A Federal Data Privacy Framework?

The Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing a federal data privacy law -- and displayed the same political divide that appeared in a House hearing earlier in the week. Republicans and industry witnesses warned against a "patchwork" of potentially conflicting state privacy regimes, perhaps most notably the California privacy law that takes effect in 2020. Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) and various witnesses from the telecommunications and computer industries talked throughout about needing strong federal regulation, addressing concern that stronger state regulations would be preempted by weaker federal law based on giving consumers a clearer picture of how their data was being harvested and commoditized, rather than focused on the consumer first and the internet economy second. Everyone appeared to agree that the notice and choice regime doesn't work and that companies are incentivized to make privacy policies complicated so that users will overshare, as it were. But Republicans were talking up making those policies clearer, combined with more consumer control over the data -- rights to correct or delete -- for example.