Alva Review-Courier -

It seems like each week brings a new weather event in northwest Oklahoma. This weekend we’re told to expect freezing rain with a small chance of snow. Let’s hope this is winter’s last gasp.

Saturday is the first day of spring according to the calendar. Sunday brings us Daylight Saving Time. Some of us like it, some of us hate it, but it will happen nevertheless.

The recent weather brought some headaches and hits to the bank account for homeowners with frozen and broken water pipes. The extreme cold exposed issues with furnaces and just generally made life miserable.

Alva Mayor Kelly Parker said Monday the “snow-nado” and “freeze-nado” weeks also brought problems for the city. In the municipal building, the city office had no heat for several days. Staff moved to the city council chambers to stay warm with quick trips into the office as needed to take care of business. He said they’ve also experienced some issues with water getting under streets and causing the pavement to buckle.

One very obvious problem is the traffic lighting at Fourth and Oklahoma in Alva. City Business Manager Angelica Brady said water got into the control system. They’re working on a solution. Meanwhile, the lights are blinking red in all directions. In case drivers don’t remember this means a 4-way stop, the city has also positioned stop signs at each street corner of the intersection.

There’s a lot of excitement in Alva as the Alva Goldbugs are headed to the state tournament this week. It’s the first time the boys’ team has made it this far since 2006. They play in the state quarter-finals against Beggs in Yukon Thursday night at 8 p.m. We know the boys and their coaches have worked hard to get this far and deserve recognition for their effort.

The municipal elections will be here soon. There will be races on the ballot in much of our coverage area. Tuesday, April 6, will determine the outcome.

Privacy Laws

It’s amazing how much information about us is available on the internet. Just put your name in a search engine sometime and see what comes up. My name comes up associated with all the newspaper writing I do because it’s also posted on our website.

We also give a lot of our information to companies. If you buy anything online, you’ll likely see a screen giving the company the option to send you emails about their products. Those are always checked, so you have to watch and uncheck them if you don’t want them filling your email inbox.

A number of states are moving to adopt sweeping consumer-privacy laws. The Virginia Consumer Data Protection Act was signed into law on March 2.

Some privacy experts and technology companies say they’d prefer to see a federal privacy law, rather than state measures. Consumer Reports has published several articles about consumer privacy rights and laws. Much of this information comes from that source.

“The best solution is a comprehensive federal privacy law that empowers people to understand how personal information they share is collected, used and protected,” says Robert Callahan, senior vice president of state government affairs at the Internet Association, a trade group whose members include Amazon, Google and Facebook.

There’s concern about huge differences in specific provisions of the state laws being passed. Companies would prefer to refer to a single document rather than trying to comply with a variety of conditions imposed by these state laws.

Last summer, a Consumer Reports study found that it can be extremely tough to exercise your rights under California’s law. Over 500 California residents participated in the study, submitting requests to a total of 214 businesses to stop sharing their data with other companies. In 62 percent of cases, participants either didn’t know whether their request was successful or said they could never figure out how to make the request at all.

A model privacy bill proposed by Consumer Reports would stop a lot of data collection before it starts by making privacy the default. It would give consumers the right to access, delete and correct date held by companies.

Here are some of the other provisions:

• Limiting data collection to what is reasonably necessary for a company to operate the services consumers are asking for.

• A broad prohibition against secondary uses or sharing of data. The law wouldn’t allow you to be bombarded with requests for permission to track you or sell your information.

• Nondiscrimination. Companies would not be allowed to penalize consumers for exercising their privacy rights.

The model bill would also include private right of action allowing consumers to sue companies for violating a law. Last year, a privacy bill in Washington state fell apart when privacy advocates pushed for a private right of action, while technology companies argued that enforcement should be restricted to the state’s attorney general.