In Jan 2018, T-Mobile completed its acquisition of a small Midwestern telecommunications company, Iowa Wireless Services (iWireless). While the company only provided service to 75,000 customers, many of its users had no other options. The service was precisely what rural communications advocates have asked for: affordable, effective, and accessible.
In his first state of the state address, Gov Gavin Newsom (D-CA) proposed "a new data dividend" that could allow residents to get paid for providing access to their data. "California's consumers should also be able to share in the wealth that is created from their data," Gov Newsom said. The data dividend proposal follows the CA state legislature's passage in 2018 of a landmark data privacy bill, granting consumers specific rights related to their personal digital information that's collected, shared or maintained by businesses.
44 public interest, civil rights, racial justice, and consumer groups wrote a letter urging Congress to prioritize civil rights concerns when developing consumer privacy legislation. The letter reads:
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