Tech executives voice support for national privacy law during hearing

Executives from major technology companies including Apple and Google expressed broad support for a national consumer privacy law in a hearing Sept 26, but offered few concrete specifics for how such a law might be best crafted. Lawmakers are no longer questioning whether technology companies should be regulated -- the conversation on Capitol Hill has shifted to how they can design a consumer privacy law that would span a broad swath of US tech and telecommunications companies with divergent data-collection practices.

The companies now seem eager to participate in the process, largely because they’re wary of a sweeping privacy law set to go into effect in CA in 2020 that could usher in a wave of new state-level rules. “If other states follow suit, we’ll be facing a patchwork of rules and fragmentation that will just be unworkable both for consumers as well as mobile companies and Internet companies,” said Leonard Cali, AT&T’s senior vice president for global public policy. The tech leaders seemed to agree on broad privacy principles, such as giving users more transparency about how their data is being used. They used the hearing to educate lawmakers on their current privacy practices and controls, signaling that Congress should look to those practices as they craft a new law. Executives told the panel that the US needs federal legislation to protect personal data — but told lawmakers not to emulate the California Consumer Privacy Act and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. Those laws are designed to give consumers far more control of their data, but they have not been fully supported by companies because of compliance costs and the restrictions on data collection.