced to adopt a "50 states legal" posture. This is, deliberately, a ratchet: it's easy for any state to require a higher standard but hard to get every state to reduce it, so privacy laws cannot be walked back in secret.

[0] Three Letter Agencies: CIA, FBI, NSA

mindslight6• 1 month ago

The ideal is that every sovereign entity passes their own privacy law that applies to their territory, with a private right of action, and adtech companies are forced to adopt a "50 states legal" posture. This is, deliberately, a ratchet: it's easy for any state to require a higher standard but hard to get every state to reduce it, so privacy laws cannot be walked back in secret.

You put this so well it kind of dislodged where I was coming from on my other comment you had responded to. I don't want to be disheartened and cynical. It's just hard to have seen this privacy issue openly festering for over two decades now, and think that things are ever going to change.

I think a private right of action with a two year delay would be great. And perhaps county DA's should be able to bring actions as well as the AG (legal policy adjacent actions aren't really in their wheelhouse, but it could help nudge the AG into action). I think the time period is a balance between giving the AG enough time to act (or be pressured into action), versus not making it too long so that illegal businesses can simply lobby to neuter the whole law before it actually goes into effect.

ldoughty2• 1 month ago

Will this have reach and teeth though?

I can imagine loopholes to this... nothing stops facebook/google from buying this data from companies not in Massachusetts? and facebook/google don't have to give advertisers the location information but can still use that information when determining the advertisement to return, right? In theory the big silicon valley "targets" of this bill don't actually have a huge incentive to give this data away, do they? They just need to be able to read/access it, which I don't think this law stops? Assuming the data broker is not doing business in Massachusetts itself

fultonn2• 1 month ago

Will this have reach and teeth though?

It'll have reach because MA has a long-arm statute and there's a rich history of applying that statute in the context of Chapter 93.

It'll have teeth but probably not to the effect that you hope.

This statute was written such that only the Attorney General can bring action; see Section 10(b). This diverges from a long history in the Commonwealth of allowing private individuals to bring civil suits for most types of Chapter 93 violations.

As a result, I anticipate that the most impactful change will be in the quantity and frequency of political donations to Mass AG candidates (and in the case of contested primaries their aligned block of candidates up and down ticket).

Consumer protection laws should always provide for a private cause of action. Otherwise they just function as a mechanism for legalized corruption.

mindslight6• 1 month ago

I don't disagree with the thrust of your criticism of the dynamic (especially long term). But there is a legitimate concern that the first test cases to hit the courts need to be quite unsympathetic egregious violators rather than surveillance dynamics that have been thoroughly normalized for decades. If people start bringing private suits against neighbors that have deployed Amazon surveillance cameras, "credit bureaus", private investigators, big tech surveillance companies directly (eg Google, and especially with weak legal arguments), it is likely to set some poor precedents and create political pushback.

rolph• 1 month ago

once you allow someone to read data, it has been given away.

even if its only retained until buffer refresh, its still given away.

if its read frombuffer space and transformed into a persistent structure, its a gift that indefinately keeps giving.

ldoughty2• 1 month ago

but if facebook/google are the buyers, they do not violate this law... the law seems to focus on the sale & giving of this data... not the reception. This means that they just need a non-Massachusetts based data broker to sell them the data, and then they can store that data to make advertisement decisions (so long as they do not forward it along)

bee_rider• 1 month ago

The intent of the law is probably to prevent the data from being sold*, so if the big Silicon Valley ad companies aren’t selling it, they are already complying with the law, right? The goal isn’t to destroy companies that are already not doing the thing.

* to the extent to which MA can do that… I mean it’s one state, so we should judge it’s accomplishments by that standard. One possibility could be that the rest of them get their act together, or at least, every state that engineers are willing to live in does.

josefritzishere• 1 month ago

This is very exciting.

like_any_other• 1 month ago

A good first step, but the harm is already done when the data is gathered. Stalking should be illegal even if you don't sell the information you gathered, I don't want Toyota or GM or Google knowing where I've been either, not just their "partners", and it's long past the time the EULA loophole was closed. Contracts exist to serve society, not the other way around.

john_strinlai• 1 month ago

still waiting for any of the many existing privacy bills, worldwide, to start doing meaningful enforcement.

