Senate Commerce Should Have Heard Consumer Voices in One-Sided Privacy Hearing

Today, the Senate Commerce Committee held a hearing entitled “Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy.” The purpose of the hearing was to “provide leading technology companies and internet service providers an opportunity to explain their approaches to privacy.” The panel consisted of six industry representatives from internet service providers AT&T and Charter Communications, and large tech companies Amazon, Google, Apple, and Twitter.

Unfortunately, no consumer voices were invited to the hearing. OTI signed onto a letter last week that was sent to the Committee expressing these concerns. While the Committee acknowledged the one-sidedness of its hearing, it refused to add consumer voices, saying instead there will be more hearings with more stakeholders in the future.

The following quote can be attributed to Eric Null, Senior Policy Counsel at New America’s Open Technology Institute:

“Without consumer voices, the hearing unfortunately provided an echo chamber for large tech companies to further reiterate what they desire in a federal privacy bill, such as ensuring a ‘level playing field’ between ISPs and tech companies.

Today’s hearing should have included consumer voices to ensure a robust, valuable discussion. Consumer voices could have challenged the companies’ claims of, among other things, needing a level playing field, which OTI and other consumer advocates oppose. Instead, companies made these claims unchallenged. As a result, this hearing held little significance for the public, and instead merely allowed companies to further cement their views in front of Congress.”