The Internet Association, which represents more than 40 companies, including Facebook, Alphabet, Microsoft and Twitter, came out Tuesday in favor “an economy-wide, national approach to regulation that protects the privacy of all Americans” rather than adhere to a bundle of individual state laws like the recently passed California Consumer Privacy Act.
The group seeks “meaningful controls over how personal information they provide” and supports the rights of consumers to delete information as well as data portability.
“A national data privacy law, like GDPR which aligns with the proposed U.S. approach, is a huge step forward in data privacy for citizens and for keeping organizations accountable when collecting sensitive data,” said Egress Software CRO Mark Bower, who noted that the regulation provided relief from the EU’s “patchwork of legislation” amassed over more than 20 years.
“The volume and diversity of regional laws made it difficult to comply with all of the regulation and also provided loopholes for less scrupulous businesses to flout individual country law across borders,” said Bower.
“The vision of a national law for the US brings together the learnings from the EU with a desire to protect U.S. citizens cross-state,” he said, resulting in “a single set of rules that business will be governed by, regardless of which state they reside, or where their data subjects reside” and which “will reduce the complexity for both business and individual and ultimately result in a more effective set of regulations.”
The California law is set to take effect in 2020.
