Executives from AT&T, Google and other top U.S. businesses called on Congress on Wednesday to establish a federal privacy framework in order to avoid a patchwork of state regulations that they say could stifle innovation.
The request comes as the Trump administration solicits comments on a proposal of its own. While lawmakers are eager to work on the issue, the Commerce Department says it is awaiting responses before determining whether legislation is necessary.
Based on written statements from company executives slated to testify in front of the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday, business leaders believe it is.
“Perhaps for the first time, there is widespread agreement among industry, policymakers and many consumer groups of the need for a new and comprehensive federal privacy law,” said Leonard Cali, senior vice president of global public policy at AT&T.
Still, the concerns over what would be included in such a bill are apparent. Businesses fear that a U.S. privacy law might be over-burdensome and warned the administration and Congress to avoid any proposals that resemble too closely the sweeping privacy law implemented in the European Union earlier this year.
“Meeting its specific requirements for the handling, retention, and deletion of personal data required us to divert significant resources to administrative and record-keeping tasks,” said Andrew DeVore, Amazon’s associate general counsel.
That risk is countered is by worry that other states will follow California’s lead and enact their own privacy laws, creating a quagmire of differing standards that could be costly and difficult to follow.
“There should be a single national standard that protects consumers’ online privacy regardless of where they live, work or travel,” Rachel Welch, senior vice president at Charter Communications, said in testimony prepared for the hearing. “A patchwork of state laws would be confusing for consumers, difficult for businesses to implement, and hinder continued innovation on the internet—which is a borderless technology.”
Top lawmakers promised companies that Congress would take a measured approach.
“Let me reassure anyone who thinks we’re going to be rushing through legislation without the benefit of alternative views that things don’t work that way here,” Commerce Committee Chairman John Thune of South Dakota said.
While Thune, who also serves as the chairman of the Senate Republican Conference, said there’s a bipartisan desire to enact privacy legislation, reaching such agreements has been notoriously hard to achieve in prior years and may become even more difficult if Democrats take control of the House, the Senate or both during the upcoming midterm elections.
Still, the support for a privacy law — both from industry and the general public — has increased in the wake of several scandals, such as the revelations that a political consulting firm hired by the Trump campaign improperly gained access to 87 million Facebook users. Google, meanwhile, recently disclosed that it allows some third-party developers access to users’ Gmail accounts.
“Politics is always about timing, and I believe now is the time to begin action on this important issue,” Thune said.
