Three of the Four Top Privacy Stakeholders Float A Compromise Discussion Draft

A data privacy draft bill breathes new hope into the chances of enactment of such a law this year.

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chair Frank Pallone Jr (D-NJ), Ranking Member Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), and Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Ranking Member Roger Wicker (R-MS) released a discussion draft titled “American Data Privacy and Protection Act” (ADPPA) and a section-by-section summary.

The first big question about ADPPA is what is Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee Chair Maria Cantwell’s (D-WA) view on the bill? According to a tweet from an industry publication reporter, Cantwell said of the two major sticking points in privacy legislation:

Per the same source, Cantwell is holding out the possibility of marking up a data privacy bill this month and possibly even a social media content moderation bill as well:

Axios reported that Cantwell is shopping her own draft bill, and a quote of her’s in a Cyberscoop article tells us a few reasons why:

“For American consumers to have meaningful privacy protection, we need a strong federal law that is not riddled with enforcement loopholes,” Cantwell wrote in a statement to CyberScoop. “Consumers deserve the ability to protect their rights on day one, not four years later. Americans also deserve a law that imposes a duty of loyalty on the companies that collect and monetize personal data so that the companies cannot abuse that data.”

Additionally, Cantwell may set a markup of her draft bill as this Wall Street Journal piece suggests she might.

It is worth keeping in mind that Cantwell and Wicker offered competing bills at the end of 2019 when their roles were reversed on the committee. Cantwell revised her 2019 bill, the “Consumer Online Privacy Rights Act“ (COPRA) (S.3195), and reintroduced it last fall (see here for analysis and detail on the first iteration.) This bill was cosponsored by Senators Brian Schatz (D-HI), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and Ed Markey (D-MA). Her draft bill likely tracks closely with COPRA and will probably preempt state laws but give people a right to sue that may be more expansive than ADPPA does.