Analysis After years of fighting to prevent any form of legislation that would safeguard Americans' online privacy, this week Congress will have two hearings on the topic during which the tech industry will outline its newfound love for laws covering its business.
But, experts warn, there is one big goal behind the sudden willingness to engage: a set of nation-wide federal laws, strongly influenced by the industry itself, which override individual state laws, and in particular a California law that was passed last year in an extraordinary last-minute compromise.
"Here's a quiet fight that’s brewing in Washington that you should pay attention to," the newly appointed FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra tweeted on Monday. "It's called preemption – that's the ability of Congress to hit delete on all state data protection laws."
The issue of federal versus states' rights is one of the United States' most enduring battles, and in the past year, the rules surrounding telecoms and the internet have been pulled firmly into its orbit, not least thanks to the FCC's controversial decision to tear up its own rules on net neutrality.
While Congress has failed miserably to deal with key issues in the digital era, and federal regulators have adopted a hands-off (or should that be hands-free?) approach to regulation, state legislators have stepped in and started making laws to protect their constituents from harm. But now Big Tech has realized that federal laws are all but inevitable, it has decided to see if it can use the process to get rid of the current laws it doesn't like. (...)
All eyes on the West Coast
But the foremost target is California's law that appeared out of nowhere, and was passed in record time last July.
The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 was the first such data privacy law passed in the US, despite years of legislative efforts in Washington DC, and while it didn't completely extend European-style GDPR protections, it did give the state's 40 million inhabitants the ability to view the data that companies hold on them and, critically, request that it be deleted and not sold to third parties.
Tech giants absolutely loathe the law, which threatens to undermine their fundamental business model of gathering, packaging, and selling user data while doing as much as possible to keep people as uninformed as possible about what information they actually have on them. Under the California law, any company with data on more than 50,000 people is covered, and each violation carries a hefty $7,500 fine.
How did online giants like Google and Facebook, which are based in Cali, ever allow such a law to pass? Why didn't they use their full lobbying might in Sacramento to kill it? Well, the fascinating answer behind that one is that they feared a worse alternative: a ballot measure. A chance for voters to directly give a thumbs up to new safeguards for their information.
In early 2016, a number of dedicated individuals with the funds and legislative know-how to make data privacy a reality worked together on a ballot initiative in order to give Californians the opportunity to give themselves their own privacy rights after every other effort in Sacramento and Washington DC has been shot down by lobbyists of Big Tech and Big Cable.
Such a law is enormously popular with voters and after real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart put about $2m of his own money into the initiative, it made its way through the somewhat complex procedure, and was just about to be placed onto the official ballot to voters.
It was almost certainly going to pass, and that meant that not only would Big Tech be forced to deal with a data privacy law but it would be far harder for it to change the legislation after the fact through Sacramento lobbying.
It came down to the wire: Mactaggart said that if California's governor signed into law a new privacy act before the ballot deadline, he would pull it. And so California's Congress scrambled, Governor Brown signed it, and literally the evening of the deadline, the ballot measure was pulled.
by Kieren McCarthy, The Register | Read more:
Image: Shutterstock
[ed. See also: The left needs to get radical on big tech – moderate solutions won't cut it (The Guardian)]
But, experts warn, there is one big goal behind the sudden willingness to engage: a set of nation-wide federal laws, strongly influenced by the industry itself, which override individual state laws, and in particular a California law that was passed last year in an extraordinary last-minute compromise.
"Here's a quiet fight that’s brewing in Washington that you should pay attention to," the newly appointed FTC Commissioner Rohit Chopra tweeted on Monday. "It's called preemption – that's the ability of Congress to hit delete on all state data protection laws."The issue of federal versus states' rights is one of the United States' most enduring battles, and in the past year, the rules surrounding telecoms and the internet have been pulled firmly into its orbit, not least thanks to the FCC's controversial decision to tear up its own rules on net neutrality.
While Congress has failed miserably to deal with key issues in the digital era, and federal regulators have adopted a hands-off (or should that be hands-free?) approach to regulation, state legislators have stepped in and started making laws to protect their constituents from harm. But now Big Tech has realized that federal laws are all but inevitable, it has decided to see if it can use the process to get rid of the current laws it doesn't like. (...)
All eyes on the West Coast
But the foremost target is California's law that appeared out of nowhere, and was passed in record time last July.
The California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 was the first such data privacy law passed in the US, despite years of legislative efforts in Washington DC, and while it didn't completely extend European-style GDPR protections, it did give the state's 40 million inhabitants the ability to view the data that companies hold on them and, critically, request that it be deleted and not sold to third parties.
Tech giants absolutely loathe the law, which threatens to undermine their fundamental business model of gathering, packaging, and selling user data while doing as much as possible to keep people as uninformed as possible about what information they actually have on them. Under the California law, any company with data on more than 50,000 people is covered, and each violation carries a hefty $7,500 fine.
How did online giants like Google and Facebook, which are based in Cali, ever allow such a law to pass? Why didn't they use their full lobbying might in Sacramento to kill it? Well, the fascinating answer behind that one is that they feared a worse alternative: a ballot measure. A chance for voters to directly give a thumbs up to new safeguards for their information.
In early 2016, a number of dedicated individuals with the funds and legislative know-how to make data privacy a reality worked together on a ballot initiative in order to give Californians the opportunity to give themselves their own privacy rights after every other effort in Sacramento and Washington DC has been shot down by lobbyists of Big Tech and Big Cable.
Such a law is enormously popular with voters and after real estate developer Alastair Mactaggart put about $2m of his own money into the initiative, it made its way through the somewhat complex procedure, and was just about to be placed onto the official ballot to voters.
It was almost certainly going to pass, and that meant that not only would Big Tech be forced to deal with a data privacy law but it would be far harder for it to change the legislation after the fact through Sacramento lobbying.
It came down to the wire: Mactaggart said that if California's governor signed into law a new privacy act before the ballot deadline, he would pull it. And so California's Congress scrambled, Governor Brown signed it, and literally the evening of the deadline, the ballot measure was pulled.
by Kieren McCarthy, The Register | Read more:
Image: Shutterstock
[ed. See also: The left needs to get radical on big tech – moderate solutions won't cut it (The Guardian)]
