Welcome to the Tech Policy Podcast. I'm Evan Swartzchstraver. On today's show, Internet Privacy. Ever wonder why you can use sites like Facebook and Google and Gmail and get all these services for free? Well, you've probably thought about it. And it's because of your data. When you use those services,

advertisers are able to target you. And contrary to some hysteria around this issue, they're not

actually selling your data. When you use a service like Facebook and Google, they're selling

advertisements that are targeted at you based on your preferences and things about you. But there's

all sorts of anonymized practices,

and we'll get into that later in the show. But the reason we're talking about this today is

because last week, Representative Marsha Blackburn, a Republican from Tennessee, who chairs

the Digital Commerce and Consumer Protection Subcommittee under the House Energy and Commerce Committee,

she introduced a bill called the Browser Act, and that's

an acronym that I'm not going to say, because these acronyms are always silly and pointless.

They just use them so that they can call bills, things that somehow have to do with their

subject matter.

But essentially, she's saying that consumers should have to opt in to this sort of thing.

Right now, the internet ecosystem globally

in some ways, but especially in the United States, is based on opt out. Essentially, you can

opt out of this sort of data collection required for these services to work, but you don't

necessarily have to opt in depending. Now, of course, consumer privacy is great, right? More

privacy regulation, more rights, more consumer choice.

How could this possibly be bad?

Well, joining me to discuss the pros and cons of this bill is Baron Soka,

President of Tech Freedom, and he's a big believer in privacy.

Right, Baron?

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