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Sign Our Letter! “We Are Vermont. Our Data Is Not for Sale.”

As Cindy Cohn recently said, “People think privacy is about hiding something, but it’s really about making sure others don’t get to control your life.” Vermont lawmakers will be voting on whether to protect fellow Vermonters, or to side with Big Tech. Tell them your privacy matters. Sign on by Wed 5/6! peoplevsbigtech.com/sign

(Please feel free to copy/paste the above text to share with your friends, family, and neighbors!)

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We Need Your Help!

If you came to one of the town halls, you heard me (Monique) say that it only takes 3-5 people to contact their legislator for a legislator to realize they need to pay extra attention to a particular issue. You can quite literally make or break a piece of legislation by participating in the process. So, what are key things you can do?

  • Sign up for action alerts below, particularly those from VPIRG.
  • Keep an eye on your email as I’ll send updates to the list of folks who registered for events.
  • Reach out to your State Representative, State Senator, Lt. Governor, and Governor to let them know you’re paying attention and want strong privacy and artificial intelligence legislation to pass. If you want to direct them to talk to me (Rep Monique Priestley), please feel free to do so.
  • Share your stories with me via email and let me know if you want them to be attributed or anonymous.
  • If you have questions/concerns/etc., please feel free to reach out to have a call or coffee.
  • Tell your friends about our town halls and have regular conversations about what you learned with friends, family members, and other Vermonters!
  • If you tell your friends and they want to host a town hall or group conversation, please reach out to us!

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Strong Comprehensive Privacy Bill for 2025-2026

4/24/2026 S.71 Draft Amendment 2.3 As Proposed by House Commerce & Econ Dev: What’s the deal on this one? Short Answer: This is a severe compromise, but still a worthwhile step in the right direction. As part of our process, our committee leadership convened a working group that included House & Senate members as well as lobbyists representing business/industry, Big Tech, and consumer protection advocacy. In this working group, legislators made major concessions to drop the ability for a consumer to bring cases to court if they are harmed as well as dropping a significant portion of the House amendment (and what was passed in H.121 unanimously by both Chambers in 2024). The Amendment builds off of S.71 As Passed by the Senate (S.93 Industry Bill guts) and adds in elements of what is current law in Connecticut, current law in Vermont, data level exemptions, clarity around advertising definitions, strong data minimization, and a ban on the sale of sensitive data. This is the one to root for as of May 1, 2026.

5/29/2025 S.71 Draft Amendment 1.3 As Proposed by House Commerce & Econ Dev: What’s the deal on this one? Short Answer: This was the strongest version introduced to date. S.71 passed the Senate as a copy of S.93. Once it got back to the House, we proposed a strike-all amendment in House Commerce to reset the language to the strong language. S.71 as proposed to be amended on 5/30/25 is a strong consumer protection privacy bill and it also made several adjustments around applicability, thresholds, private right of access eligibility, and data minimization in order to accommodate concerns from industry.

Weak Comprehensive Privacy Bill for 2025-2026

3/27/2025 S.71 As Passed by the Senate (aka Exact Copy of S.93 Below): What’s the deal on this one? Short answer: It’s the Industry Bill. S.71 started as a companion copy of H.208. When industry lobbyists said they’d refuse to engage with the House on H.208 and said they’d just attack the bill in the Senate, we asked the Senate to start the bill instead. Because the bill started off strong, it was stalled so we had the Senate do a strike-all and replace the contents with the Industry Bill (S.93). This is the bill that the Chamber of Commerce is fighting for alongside Big Tech.

2/27/2025 S.93 As Introduced in the Senate: What’s the deal on this one? Short answer: It’s the Industry Bill. It looks like a copy of what passed in Connecticut a few years ago (which has since been amended to be stronger and close some loopholes), except that there’s a clause that strips Vermonters of existing rights afforded to them under the Consumer Protection Act.

Data Broker Delete Act Bill for 2025-2026

3/25/2026 H.211 As Passed by the House

What’s the deal on this one? Short answer: This isn’t as strong as it was introduced, but it’s a worthwhile step. Although H.211 As Passed by the House made the single-button deletion mechanism into a study, the reporting requirements in the bill will generate real data on broker activity, volume, and compliance – exactly what we need to make the case for an automated deletion system in a future session when the budget allows. In the meantime, the bill: increases fees, stronger transparency requirements, updated definitions that cover more data brokers than current law, and the creation of the right to be deleted from data brokers. Those are meaningful protections Vermonters don’t have today.

Additional Consumer & Government Tech Protection Bills for 2025-2026

  • H.160 Creating a Right to Repair for Medical Devices
  • H.161 The Vermont Fair Repair Act
  • H.262 Restricting Electronic Monitoring of Employees and the Use of Employment-Related Automated Decision Systems
  • H.340 Regulating Developers and Deployers of Certain Automated Decision Systems
  • H.341 Oversight and Safety Standards for Developers and Deployers of Inherently Dangerous Artificial Intelligence Systems
  • H.342 Protecting the Personal Information of Certain Public Servants
  • H.360 Privacy Protections for Mobile Identification
  • H.366 Neurological Rights
  • H.387 Creating a Property Right for an Individual’s Personal Characteristics
  • H.388 Protection of an Individual’s Digital Replica
  • H.389 Restricting the Use of Artificial Intelligence to Affect Rental Housing Pricing and Availability
  • H.390 Restrictions on Digital Advertising Brokers
  • H.391 Disclosure of Transactions Involving Personally Identifiable Information
  • H.520 Right of Users to Control Their Social Media Data
  • H.699 Unfair & Deceptive Acts or Practices Updates
  • H.706 Browser Opt-Out
  • H.714 Automated Decisions Affecting State Employees
  • H.720 Cloud Compute as Public Utility
  • H.752 Expansion of State Government AI Inventory
  • H.776 Use of AI in Healthcare Coverage Decisions
  • H.783 Consumers’ Right to Know When Engaging with a Chatbot
  • H.784 People-First AI Companions
  • H.791 State Information Practices Act
  • H.792 AI Product Liability
  • H.812 Duty of Data Loyalty

Celebrating Wins

2025 Vermont Age Appropriate Design Code

This legislation has very strict data minimization and data privacy standards for minors under 18. It establishes and expectation of high privacy settings by default, disallows tracking, disallows the unwanted contact of unknown adults, disallows the sharing/sale of the data of minors, and has a private right of action.