The US Finally Has A Chance For A Federal Privacy Law. It Should Take It:
Strong privacy rights are a crucial first step to a healthy and productive online ecosystem. The European Union figured this out years ago, enacting the General Data Protection Regulation. In contrast, the U.S., the land of tech innovation, is tripping over its own feet at the finish line and hoping nobody notices we'll be without a consistent and consequential law protecting internet users for at least a few more years. It's well past time to put politics and personal gripes aside and bring up the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) for a vote in the House of Representatives before the end of the year.
We're a few weeks into the lame-duck congressional session, and any progress made in House ADPPA negotiations is at best secret, at worst non-existent. With so many disillusioned by the state of governing in the US, it would be easy to shrug this off as the usual gridlock.
But this impasse defies political logic—we are well past the point of principled opposition, competing ideological stances, or genuine concern for internet users. It must be emphasized over and over again: the main debates that kept comprehensive federal privacy legislation from happening are mostly settled. Republicans agreed to a limited (but significant) private right of action, meaning that users have a right to sue companies for violating their privacy rights. Democrats have overwhelmingly agreed to a federal preemption clause that still preserves many state-level privacy laws, though not hypothetical future legislation.
Beyond minor technical tweaks that folks can easily sit down and hammer out, three major misconceptions about ADPPA continue to drive the conversation: the notion that ADPPA's provisions will leave Americans worse off on privacy in the future, the idea that ADPPA is soft on industry, and the implicit view that keeping the status quo is preferable to passing ADPPA. It's hard to overstate that federal legislators from California, bowing to bad faith arguments from territorial state privacy regulators, are the overwhelming drivers of these concerns.
When California's privacy leaders and congressional delegation could not continue to falsely claim that their state laws are stronger than the ADPPA (they are not), they started hanging on to a different argument from the preemption debate: that states would not be allowed to "innovate" and that users would be "stuck" with the protections Congress passed. This argument at least is rooted in reality—the ADPPA will certainly bar states from enacting new comprehensive privacy laws. But it fails to engage with the content of the legislation before us and the stark reality of privacy protections in this country.
To be clear: ADPPA opponents claiming the mantle of potential future innovation at the state level are doing so in defense of state laws that are universally weaker than ADPPA. If state lawmakers, including in California, want to increase privacy protections for their residents, the clear solution is to pass ADPPA now rather than be content with weaker protections that might improve. The pledge of better choices in the future has always been an empty promise at both state and federal levels. To give up a real privacy bill for an empty promise defies logic.
The remaining voices of dissent argue that ADPPA would benefit the tech industry, pointing to support from some companies as evidence. This fails to reckon with myriad reasons why companies might support regulation.
[Is there any chance that our community can discuss this topic without turning it into a "my party is better than your party" mud slinging match? I hope so... JR]
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Sunday December 11, @09:17AM
But my party is better than your party. I mean, it must be, or else it wouldn't be my party, right? :-)
Well, actually there doesn't exist a single party in the world which I would consider "my party". But then, no party is perfect, and since I have no party, that means my party is perfect, and therefore better than yours, whatever that may be. :-)
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday December 11, @09:21AM (1 child)
... I can tell you it is a pain in the a…ftermost bodypart to live up to — but absolutely worth it.
It has helped bring the biggest companies to heel by leveraging huge fines against them (as a percentage of their total turnover, which seriously hurts).
It has not stopped the spying … yet, but I'm pretty sure it will help over time.
I used to have a huge respect for many American values and ideas, like freedom for the individual, free speech and technological advances — but these days this ideology watered down to the point of ridicule from much of the so-called "free world". On the altar of unbridled money worship, capitalism at its worst.
I hope for the US (and for the rest of the world) that something substantial comes through sooner rather than later.
(Score: 2) by pe1rxq on Sunday December 11, @12:07PM
I agree, but also want to note that to it seems most of the a.. hurting is the result of companies trying to do everything they can to comply in the most a.. hurting way.
(Score: 2) by Snotnose on Sunday December 11, @10:09PM
Since the late 90's, when Microsoft found itself in the crosshairs of government investigators and they realized they needed to divert some of those R&D budgets, not to mention stock dividends, to bribery, errr, um, campaign contributions. Ever since tech companies have understood what bribery, um, my bad, campaign contributions contribute to the bottom lines.
Somehow my sig seems appropriate. (but it won't when I change it, and the change propagates to all my earlier replies, including this one).
I just passed a drug test. My dealer has some explaining to do.