Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) announced a new data privacy bill today, marking the first real push from Congress to regulate big tech companies in the new year. The bill, initially reported by Axios, does little to quell Democrats’ regulatory desires, and it would effectively remove individual states’ authorities to write their own, perhaps stricter, rules.
The bill is called the American Data Dissemination Act, and it would direct the Federal Trade Commission to write privacy rule recommendations for Congress, proposing a framework for companies like Facebook, Twitter, and Google. If Congress does not pass a bill within two years, the FTC would be able to write its own rules for companies, something the agency has been unable to do since the...