ITI Offers Recommendations for a U.S. Privacy Standard in Congressional Testimony
WASHINGTON – Today, ITI’s Senior Vice President of Policy and General Counsel John Miller provided the global tech industry’s perspective on draft federal privacy legislation, the American Data Privacy and Protection Act. In testimony (opens in a new tab) before the U.S. House Energy & Commerce Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce (opens in a new tab), Miller underscored ITI’s longstanding support for federal privacy legislation and offered recommendations to help this draft lead to a national privacy standard.
“The technology sector has for several years shared [Chairman Frank Pallone, Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers, and Senator Roger Wicker’s] goal of enacting comprehensive federal privacy legislation, and the [draft we are discussing today] represents welcome and tangible progress toward that goal,” Miller said in his testimony. “The draft bill represents not only a significant contribution to the evolving domestic and global conversation on privacy legislation, but arguably an inflection point on par with Europe’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).
“[This is] the most credible bipartisan and bicameral effort yet to advance comprehensive federal privacy legislation in the United States, but we also need to acknowledge the bill needs substantial improvement, and we look forward to continuing to constructively engage with policymakers as the bill moves forward,” he continued.
In 2019, ITI published the Framework to Advance Interoperable Rules (FAIR) on Privacy (opens in a new tab), a legislative roadmap that advances the privacy rights of consumers and defines the responsibilities of companies in using personal data while supporting innovation. Miller highlighted where the discussion draft and ITI’s FAIR Privacy Framework overlap as well as key issues in the measure, including definitions that need improvement, overly-broad sensitive covered data provisions, the need to further narrow the Private Right of Action, clarity on preemption, and provisions related to controller processor.
Read Miller’s testimony here (opens in a new tab).
Watch the hearing: Protecting America’s Consumers: Bipartisan Legislation to Strengthen Data Privacy and Security (opens in a new tab).
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