On Wednesday, a House panel is expected to greenlight a basic privacy bill that strikes compromises on a number of key issues that have long troubled negotiators.
This would mark the first time a consumer privacy bill has made it out of committee, a historic achievement.
While the legislation is still subject to change in the markup session, the latest version released Tuesday by the House Energy and Commerce Committee shows key deals reached by Democrats and Republicans. Directed by the Chairman Frank Pallone Jr. (DN.J.) and ranking member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), is the most significant effort ever to pass a law.
Most importantly, the proposal brokers a bipartisan compromise by gutting most state privacy laws, as Republicans have sought, in exchange for giving consumers the right to sue violators, which Democrats have called for.
Mutual concessions do not end there. The bill includes versions of many Democratic demands, including civil rights protections against discriminatory data use, in forms more palatable to Republicans. While viewed less favorably by consumer advocates allied with Democrats, they are less likely to face a backlash from business groups arguing that more sweeping requirements would make compliance too burdensome.
“Everybody is coming to terms with the fact that this is going to have to be bipartisan and nobody is going to get everything they want,” he said. Sara Collinssenior policy adviser for the consumer group Public Knowledge, which supports the bill.
The latest version includes recent changes that appear to be aimed directly at addressing the concerns of a prominent critic.
Senate Commerce Chair Mary Cantwell (D-Wash.), whose panel controls the bill’s fate in the upper chamber, has opposed the proposal to extend the time consumers can file lawsuits against companies by four years. The latest version reduced that to two years. There is also an expanded section on forced arbitration, a key sticking point for Cantwell.
The updated measure also expressly stated that California’s newly formed enforcement agency could support the act, a nod to criticism from state Democratic officials.
James Czerniawskisenior policy analyst at the libertarian advocacy group Americans for Prosperity, said “you can see some concerns rising” from Republicans about expanding the private right of action and clearly carving out a role for California regulators .
Still, he said, “working out these details isn’t always easy, but it’s a welcome sight to see them working on the same thing.”
The bill appears to address children’s privacy advocates’ concerns about a loophole that could allow companies to avoid scrutiny for serving ads targeted at children and teens if the firms didn’t know it was happening. The updated bill applies that more limited standard to smaller firms only. Bigger companies could be held liable if they knew or should have known about it.
Recent changes seem to give up ground in both directions.
The latest version exempts small businesses from facing lawsuits from individuals. It also makes the Federal Trade Commission the sole enforcement agency overseeing data privacy, with some exceptions, preempting the role of the Federal Communications Commission. Republicans have long challenged the FCC’s ability to enforce privacy rules in the telecom sector.
“The American Privacy and Data Protection Act’s national standard is stronger than any state privacy law,” McMorris Rodgers said in a statement to The Technology 202. “It prohibits Big Tech from tracking and exploiting sensitive information of people for profit without their consent, protects children, and ensures that small businesses can innovate.”
However, the compromises didn’t just come “out of the blue,” Collins said. Discussions, negotiations and even major proposals about data privacy have been around for years.
“There’s been a significant amount of education that’s happened, and just a significant rallying around the idea that we need to get this under control,” she said.
But this time, she said, Congress leaders made it clear they were determined to get the job done.
“It came out of the gates very serious, and it’s clear, especially from Palone and McMorris Rogers, that they want to get something done … and that they’re going to put pressure on people to get things done and that there’s going to be a negotiation,” she said. .
However, the negotiations are not over. The measure faces major hurdles in the Senate, and it remains to be seen whether House lawmakers have done enough to overcome them.
Lawmakers issue more antitrust findings to bolster case for reform
The House Judiciary Committee on Tuesday released its full final report on allegations of anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants, which supporters said contained more findings that bolstered calls for antitrust legislation.
According to Politico Josh Sisco“Internal documents from Google and Amazon … show new examples of how companies favor their products over competitors,” adding ammunition to the push for Congress to strengthen antitrust law.” And according to Bloomberg News Leah Nylen, A separate memo highlighted how executives at Facebook’s parent company, Meta, “were more concerned about the threat posed by their own products” than they were publicly.
While the panel referred to the memos when it released its report in 2020, they were released in full on Tuesday. “These documents expose the problem in black and white – these platforms use their dominance to unfairly disadvantage their rivals, all at the expense of competition and consumers.” Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) said.
The companies contested the announcement. Google said the documents were “cherry-picked” and Facebook noted the memos were not new, while Amazon did not return a request for comment, according to reports.
Twitter scores early victory in legal battle with Musk
“A Delaware Court of Chancery judge largely granted Twitter’s request for an expedited trial on Tuesday, an early victory for the social media company in its legal battle against Elon Musk, the world’s richest man,” colleagues mine. Elizabeth Dwoskin AND Gerrit De Vynck report.
Musk’s legal team had requested a mistrial in February, giving them seven months to try to obtain information from the social network, potentially including data on the proliferation of bots on the site, which Musk has disputed. “The chancellor Kathleen McCormick granted Twitter’s appeal for an early trial date, setting a five-day trial in October,” my colleagues wrote.
“The reality is the delay [requested by Musk] threatens irreparable harm to vendors and Twitter,” McCormick said. Musk’s attempt to exit his $44 billion deal to buy the social media company is expected to be one of the most closely watched tech legal disputes in modern history.
Senate votes to advance chip bill
“A bipartisan bill subsidizing domestic semiconductor manufacturing cleared its first procedural hurdle Tuesday in a 64-34 vote, even as the details of the legislation were still being worked out,” The Wall Street Journal’s Natalie Andrews reports.
According to the report, “The vote paves the way for a larger package that would include additional funding for scientific research. Before the vote, the Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., NY) said he would use the outcome to gauge whether there was enough Republican support for additional funding.”
“This will be a test vote and the outcome will decide whether the scientific part of USICA is included,” Schumer said.
US senator urges passage of Big Tech antitrust bill as time runs out (Reuters)
Apple reaches $50m settlement over faulty MacBook keyboards (Reuters)
UK won’t ban video game loot boxes after 2-year investigation (Jonathan Lee)
Netflix loses nearly 1 million subscribers, promises comeback (Wall Street Journal)
Blizzard Albany, formerly Vicarious Visions, Announces Merger Offer (Shannon Liao)
A company called Meta is suing Meta for calling itself Meta (The Verge)
- The House Energy and Commerce Committee holds a hearing on data privacy legislation today at 9:45 a.m.
- The Senate Commerce Committee holds a hearing to consider President Biden’s nomination Arati Prabhakar to lead the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House today at 10:00 a.m.
- Republican FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr discusses broadband grants at an American Enterprise Institute event Thursday at 10 a.m.
that‘That’s all for today – thank you so much for joining us! Be sure to tell others to subscribe of technology 202 here. Get in touch with tips, comments or greetings I tweet or email.