Cider99864• 1 month ago

We need private right of action. That's the big thing holding up the sweeping Mass privacy law. The house supports a private right to action and the senate only wants the attorney general enforcing the law.

throwaway858253• 1 month ago

California already has a million toothless laws. Anything without a private right of action may as well not exist.

analog31• 1 month ago

Indeed, and I think possession of the information should be what's actionable.

mindslight6• 1 month ago

Do you have any links that elaborate on this? I haven't been following the Mass privacy law, but if this is true it seems like now is the time to pressure the state senate into adopting the private right of action.

post_break2• 1 month ago

Does this include vehicle data? That's a big one. Your new car selling you out constantly.

stronglikedan• 1 month ago

I've been driving connected cars for a decade and I haven't felt sold out yet. What am I missing?

criddell• 1 month ago

I bought a car earlier this year and it took about a week before I started getting car warranty junk mail for the new car.

chaps• 1 month ago

Are you asking for articles that show how connected car data is being sold left and right?

wmf• 1 month ago

Tail risk. Only <1% of people get punished by their car's data. IMO that's still too much.

post_break2• 1 month ago

Your driving habits, and everyone around you are impacting car insurance for example.

tencentshill• 1 month ago

Are you in the US? Currently if you are in the US and not native-born, you're at very direct risk. That data is how ICE builds their enforcement leads. It's still often wrong, so they might break down your door and arrest you at gunpoint anyways.

deathanatos• 1 month ago

* Massachusetts' RMV AFAICT resells one's data, resulting in new car purchasers receiving a huge amount of fraud in their mail. It can be difficult to distinguish what is a legitimate correspondence from the dealership vs. what isn't, as the fraud mail does not clearly identify itself. (And in fact, that's the tell.)

* My Subaru runs ads for Sirius XM. (Ad, on the infotainment screen. While the car's in motion.) I did not pay for my car to run ads, obviously, and obviously that was never mentioned by the dealer, ever, before or after purchase.

lightedman• 1 month ago

You're missing the fact that if I wanted to find you and kill you companies are collecting that location data and I can buy it and use it to accomplish my goal.

danesparza• 1 month ago

Feels like the word 'sale' may actually turn into a loophole. It should have probably been worded to use 'exchange' or 'transfer' instead. But this is progress.

Cider99864• 1 month ago

Yeah, we need data minimization. As long as it's collected it is a liability for consumers, turn it into a liability for businesses to incentive them to collect as little as possible.

bobro• 1 month ago

https://malegislature.gov/Bills/194/S2619/BillHistory

SECTION 1. The General Laws are hereby amended by inserting after chapter 93L the following chapter:-

Chapter 93M. Massachusetts Data Privacy Act

Section 1. As used in this chapter, the following words shall have the following meanings unless the context otherwise requires:

...

“Sale of personal data”, the transfer of personal data in exchange for monetary or other valuable consideration by the controller to a third party; provided, however, that “sale of personal data” shall not include: (i) the disclosure of personal data to a processor that processes the personal data on behalf of the controller if limited to the purposes of the processing; (ii) the disclosure of personal data to a third party for purposes of providing a product or service affirmatively requested by the consumer; (iii) the disclosure or transfer of personal data to an affiliate of the controller; (iv) the disclosure of personal data with the consumer’s affirmative consent, where the consumer affirmatively directs the controller to disclose the personal data or intentionally uses the controller to interact with a third party; (v) the disclosure or transfer of personal data to a third party as an asset that is part of a merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction or a proposed merger, acquisition, bankruptcy or other transaction, in which the third party assumes control of all or part of the controller’s assets; or (vi) the disclosure of personal data that the consumer: (A) intentionally made available to the general public via a channel of mass media; and (B) did not restrict to a specific audience.

jboggan3• 1 month ago

California very quietly passed AB-1542 last week which includes precise location data, health data, SSNs, etc. I expect many states to follow suit.

Related, General Motors got hit with a $12.75M fine for reselling OnStar location data last month: https://ccpa.world/enforcement/gm-onstar-smart-driver

yencabulator• 1 month ago

I expect many states to follow suit.

