Action needed on federal tech privacy rights
Don't expect Congress to act on President Joe Biden's call for stricter privacy protections by Big Tech firms. Never mind that polls showing more than 80% of Americans have concerns about the safety and privacy of the personal data they provide on the internet.
Biden made pretty much the same demand a year ago in his State of the Union address. But Congress failed to act, despite Democrats controlling both the House and the Senate.
The plain truth is the Federal Trade Commission has for years called on Congress to pass a federal law protecting the basic online privacy rights of Americans.
Yet the United States retains the dubious distinction as the only major developed nation without fundamental online user protections.
Jessica Rich, the former FTC director of consumer protection, recalls that before Apple introduced the first smartphone, before Facebook existed and before Google went public, she begged Congress to pass a law that would establish a basic level of accountability for personal data that the FTC could enforce.
The FTC recommendation to Congress called for online companies to implement “four widely accepted privacy principles”:
• Clear and conspicuous notice of its data practices, including what data it collects, how it uses the data, and whether other entities are collecting data through its website.
• Choice as to how consumer data is used beyond the use for the data was provided.
• The ability for consumers to review, correct and/or delete their data.
• Reasonable security measures to protect the data from unauthorized access.
Twenty-three years later, we're still waiting for Congress to act.
In 2018, Santa Clara Rep. Ro Khanna, at the request of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, introduced an Internet Bill of Rights designed to protect the data and privacy of every American, but it, too, failed to gain the necessary traction to become law.
Last year, the House Energy and Commerce Committee advanced a bipartisan bill that would produce a national data privacy standard, but the measure didn't get a House floor vote.
Last week, during a subcommittee meeting, the two lawmakers who introduced the legislation, Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, RWash., reiterated the need for Americans to have meaningful control over their personal information.
The continued growth of China's social media app, TikTok, only adds to that need.
TikTok has an estimated 80 million users in the United States, with 60% of those users between the ages of 16 and 24.
Rodgers said the legislation is critical for securing the personal information of every American from foreign threats.
In 2020, California's online privacy and protection law went into effect, providing residents with the toughest privacy-rights law in the nation.
But Congress still needs to act to provide those critical protections for all Americans.