In a joint statement, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), and House Energy and Commerce Data Privacy Working Group Chair John Joyce (R-Pa.), said the proposals would establish “clear, enforceable protections” allowing Americans to remain in control of their data while holding companies accountable for safeguarding it.
Unlike past pushes on data privacy legislation, the effort has backing from the powerful GOP chairs of both the House Energy & Commerce and Financial Services committees, Reps. Brett Guthrie and French Hill of Arkansas. The panels have historically feuded over their jurisdiction and approach to consumer data, so the cooperation could help give legs to the new effort, though no Democrats have signed on.
A group of senior House Financial Services Republicans — Hill, Rep. Bill Huizenga of Michigan, Rep. Andy Barr of Kentucky and Rep. Bryan Steil of Wisconsin — said in a joint statement that “the volume and complexity of data have increased such that providing consumers greater control over their financial data has become imperative.”
“The Financial Services Committee is proud to introduce these commonsense protections in coordination with the Energy and Commerce Committee as part of a unified House Republican effort to ensure Americans’ data privacy rights,” the lawmakers said.
House E&C ranking member, New Jersey Democrat Frank Palone, in a statement criticized the proposals and said they would protect “corporations and their bottom line”, not people’s privacy. “We should be protecting the little guy with a bill that empowers consumers, not one that preempts consumer protections at the behest of Big Tech,” Pallone added.
The new SECURE proposal includes language from similar state privacy laws, notably from Kentucky and Virginia, which do not allow people to sue companies for violating their privacy rights and limits enforcement to government regulators such as state attorneys general or the Federal Trade Commission.
Specific provisions seek to define a new federal standard for how consumers’ can stop their personal details being sold and being used for targeted marketing. They would also create new requirements for how companies anonymize personal identifiable information, and would force data brokers to make clear the nature of their business on websites and apps.
The measure is partially the product of Commerce’s all-Republican Data Privacy Working Group formed last year. However, with the midterms fast approaching, the window is narrowing to build consensus with the committees’ Democratic members. A House Energy and Commerce aide told reporters Wednesday they intentionally included aspects of Democratic-led state privacy laws, including those passed in New Jersey and Colorado, as a way to reach across the aisle.
“We see that as creating room for potential deal space if there [are] good faith negotiations,” the aide said.