This past Wednesday, the Senate Commerce Committee held another hearing on consumer data privacy, this time giving voice to prominent privacy advocates. Previous testimony in September from leading technology businesses focused on concerns with the complexity of having to comply with a patchwork of different state privacy regulations, broad definitions of “personal information” in the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), and a desire to see Federal legislation enacted that would preempt state laws and create a single, unified US privacy law.

While a national privacy law would simplify compliance, in Wednesday’s hearing Nuala O’Connor, the President and CEO of the Center for Democracy & Technology, cautioned the committee that the “price of preemption would be very, very high”, and Laura Moy, Executive Director and Adjunct Professor of Law at the  Georgetown Law Center on Privacy & Technology, laid out in her written testimony six strong recommendations that we should expect to see in any proposed national standard:
Continue Reading The Senate Commerce Committee held a second hearing on consumer data privacy, this time with privacy advocates