As expected, the House Energy & Commerce Committee advanced the bipartisan, bicameral American Data Protection and Privacy Act (ADPPA) on a 53-2 vote. It’s the first time this century a consumer privacy protection bill has ever made it out of committee in Congress, so congrats to all involved! \u00a0<\/p>\n
ADPPA’s next step is a vote by the full House. \u00a0It’s not currently on the House floor schedule, and Congress takes most of August off, so it probably won’t happen until mid-September. \u00a0The Sunday Show: Prospects for the American Data Privacy and Protection Act<\/a>, a discussion with Nora Benavidez of Free Press, Justin Brookman of Consumer Reports, and Justin Hendrix, has some good perspectives on the current status and next steps.<\/p>\n But even though the bill has strong bipartisan support, it’s still far from a sure thing. The intense debate about whether ADPPA will preempt state laws has gotten most of the attention, but as Tonya Riley reports in Federal privacy legislation progresses, but concerns about data brokers loom<\/a> on Cyberscoop, <\/em>that’s far from the only issue.<\/p>\n \u201cThe bill before us has a major loophole that could allow law enforcement to access private data to go after women,\u201d said Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., who voted against the bill. \u201cFor example, under this bill, a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion could use against women their intimate data from search histories or from reproductive health apps. That loophole must be addressed.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n And Senator Wyden continues to be concerned about the exemption of “de-identified” \u00a0data.<\/p>\n \u201c[T]his loophole could allow data brokers to sell location data to the government about visits to reproductive health facilities, for example, or other private information that is trivially easy to connect to individuals,\u201d a Wyden aide wrote in an email to CyberScoop. \u201cHe strongly believes this must be fixed before any legislation becomes law.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Meanwhile, here in \u201cthe other Washington<\/a>\u201d, Kim Clark of Seattle-based Legal Voices goes even farther in Orion Donovan-Smith\u2019s Spokane Spokesman-Revi<\/em>ew article<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cThis bill, at least from the perspective of pregnant people, it really doesn\u2019t do much\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n UPDATE: Several California Privacy Protection Agency board members also expressed concerns during their July 28 special board meeting. \u00a0See Is there an elephant in the Zoom room?<\/a> for more \u2013 including a followon discussion about how similar potential ADPPA loopholes affect unhoused people.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To be clear, this isn’t the only challenge facing ADPPA. \u00a0Most of the other \u00a0coverage in the last week<\/a> has focused on the battle over whether ADPPA should preempt state privacy laws. At the markup, Rep. Eshoo’s amendment to strip the preemption section was voted down (8-48), but several California Representaties said they’d vote against the bill on the floor unless this issue was addressed. \u00a0Daniel Solove’s A Faustian Bargain: Is Preemption Too High a Price for a Federal Privacy Law?<\/a> and the letter from a coalition of state Attorneys General (including Washington’s) opposing preemption of state laws<\/a> have more. <\/p>\n And while the version of the ADPPA the committee advanced did include some significant improvements, they also weakened the bill in some significant ways \u2013 and didn’t address the loopholes Rep. Eshoo and Sen. Wyden are talking about. They also didn’t address concerns Senate Commerce committee staffers raised in a memo, as reported by Cristiano Lima in the Washington Post<\/a>:<\/p>\n According to the memo, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act<\/a> \u201cmakes it harder for women to seek redress when their sensitive health data has been used against them\u201d and would force women to \u201cjump through arbitrary, drawn-out hoops\u201d to sue over privacy violations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n As Shaunna Thomas of gender justice group UltraViolet says in the Spokesman-Review article<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cWe see an opportunity for asking Democrats to recognize the threats that have become far more acute in a post-Roe world, and to consider using the leverage they have \u2013 which is not insignificant \u2013 to consider these improvements in that light.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But will Democrats use that leverage? \u00a0 The risk is that contentious topics like preemption take up so much time and energy that legislators don’t talk about the elephant in the room \u2013 and so don’t realize that the current version of ADPPAl, as Kim Clark says, “really doesn’t do much” to protect pregnant people.<\/p>\n We shall see.<\/p>\n The California Consumer Privacy Agency (CCPA) released a bill analysis<\/a> \u00a0this morning and announced has a public special board meeting at 9:00 am Thursday.<\/a> \u00a0<\/p>\n \ud83c\udf7f \u00a0<\/p>\n And this short thread from ACLU of Northern California<\/a> also makes some great points.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n A lot\u2019s being said about the American Data Privacy and Protection Act.<\/p>\n But not nearly enough on how it dismantles current privacy laws, including over 50 years of work in California.<\/p>\n There\u2019s a reason Big Tech support it. And it\u2019s not because they care about our rights. <\/p>\n Thread<\/p>\n — ACLU of Northern CA (@ACLU_NorCal) July 26, 2022<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nUPDATE, 6:00 pm (Pacific time)<\/h3>\n
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