Brookings Institution

Although separate Republican and Democratic bills are not the joint bipartisan proposal widely anticipated for several months, the bills and the hearing this week kick off the concrete discussion about privacy legislation that stakeholders have wanted for several months. The first bill to emerge was the Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act filed by Sen Maria Cantwell (D-WA) on Nov 26. Then, just before Thanksgiving, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-MS) circulated a “staff discussion draft” of a Consumer Data Privacy Act of 2019 covering much of the same ground, but with a di

The week of Nov 18, Senate Democratic leaders released a set of privacy principles that help to frame the debate on federal privacy legislation. The substance of the principles is at high-level of generality but stakes some notable ground in the privacy debate:

• An emphasis on addressing how companies collect, use, and share personal data
• A shoutout for civil rights
• Strong enforcement at several levels
• A private right of action without federal preemption

Since the time of the early advertising-supported newspapers, economic incentive has worked to bring people together around a common set of shared information. Maximizing ad revenue meant offending as few readers as possible by at least attempting a balanced presentation of the facts. The search for balance began to retreat with the arrival of cable television, but the economic model of maximizing revenue by maximizing reach still governed. The targeting capability of social media algorithms, however, has extinguished the traditional economic model.

In 2012, 70 percent of schools lacked internet connections fast enough to support basic administrative and instructional needs (100 kilobytes per person), but now only 1.6 percent of school districts fail to meet that low bar. Despite this progress, the Federal Communications Commission is considering changes to the E-Rate program, which subsidizes internet access in schools across the country. The proposal would cap spending and potentially decrease the funding available to schools.

5G will be a physical overhaul of our essential networks that will have decades-long impact. Because 5G is the conversion to a mostly all-software network, future upgrades will be software updates much like the current upgrades to your smartphone. Because of the cyber vulnerabilities of software, the tougher part of the real 5G “race” is to retool how we secure the most important network of the 21st century and the ecosystem of devices and applications that sprout from that network.