Dueling bills set stage for privacy debate

Key Democratic and Republican senators have offered dueling versions of legislation to create more privacy for Americans online in recent days.

The competing bills highlighted how months of bipartisan negotiations have yet to yield a proposal both parties can back but have also raised hopes of boosting those efforts.

The proposals — from the chairman and ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over tech issues — show some substantive common ground. But there are still stark differences, with Republicans backing some of the tech industry’s top priorities while Democrats push tougher restrictions on how those companies handle data.

Parallel efforts: Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, detailed Democrats’ privacy wish list when she released her bill with several senators on the committee last week.

Days later, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) drew the GOP line in the sand as his office began circulating a draft bill that hews closely to the tech industry’s ideal proposal. Wicker’s bill would override any state privacy laws, including the tough California law that will go into effect in January, and does not allow individuals to sue companies over privacy violations.

The backdrop: Wicker and Cantwell stepped aside from a larger group of bipartisan senators to begin negotiating with each other over the summer. Those efforts had largely stalled for months.

Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) were both part of the previous larger effort to work up a privacy bill, and the two are now working together to put out their own legislation.

“Senator Blumenthal continues to work with Senator Moran on comprehensive, bipartisan privacy legislation and is grateful for the leadership shown by both Chairman Wicker and Ranking Member Cantwell on this critical consumer issue,” a Blumenthal spokeswoman told The Hill.

Where things stand: Stakeholders across the tech industry and privacy advocacy community told The Hill on Monday that Cantwell and Wicker’s bills are a clear signal that bipartisan negotiations were going nowhere. But they said the proposals could also breathe new life into the effort now that Republicans and Democrats have gone public with their priorities and revealed some substantial areas of mutual interest.

The Senate Commerce Committee will hold a data privacy hearing on Wednesday, during which lawmakers are expected to go public with their views on a variety of proposals to rein in tech companies’ unregulated collection of information on their billions of users.

One industry source described the current status of privacy negotiations on Capitol Hill to a public comment period following the release of a bill’s text. “I think the fact that they have both of these bills out there really helps the negotiation because others can get involved with some creativity and suggestions,” the source said.

Several basics in both bills are the same: “It’s interesting because when you look at the two bills, there are actually certain similarities in language and provisions,” Ferras Vinh, who works on public policy for privacy-focused tech company Mozilla, told The Hill. “A more positive takeaway is … the two sides have obviously had a lot of conversations, in terms of what should be in a comprehensive privacy bill.”

“Nobody panic,” advised Michelle Richardson, a director with privacy group the Center for Democracy and Technology. “This is not an uncommon way for legislation to proceed. They’ll start closing the gaps between the two proposals.”