Efforts to pass a comprehensive data privacy bill have failed in Congress for years, leaving the U.S. behind on protections as global regulators push ahead and state laws try to fill the gaps, creating a patchwork of regulations for tech companies to follow.
Seizing on attention to the issue from mounting concerns about the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and social media platforms’ harms to children, the draft legislation released by House Energy and Commerce Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) seeks to strike a balance to meet the sticking points both sides of the aisle raised in previous debates around data privacy proposals.
“A federal data privacy law must do two things: it must make privacy a consumer right, and it must give consumers the ability to enforce that right,” Cantwell said in a statement. “Working in partnership with Representative McMorris Rodgers, our bill does just that. This bipartisan agreement is the protections Americans deserve in the Information Age.”
McMorris Rodgers said the bill is the “best opportunity we’ve had in decades to establish a national data privacy and security standard that gives people the right to control their personal information.”
The draft bill aims to require companies to be more transparent about how they use consumer data and give consumers more rights over how their data is used.
It also would preempt state law, meaning it would apply in place regardless of rules states have set forth.
Part of the balance the bill seeks to strike is allowing for the preemption, which Republicans had been pushing for, while allowing for consumers to seek financial damages, a point Democrats had sought.
A majority of U.S. voters hold unfavorable views of Amazon founder and executive chairman Jeff Bezos and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, according to a new survey from The Tech Oversight Project. Sixty-five percent of registered voters said they have a somewhat or very unfavorable opinion of Zuckerberg, who runs the parent company of Facebook and Instagram. Another 59 percent said the same of Bezos, the survey found. Slightly less …
Internet personality group Dude Perfect has raised more than $100 million to expand its reach and create more content, the company announced Monday. Founded more than a decade ago, Dude Perfect makes videos and other content focused on sports and humor and has amassed a sizable following using viral YouTube videos and clips. The group received a nine-figure fundraising injection from Highmount Capital, a private equity investment …
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) unveiled legislation on Tuesday that would require companies using copyrighted material to train their generative artificial intelligence models to publicly disclose all of the work that they used to do so. The bill, called the “Generative AI Copyright Disclosure Act,” would require people creating training datasets – or making any significant changes to a dataset – to submit a notice to the Register …
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) on Monday endorsed an effort to require the Chinese company ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban of the popular app within the United States, warning that Chinese ownership poses a serious national security threat. “America’s greatest strategic rival is threatening our security right here on U.S. soil… in tens of millions of American homes. I’m speaking, of course, about TikTok,” …
News we’ve flagged from the intersection of tech and other topics:
Cruise to return to Phoenix in “manual mode”
Cruise will return its robotaxis to Phoenix in “manual mode,” meaning they won’t be driven autonomously, TechCrunch reported.
Automattic acquires Beeper messaging app
Automattic, the parent company of WordPress and Tumblr, has acquired Beeper, the upstart messaging app that attempted to open up the iMessage protocol to Android users, The Verge reported.
On Our Radar
Upcoming news themes and events we’re watching:
The House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Communications and Technology will hold a hearing on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act on Thursday at 1 p.m.
A MESSAGE FROM TECHNET
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Trump administration officials barred experts from warning legislators that they were about to write a major environmental loophole into law, Environmental … Read more
The April 15 tax filing deadline is less than a week away at a pivotal moment for U.S. tax administration, with the IRS undergoing big changes in the … Read more
