Democrats today introduced new legislation aimed at banning nearly all forms of what its authors label “surveillance advertising.”

The “Banning Surveillance Advertising Act,” introduced by Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-California), Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Illinois), and Sen. Cory Booker (D-New Jersey), would prohibit advertising platforms such as Google LLC and Meta Platforms Inc., the parent company of Facebook, from selling targeted ads based on users’ personal data.

Advertisers would be barred from targeting users based on “protected class information,” which is things such as their gender, race and religion. There would be some exemptions, allowing for use of “broad” location-based targeting, such as ads targeted at a specific municipality. The bill would also not prohibit “contextual advertising,” such as showing ads to users based on what content they’re engaging with.

The bill calls for the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to enforce any violations of the law. It also allows individual users to sue any company that violates the law, granting up to $5,000 in relief per violation.

Eshoo (pictured) said in a press release that surveillance advertising is a “toxic business model” and one that causes “irreparable harm” to consumers, businesses and democracy.

“The ‘surveillance advertising’ business model is premised on the unseemly collection and hoarding of personal data to enable ad targeting,” she continued. “This pernicious practice allows online platforms to chase user engagement at great cost to our society, and it fuels disinformation, discrimination, voter suppression, privacy abuses and so many other harms. The surveillance advertising business model is broken.”

The introduction of the bill is not surprising, given the years of inaction by the likes of Google and Facebook on very real concerns about their advertising strategies, Charles King of Pund-IT Inc. told SiliconANGLE.

“As far as its chances of passage, who knows? The Dems control the House but they’re hardly united when it comes to business regulations,” King said. “Even if the bill does attract enough support to pass, the current rules and makeup of the Senate could result in it being locked up for months or killed outright, depending on what lobbyists from the companies targeted are willing to do or pay.”

King said one notable point is that Eshoo’s Congressional district includes a significant portion of Silicon Valley. “It’ll be worth watching to see how local business leaders and political analysts respond to the bill,” he said.

Although the bill would undoubtedly force Google, Facebook and others to alter their business models radically, it has attracted support from various quarters. Public interest organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League, Electronic Privacy Information Center, Demand Progress and the Center for Digital Democracy all voiced their support, as did companies such as the privacy-centric search engine DuckDuckGo and Proton Technologies AG, creator of the encrypted email service ProtonMail.

“Surveillance advertising is at the heart of every exploitative online business model that exacerbates manipulation, discrimination, misinformation, extremism, and fundamentally violates people’s privacy in ways they would never choose if given a true choice,” Schakowsky said in a statement.“The Banning Surveillance Advertising Act will put a stop to this repulsive practice and therefore protect consumers by removing the financial incentive for companies to exploit consumers’ personal information and help stop a morass of online harms.”

Photo: Anna Eshoo/Flickr