For the past year, discussions involving data privacy have heated up in Congress, and new federal legislation now seems inevitable. Today, a leading industry group, supported by Google, Amazon, and Facebook, proposed a “grand bargain” with lawmakers, arguing that any new federal data privacy bill should preempt state privacy laws and repeal the sector-specific federal ones entirely.
The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation’s (ITIF) proposal lays out a few basic characteristics for legislation that the industry has frequently discussed in the past, like requiring more transparency, data interoperability, and users to opt into the collection of sensitive personal data. All 50 states have their own laws when it comes to...