Senate Tech Task Force Leader Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) Wants to Focus on Data Privacy

The Senate Judiciary Committee’s new tech task force leader, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), wants to use her perch to hold tech companies accountable. But before Congress aims its hammer at Big Tech's power, she says lawmakers need to pass data privacy legislation and see how that changes the companies' business models and impacts competition in the market. That approach splits sharply from the Democratic-led House Judiciary Committee, which has opened a wide-ranging, bipartisan investigation into technology companies’ power and their impact on competition. The diverging priorities illustrate that while there is a broad bipartisan consensus that Silicon Valley is overdue for regulation, there’s little agreement in a divided Congress about which tech policy issues should even be the priority — let alone how lawmakers should craft such measures. Sen Blackburn's priorities:

• Help lawmakers "up their institutional knowledge" on issues like privacy, data security, competition issues, and allegations of political censorship
• For Congress to use her legislation, the BROWSER Act, as a starting point for data regulation
• Having the Federal Trade Commission continue to be in charge of enforcing privacy restrictions, even though she was disappointed by the $5 billion fine handed to Facebook