Hillicon Valley — Data privacy bill challenged

The House Energy and Commerce Committee debated a data privacy proposal intended to set national standards for how companies obtain and manage data, but it is facing an uphill battle as business groups and privacy hawks express disagreements with the bill.  

In other news, Meta announced on Tuesday that it will add new parental control features for its Quest virtual reality headsets. 

This is Hillicon Valley, detailing all you need to know about tech and cyber news from Capitol Hill to Silicon Valley. Send tips to The Hill’s Rebecca Klar, Chris Mills Rodrigo and Ines Kagubare. Someone forward you this newsletter? Subscribe here.

Data privacy bill faces uphill battle

A new bipartisan data privacy proposal is facing an uphill battle amid opposition from privacy hawks and business groups. 

• Supporters of the current draft of the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) tried to appeal to both sets of critics during a House hearing Tuesday. 
• Groups on both sides of the spectrum have praised the fact that any bipartisan legislation on this issue has come out as a breakthrough, signaling that there is some appetite to fashion the bill into something that can pass through Congress. 

The discussion draft, proposed by Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) and Reps. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.), comes after years of partisan disagreements and false starts. 

Read more here. 

Quest gets parental controls

Meta is adding new parental control features for its Quest virtual reality headsets and updating control features in Instagram, the company announced Tuesday. 

• A new Parent Dashboard for the Quest will give guardians more control over approving teenage users’ purchases and access to viewing Quest usage.
  
• In order for parents to link to their teen’s account, the teen must initiate the process and both the parent and teen have to agree, according to the announcement. 

The tools will give guardians the ability to approve downloads or purchases of apps that are blocked by default based on age rating. Teens 13 and older will also be able to submit an “Ask to Buy” request that parents can approve or deny from the Oculus mobile app. 

Read more here. 

TRANSFORMATION NEEDED IN CYBERSPACE 

National Cyber Director Chris Inglis said Monday that the administration and federal agencies should prioritize transforming the way they approach and invest in cybersecurity, as previous efforts have “not worked.” 

Ingles was speaking at cyber summit hosted by the Information Technology Industry Council on ways the public and private sector can combat cyber threats. 

• “I think that everything else that we have tried, as nobly intended, has not worked,” Inglis said.  
• “And so in order for us to then change the nature of the game, I think that we have to crowdsource the adversaries the way they’ve crowdsourced us,” he added. 

Read more here. 

BITS & PIECES

An op-ed to chew on: Why Russia blocked Western social media —  but not YouTube 

Lighter click: peak adulting 

Notable links from around the web: 

Google Says It Bans Gun Ads. It Actually Makes Money From Them. (ProPublica / Craig Silverman and Ruth Talbot) 

Those videos about a foot fetish site going viral on TikTok? A lot of them are sponcon (NBC News / Morgan Sung) 

Amazon Builds Property Empire, Quietly Buying Land Across the US (Bloomberg / Spencer Soper and Natalie Wong) 

One last thing: $2M on 25 railroad projects

The Federal Railroad Administration announced it plans to send up to $2 million in funding toward 25 different projects in 13 states.  

In a statement on Monday, the agency said the money would fund trespassing and suicide prevention grants and include educational outreach aimed at reducing railroad-related suicides. 

• The grants are targeted toward communities and states with high occurrence rates of trespassing and casualties. 
• The states include California, Florida, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Montana, North Carolina, New York and Ohio. 

Read more here.  

That’s it for today, thanks for reading. Check out The Hill’s Technology and Cybersecurity pages for the latest news and coverage. We’ll see you tomorrow.

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