In brief
PDTA rests on three findings: property concepts do not settle government's authority over information; possession, technical capability and commercial availability do not create authority; and broader informational power requires renewed, particular authorization.
- Primary Information Trusteeship. A person is the Primary Information Trustee of information about that person, without any claim that facts are property. Consent that is coerced, conditioned on an unrelated benefit or broader than the interaction is no consent (Section 4).
- No authority by possession, capability or purchase. Government becomes a Secondary Information Fiduciary when it exercises informational power, and gains no authority merely by holding, being able to reach, or buying information (Section 5).
- Four duties. Loyalty, care, confidentiality, and transparency and accountability, performed through system architecture where feasible rather than through voluntary restraint (Section 7).
- Separate acts, separate authority. Authority to verify is not authority to read; to read is not to correlate; to correlate is not to infer. A material expansion requires materially renewed authorization (Section 8).
- Disloyal practices. A list of presumptively disloyal practices that government must justify, and a list of per se disloyal practices, such as standing capability to build comprehensive cross-purpose profiles, that consent cannot cure (Sections 13 and 14).
- Enforcement. Burdens of proof on government, a private right of action, structural remedies aimed at the capability rather than only the last misuse, and an independent Data Trusteeship Authority (Sections 20 to 23).
Section map
| Sections | What they do |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Title, findings and purposes, definitions. |
| 4–5 | Primary Information Trusteeship; government as Secondary Information Fiduciary; no authority by possession, capability or commercial availability. |
| 6–7 | Originating informational purpose and governmental informational authority; the four fiduciary duties and their structural performance. |
| 8–12 | Authorized informational acts and material expansion; purpose and question particularity; purpose sequestration, correlation, inference and reuse; bounded government discovery; independent information intermediaries. |
| 13–14 | Presumptively disloyal practices (rebuttable, but not by convenience); per se disloyal practices. |
| 15–19 | Rights of Primary Information Trustees; authorized trustees and guardianship; responsibility of government, vendors, agents and other governments; access, retention and recovery; architecture and conformance. |
| 20–23 | Burdens of proof; private right of action; remedies, including declaratory, injunctive and structural relief; the Data Trusteeship Authority. |
| 24–28 | Relationship to VIDA, GAAFA and other law; rulemaking and FCGIAS conformance; review; severability; effective date 180 days after enactment and the transition framework for all three acts. |
Text
For drafting assistance, write to legislative@fiduciarycommons.com.