Unlike 160+ countries, unlike almost every industrialized nation, the U.S. has been an outlier because it lacks a comprehensive privacy law. Congress has been trying repeatedly to pass one, without luck, an effort that has faltered because such a law involves many complicated issues that require thoughtfulness and compromise, which don’t exist in Congress these days.
Congress’s latest foray is a new bill called the SECURE Data Act, a piece of garbage cooked up by Republicans as a gift to industry in a climate where the public is deeply concerned about privacy, outraged at the harms tech is causing, and yearning for ways to hold Big Tech accountable.
I can’t stress enough how awful this bill is. On balance, if passed into law, it will do dramatic harm to privacy. It will leave people less protected than if it didn’t exist. I’d call it more of an anti-privacy law than a privacy law.
I’ll briefly provide a few reasons why this bill is terrible and should not be passed.
