Online privacy

The Information Technology Industry Council (ITI), a leading tech lobbying group in Washington (DC), introduced a plan for regulations to protect user privacy online, becoming the latest player to try to shape new legislation that the industry sees as increasingly likely. The framework from ITI, whose members include Google and Facebook, is designed to guide policymakers in the US and around the world as they weigh concerns about data privacy online, said ITI president Dean Garfield.

Republican and Democratic data firms are hard at work on the next generation of digital tools—driven by the idea that political campaigns can identify and influence voters by gathering as much data about them as possible. “To be a technology president used to be a very cool thing,” said Zac Moffatt, who ran Mitt Romney’s 2012 digital campaign. “And now it’s a very dangerous thing.” The manipulation of personal data to advance a political cause undermines a fundamental aspect of American democracy: the idea of a free and fair election.

Officials from the United States have entered discussions with their European counterparts in Brussels over the status of the Privacy Shield agreement, which allows Europeans to file complaints about how US companies are using their data. The officials are expected to tackle "developments concerning the collection of personal data by US authorities for purposes of law enforcement or national security." Don’t expect any major surprises, as European Union leaders are expected to wait until at least November to issue recommendations on whether to move forward with the pact.

At an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of his Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA), Sen Ed Markey (D-MA) said protecting children's privacy is a moving target, but a target that must be hit -- including taking on big companies who collect and mine children's data. Sen Markey said his strategy will be to push for extending COPPA protections to all children under 16 (currently it is under 13) and for an eraser button that allows parents and kids to delete information from their online history (the California privacy bill has such an eraser button).

Voters in elections tend to focus on topline policy issues such as the economy and health care, not tech policy, which enjoys considerable bipartisan agreement and offers little opportunity to highlight differences with opponents. Network neutrality internet regulation is an exception, as Democratic lawmakers use it both as symbolic politics at the federal and state level and as a wedge issue to bring millennial voters, a group with historically low turnout in midterms, to the polls.

On Oct 10, privacy advocates got their turn to speak before the Senate Commerce Committee, laying out the necessity of a national privacy law that goes beyond the protections already offered by some states. The hearing highlighted that consumer advocates and industry representatives don’t always see eye-to-eye on how protective a national law should be. But who will get to influence the legislation while it is drafted? “I want to be clear that the next federal privacy law will not be written by industry,” Chairman John Thune (R-SD) said.

Only half of US businesses affected by the California Consumer Privacy Act of 2018 expect to be compliant by the 2020 deadline, according to a PwC survey of more than 300 executives at US companies with revenues of $500 million or more. The law — CCPA for short — is expected to provide state residents sweeping data-privacy rights that most businesses will only be able to honor by first overhauling their personal data-governance capabilities.

Add Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-IA) to the lengthening list of lawmakers who want answers from Google about the Google+ data vulnerability it chose not to tell its users about. Sen Grassley wants the company to explain how it is protecting personal info given that the "glitches" apparently went unaddressed for three years. Sen Grassley invited Google to join Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at an April 10 hearing on data privacy and social media, but he says Google declined because it said it didn’t have the same data privacy issues as Facebook had.