U.S. lawmakers on Tuesday held a hearing on a bipartisan data privacy bill known as the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA). While the broad contours of the bill have earned the support of tech-industry trade groups, some are warning that certain provisions of the bill could wreak a lot of havoc, including frivolous litigation brought by "a host of private lawyers for hire" and undue burdens on tech businesses. The bill has also earned opposition from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
At the hearing on Tuesday, members of the House Subcommittee on Consumer Protection and Commerce of the Committee on Energy and Commerce discussed ADPPA, which would set up a federal framework for the privacy and security of consumer data. The need for such a framework has support from some seemingly unlikely corners, in part because in the absence of a federal framework for dealing with user data, states have started making their own rules. (As of this summer, five states—California, Colorado, Connecticut, Utah, and Vermont—had done so.) And complying with a bunch of different states' rules would likely be more burdensome than complying with one national set of standards.
