IMC-CAN Team Weekly Action May 15, 2026
Today, technology has far outpaced privacy law. Data brokers and Big Tech companies can collect, analyze, and sell vast amounts of our personal information, including precise cellphone location data that can reveal where we live, work, worship, seek medical care, protest, or spend time with our families.
Recent reporting shows that federal immigration authorities, including ICE, have purchased location data from private companies to track people without a warrant. These unchecked surveillance practices threaten everyone’s privacy and safety, but they especially endanger immigrants, LGBTQ people, abortion patients and providers, protesters, survivors of domestic violence, journalists, and other vulnerable communities.
The Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act (H.4746) would establish some of the strongest digital privacy protections in the country. The bill would ban the sale of precise geolocation data, limit how companies collect and process personal information, strengthen protections for minors and sensitive data, prohibit digital discrimination, and create meaningful accountability for powerful corporations that profit from surveillance.
The Massachusetts Senate already unanimously approved a strong version of this legislation, and the House Advanced IT Committee favorably reported the current bill in November 2025. Since then, however, the bill has stalled in the House Ways and Means Committee with no vote scheduled. Now is the time to contact your State Representative and demand action to move this critical privacy legislation forward. Use this CAN to advocate with your State House Representative, urging them to get these needed reforms done now!
As a bonus action, activists are also urging legislators to oppose proposed social media age-verification and youth social media restriction bills, including H.4229, “An Act protecting children from addictive social media feeds”. Critics, including more than 50 human rights, civil liberties, privacy, and LGBTQ advocacy organizations, warn that requiring users to verify their ages through government-issued identification or biometric systems would undermine anonymity, chill free expression, create major data privacy risks, and place vulnerable young people, especially LGBTQ youth, at greater risk rather than keeping them safe. The Senate adopted its own version of the bill, which does NOT include the concerning age verification requirements.
Progressive Mass
ACLU of MA
Fight for the Future
Step One: Find your MA House Representative HERE.
Step Two:
Call Script: (personalize all items in blue):
If you reach an answering machine and leave a voicemail, be certain to leave your full name, address, and phone number so that your call is tallied
“Hi, my name is [Name], and I’m your constituent in [Town]. I am calling to urge [Rep Name] to support the Consumer Data Privacy Act, H.4746, and get it to a vote as quickly as possible.
Massachusetts families deserve safety, privacy, and fairness, not ICE collaboration, not data brokers, not corporate loopholes. This bill is important for protecting our personal location data and keeping everyone safe.
This bill is a critical step to not only protect our privacy, but to keep people in Massachusetts safe from exploitation, harassment, or violence – including immigrants, seniors, children, people seeking abortion and gender-affirming care, survivors of domestic abuse, veterans, elected officials, and law enforcement.
The Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act would stop unnecessary and invasive online surveillance by creating meaningful limits on the collection and use of our personal data and prohibiting companies from selling our precise location information.
Please act to protect our privacy and personal safety by passing the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act as swiftly as possible.
Thank you.
[Your name]”
Recent reports have shown that ICE has been buying cell phone location data to track people at work or at home. Currently, no laws prevent data brokers from buying and selling our sensitive data, like location data, on the open market. Strengthening our data privacy protections is essential. Big Tech companies like Facebook and Google, which have been buddying up to the Trump administration, are lobbying to water down the Massachusetts bill. If adopted, this data privacy bill would be the strongest protection in the country!
The House Advanced IT Committee released H.4746 with a favorable report. Now, it sits in the House Ways and Means Committee, with no sign of movement on the bill.
The MCDPA (H. 4746) builds on a bill unanimously passed by the Senate in September. Both bills include strong data minimization rules that set meaningful limits on the personal data that companies can collect and the sensitive data they can use, offer enhanced protections for minors’ personal data, ban the sale of precise geolocation data, and have strong civil rights language to prohibit digital discrimination. The House bill also includes:
A private right of action under Massachusetts’ Consumer Protection law (chapter 93A) for large data holders, offering a critical enforcement option against the most powerful companies that collect large volumes of personal data;
A requirement that the processing of non-sensitive personal data be consistent with the consumers’ reasonable expectations;
A stronger definition of “affirmative consent” narrows the exemption for publicly available information;
The addition of union membership and veteran status to the definition of “sensitive data”;
A strong data security rule that requires companies to delete personal data when it is no longer necessary for the purpose for which it was collected; and
A requirement that browsers offer a global opt-out signal to consumers, mirroring a protection just enacted in California.
Your State Representative needs to hear from YOU about the importance of getting a strong bill passed as soon as possible.
Progressive Mass’s Data Privacy Links, 2026
Sep 2025: The MA Senate voted 40-0 to pass the Massachusetts Data Privacy Act, which would ban the sale of sensitive data (including location data). Senate Fact Sheet.
Nov 2025: The Location Shield Act bill was folded into a new draft, (H.4746) “ Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act,” a broader omnibus privacy bill. This bill contains broad privacy rules that treat precise geolocation data as sensitive. The ACLU of Massachusetts supports the bill’s consumer protections, including bans on selling sensitive information (like precise location data) and protections for people vulnerable to exploitation, harassment, or discrimination. The bill is currently before the House Ways and Means Committee, but it could come to the House floor for a vote soon.
Mass House Committee Releases Strong Privacy Bill, Nov 17, 2025
ACLU of Massachusetts Applauds House Data Privacy Bill
Previous IMC-CANs (7/02/25 & 8/27/25)included action alerts for a previous version of this law, the Location Shield Act (H.86/S.197).
Oppose the Unconstitutional Social Media Ban and Age Verification Requirements. nnolly
50+ human rights groups release letter urging Massachusetts lawmakers to reject age verification bills, hold press conference with Rep. Mike Connolly, Fight for the Future, 5/13/26
Human rights advocates rally against proposed youth social media ban in Mass., WGBH, 5/13/26
25 Reasons to Oppose Age-Based Social Media Bans, Mass50501
The Coordinated Action Network (IMC-CAN) Team is an Action Team of the Indivisible Massachusetts Coalition (IMC). We work with legislative experts and advocacy groups (Indivisible National, ACLU, Common Cause, Progressive Mass, MIRA, and many others) to vet and prioritize a short list of actions for the week. These actions are sent to thousands of individuals each Wednesday through IMC’s weekly newsletter.
Please share these priority IMC-CAN actions with your networks each week to amplify our impact! Click on the Action Sheet links below for everything you need!
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