Last night, the House Energy and Commerce Committee announced a markup for the “American Data Privacy and Protection Act,” a bipartisan, bicameral bill introduced by Frank Pallone, Jr., (D-NJ), Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), and Gus Bilirakis (R-FL) to establish a national standard to protect consumer data privacy.
As written, the bill would impose restrictions on how businesses (and not just Facebook or Google) can collect, use, and share consumer data, as well as allow for federal, state, and individual enforcement to protect consumers’ rights. Public Knowledge urges the committee to report this bill favorably to the House for a floor vote.
The following can be attributed to Sara Collins, Senior Policy Counsel at Public Knowledge:
“This sweeping bill provides individuals with broad privacy protections across all sectors of the economy. Instead of relying on ‘notice and choice’ – a framework that puts the burden on consumers to decipher what a specific company’s privacy practices are – this bill requires companies to minimize the data they collect and to only process data, without affirmative express consent, for a permissible purpose. Individuals will also be given the right to access, correct, and delete the data companies have collected about them.
“As written, the bill also gives the Federal Trade Commission the authority to mandate a global ‘opt-out’ of targeted advertising mechanism as well as the creation of a ‘Do Not Collect’ button, which would allow individuals to get their data deleted from every data broker that has collected information about them.
“We appreciate the committee working with us to ensure that the transition of the voice and cable networks from Federal Communications Commission authority to FTC authority are minimally disruptive. Our goal has always been to make sure that Americans do not inadvertently lose privacy protections they have come to rely upon in our sector-specific laws such as those that protect voice communications. We look forward to continuing to work with Congress to further strengthen this bipartisan privacy bill.”
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