More importantly, many companies will follow California rules even outside California. My car was built to California emissions spec at a time when very few states had stricter rules.

(The one major exception seems to be the "sell my data" opt-out and such privacy rules, that industry is sleazy enough that they'll go through extra trouble to keep screwing over non-CA residents.)

jboggan3• 1 month ago

Well, CT and VT passed their own version of the California DROP system last week and there are 5 other states in play for the current 2026 legislative sessions. I think it will be a slow patchwork for more states to take similar action, but it is coming.

I will note that many "data brokers" will just honor non-California residents' requests as if they were California residents and subject to the CCPA, simply because they would rather remove a potentially litigious consumer from their databases. Given the relatively low potential revenue for a single consumer's data it just doesn't make sense to hold on to information for the kind of person who currently goes out of their way to make that kind of request.

At the same time, many data brokers do go out of their way to deny as many privacy requests as possible. Given that the CPPA/CalPrivacy is starting audits very soon I don't see this as a winning strategy for them in the long run.

themafia2• 1 month ago

Watching "The Price is Right" made California a mythical place for me as a child in the Midwest. All the cars being given away, they were sure to mention, followed "California emissions standards!"

No surprise. I ended up moving here.

nullc• 1 month ago

The FTC settlement with GM allows GM to sell precise location as long as it's anonymized by attaching it to anonymous identifiers rather than personal info. It also allows non-precise location (e.g. zipcode/census-block) attached to identifying information.

Apparently no one at the FTC is smart enough to realize if Bob and anonid both move through the same sequence of approximate locations that the anonid is Bob. Or maybe they aren't that ignorant and just wanted to look like they were doing their job while protecting the surveillance status quo.

throwaway858253• 1 month ago

The government measures success in column inches.

dylan604• 1 month ago

Selling anonymized precise location of a car that spends ~half the day at a residential location sure will make it impossible to de-anonymize that data.

The FTC under this administration that just doesn't care about people and only care about helping corporations.

jboggan3• 1 month ago

The CPPA went above the FTC and banned it outright, as well as forcing the two registered data brokers who bought the data to delete it.

gnerd00• 1 month ago

it's out of Committee in the House and passed a House vote.. not done yet

MisterTea• 1 month ago

I wonder how much money GM made selling the data vs the fine.

Cider99864• 1 month ago

this is the bill we need to pass in the house instead of them trying to age-(identity)gate social media.

(https://epic.org/press-release-massachusetts-senate-unanimou...)

throwaway858253• 1 month ago

Only data that does not exist cannot be misused.

themafia2• 1 month ago

A moment of high drama in the courtroom:

"Did you notice anything odd about the defendants vehicle?"

"Yes."

"What was that?"

"He had disabled his GPS and telemetry systems."

timeninja• 1 month ago

Massachusetts allows the use of Cellebrite software.

In which case "precise location data" is moot.

hoppyhoppy2• 1 month ago

Sure, if the cops seize your phone from you and try to suck out its data, then they clearly already know your precise location. But in some situations you would've been able to avoid getting your phone sucked out by the cops if they hadn't been able to purchase precise location data about where you were in the hours/days/weeks leading up to that.

ezfe3• 1 month ago

What is your point here? That's not what this law is about.

loeg• 1 month ago

Does this criminalize Strava?

markerz• 1 month ago

If Strava is sharing or reselling users GPS locations to third parties without user consent, yes.

ezfe3• 1 month ago

Why would it?

nxy• 1 month ago

Thank god if this is true! If not and this is just a "coverup".. Wouldn't be the first time.

m463• 1 month ago

later in the article it said not only selling, but sharing.

important because "sharing" is much more prevalent than "selling" data.

that said, I wonder how "precise location", and statistics/algorithms will combine?

for example, what if someone moves from zipcode 1 to zipcode 2? would that work out to a more precise position?

testytestyroo• 1 month ago

What prevents law enforcement from collecting this data/other signals and anonymizing it and then running models against it? Are there any laws against this?

cmxch• 1 month ago

Criminals rejoice.

Massachusetts bans sale of precise location data in new privacy rights bill

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