Analysis | House hearing highlights potential flashpoints in renewed privacy talks (2024)

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee touted the breakthrough deal struck by Chairwoman Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) and Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) as a significant step forward in the debate over privacy protections. Several expressed confidence that Congress will finally get a national law on the books after years of false starts.

“I’m fired up. We’ve got to get this done,” said Rep. Gus M. Bilirakis (R-Fla.), whose subcommittee held the hearing. “I’m fired up, too. … We do need to get this done,” echoed Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-N.J.).

Here are our top takeaways from the session:

After years of back-and-forth debate over whether a federal privacy law should override state standards and give consumers the ability to sue companies, there was limited disagreement at Wednesday’s hearing about lawmakers’ proposed compromise on those issues.

Some of the members and witnesses testifying raised questions about the scope of the bill’s state-preemption language or its limits on the right to bring lawsuits. But there was little to no disagreement that Congress needs a deal on those issues to move forward.

There also appeared to be broad consensus that a framework built around the concept of “data minimization” — that companies should only collect as much information as they need to offer specific services — is the right approach for a national privacy standard. Pallone, who as chair advanced a separate “comprehensive” privacy bill during the last Congress, noted that the new proposal “adopts many of the key pillars” of the prior effort, including data minimization rules.

As has been the case for years, whether lawmakers agree to advance both broader privacy safeguards for all consumers as well as heightened protections for children online could decide whether any legislation can succeed this Congress.

The session marked the first time House lawmakers considered legislation that has already advanced twice in the Senate to expand federal privacy protections for kids and create new safety obligations for digital platforms, the Kids Online Safety Act and the Children and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act, otherwise known as KOSA and COPPA 2.0.

In a notable shift in tone, McMorris Rodgers talked about advancing the two buckets of legislation together. “Working together with other important legislation … these solutions will ensure the best protections to date for our children,” she said of the kids-focused bills.

But Pallone voiced concern that the children’s privacy update, COPPA 2.0, “does not provide sufficiently robust privacy protections for children,” and he appeared to call for including such guardrails in the broader privacy bill, rather than taking up a stand-alone bill. Hashing out that dispute, as well as what other children’s protections to include, will be key for lawmakers.

Several members said any privacy package must include stronger rights allowing consumers to control how data brokers collect and use their personal information.

Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.) said she was concerned that the draft privacy proposal would require that users “individually” ask hundreds of data brokers to delete their information, rather than creating a central mechanism where they could do so in one place, as her separate Delete Act proposal would do. “That’s just not feasible,” she said of the current approach.

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