States Are Moving on Privacy Bills. Over 4 in 5 Voters Want Congress to Prioritize Protection of Online Data

随着越来越多的州引进和考虑自己的达ta privacy bills, public support for Congress to pass a national standard is holding strong, with 83 percent of voters saying it should be a "top" or "important, but lower" congressional priority this year.

While Congress continues to punt on a conversation about a national framework, states have been taking matters into their own hands: at least 20 states have introduced their own privacy bills this calendar year alone, according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals, with Virginia becoming the second state after California to pass a law in March. And experts are watching longer legislative sessions in Florida, Colorado, Alaska, Connecticut and New York for any additional privacy laws this year.

State lawmakers are picking up on a growing appetite from constituents for any legislation putting rules on what data about them is collected, stored and used by companies. In the Morning Consultsurveyconducted April 16-19, the share of registered voters who said Congress should make passing this legislation a priority grew 4 percentage points since a December 2019survey, the last time the question was asked. A year earlier, inNovember 2018, 78 percent of voters said the same.

And the push for Congress to prioritize a privacy bill claims bipartisan support: 86 percent of Democrats and 81 percent of Republicans said this should be a “top” or “important but lower” priority this year.

调查显示,在1992年进行registered voters, has a margin of error of 2 points.

Despite high bipartisan support among the public, conversations on Capitol Hill are still slow moving. So far this year, Rep. Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.) introduced the first comprehensive privacy bill of the current congressional session -- theInformation Transparency and Personal Data Control Act-- in March, but aside from that, discussions have been relatively quiet. The last congressional hearing about the topic was in September.

When it comes to regulating data privacy, voters place similar amounts of responsibility on federal and state lawmakers, as well as federal regulators. While 72 percent of voters said Congress is either “very responsible” or “somewhat responsible” for regulating how companies collect, store and share personal information, 79 percent said the same for federal agencies and 75 percent for state governments.

Ever since the passage of the first state privacy law in California in 2018, more states have been pursuing their own options, said Pollyanna Sanderson, policy counsel at the Future of Privacy Forum.

Some pursue comprehensive bills, which face their own legislative hurdles such as partisan debates about enforcement styles or what the exact definition of personal data should be. Others are considered sectorial, meaning they just focus on a specific type of data, like Illinois’ law regulating collection of biometric information.