A new tech privacy bill is a good start
It’s become a ritual. Every year or so, the House or Senate calls the heads of major tech companies to Capitol Hill for a hearing. The lawmakers bloviate, complain, ridicule and excoriate the executives for the manifest damage attributable to their services — everything from children’s mental health problems to election interference. The executives feign concern about all the ills attributed to social media. They look insincere, cagey; the lawmakers appear unfamiliar with even the basics of their own cellphones. Eventually, the hearing ends, the executives depart and nothing changes.
Perhaps the Kabuki theater is finally going to end. The Post reported on “a sweeping proposal that would for the first time give consumers broad rights to control how tech companies like Google, Meta and TikTok use their personal data, a major breakthrough in the decades-long fight to adopt national online privacy protections.” The American Privacy Rights Act, proposed by Senate Commerce Chairwoman Maria Cantwell, D-Washington, and House Energy and Commerce Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Washington, would create a uniform data collection standard and “give users the right to opt out of certain data practices, including targeted advertising.” It would also “require companies to gather only as much information as they need to offer specific products to consumers, while giving people the ability to access and delete their data and transport it between digital services.” The bill would preempt some but not all state laws that have sprung up on related matters. (The Spokesman-Review reports that the proposal would not preempt certain state laws related to “civil rights, consumer protection, contracting and more than a dozen other categories.”)
Perhaps most notably, the bill would end the wholesale immunity from litigation that these companies have enjoyed, allowing individuals to sue if “companies fail to fulfill data deletion requests or to obtain express consent before collecting sensitive data.”
Imperfect proposal
However, the data privacy issue is just one of many critical tech topics that have drawn the ire of voters and politicians alike. This latest proposal would not address a slew of other Big Tech ills: damage to minors’ mental health, addictive and radicalizing algorithms, voting and health disinformation, deep fakes and undisclosed AI manipulation, hate speech, anonymous political ads exempt from the regulations that cover TV ads, and monopolistic tactics that reduce competition. It would not deal with Chinese ownership of TikTok. (The House passed a bill on that matter; it has not moved forward in the Senate.) Those remain severe problems, some perhaps more egregious than those covered by the bill. (Bills on many of those topics have stalled.)
That said, if Congress must start somewhere to break down the impunity with which internet companies have operated, this bill represents a promising start. Microsoft applauded the effort. The Open Technology Institute, operated under the auspices of the center-left New America think tank, praised the effort as well for including “the necessary pillars of sound privacy legislation — strong data minimization principles; online civil rights protections; universal opt outs; a private right of action; and privacy rights, like users’ ability to view, correct, export, or delete their data and stop its sale or transfer.” Comparing it to a bill introduced in 2022, however, the institute pointed out that the current effort does not include strong children’s privacy measures. (The co-sponsors say they are interested “in working on both kids’ online safety and national data privacy,” Bloomberg Law reported.)
Tough road ahead
It is far from certain that a bill this complex, effectively pitting the interests of many tech companies against those of consumers, will make it through the most dysfunctional Congress in history. Even under the best of circumstances, this would be a daunting exercise. But chances are high of defeat given a Republican House that cannot manage to even bring a Ukraine bill to the floor and a Senate with filibuster-wielding gadflies such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who delights in posing as the slayer of the supposed left-wing conspiracy to disadvantage conservatives on social media. Moreover, Congress’s fall schedule will be truncated because of the elections, leaving little time for even must-pass legislation.
That said, the privacy proposal has several factors going for it. First, it’s just complicated enough to keep MAGA hyperventilation to a minimum. Topics that get into the weeds of complicated issues can often fly under the right-wing media radar; fat, juicy targets like abortion bans, the faux-invasion on the Southern border and cutting off Ukraine aid are more their speed. Second, who isn’t in favor of “privacy”? It has the appeal of mom and apple pie, a feelgood measure that lawmakers with low output can tout at home. Finally, bipartisan disdain for the tech companies has reached new heights. Both sides therefore have an interest in pointing to something they’ve done to defend Americans against those billionaire CEOs whom they so delight in tongue-lashing.
When at least two lawmakers (McMorris Rodgers is retiring) care about good governance and invest time in the policy weeds, voters should celebrate. If Congress can get something done on this front, perhaps that will encourage reform in other areas. Any win against Big Tech — notoriously resistant to regulation — would be welcome.