Draft of Bipartisan ‘Years-in-the-Making’ Privacy Bill Released

WASHINGTON, June 3, 2022 – Leaders of the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Senate Commerce Committee announced on Friday a discussion draft of a “comprehensive” data privacy bill that they say has been in the making for years.

The bipartisan bill overall addresses a national data privacy framework, a set of consumers’ data privacy rights and appropriate enforcement mechanisms.

The release was announced by the House committee’s Chairman Frank Pallone, D-N.J., its ranking member Rep. Cathy McMorris-Rodgers, R-Wash., and the Senate committee’s ranking member Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.

“In the coming weeks, we will be working with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to build support and finalize this standard to give Americans more control over their personal data,” they said.

“We welcome and encourage all of our colleagues to join us in this effort to enable meaningful privacy protections for Americans and provide businesses with operational certainty. This landmark agreement represents the sum of years of good faith efforts by us, other members, and numerous stakeholders as we work together to provide American consumers with comprehensive data privacy protections.”

They called the release of the draft a “critical milestone.”

The proposed bill would grant Americans protections against discriminatory use of their data, require covered entities to minimize on the front end the data they collect, enforce loyalty duties and prevent customers from needing to pay for privacy, prohibit targeted advertising for covered entities, enhance data protections for children and minors and establish “regulatory parity” across the internet.

Child privacy has been a particular topic of interest on Capitol Hill, with several high profile hearings taking place with social media companies to investigate their practices of catering to teenage users.