Responding to the passage of a California law that gives people the right to know what information companies are collecting about them, tech industry leaders like Facebook, Google, IBM and Microsoft  are lobbying the federal government to come up with a law of its own.

The advantage of such a law, officials say, would be twofold: It would overrule the California law and establish a kinder set of rules that would give the companies wide leeway over how personal digital information was handled, writes Cecilia Kang at bizjournals.com.

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The efforts could set up a big fight with consumer and privacy groups, especially as companies like Facebook face scrutiny for mishandling users’ personal data. Many of the internet companies depend on the collection and analysis of such data to help them target the online ads that generate the bulk of their revenue.

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