Florida Senator Marco Rubio is touting a federal data privacy bill that is meant to supersede a hodge-podge of conflicting state laws.
Here is an excerpt from a report from Fortune:
The bill, titled the American Data Dissemination Act, requires the Federal Trade Commission to make suggestions for regulation based on the Privacy Act of 1974. Congress would then have to pass legislation within two years, or the FTC will gain the power to write the rules itself (under current laws, the FTC can only enforce existing rules).
While Rubio’s bill is intended to reign in the data collection and dissemination of companies like Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, and Netflix, it also requires any final legislation to protect small businesses from being stifled by new rules.
“While we may have disagreements on the best path forward, no one believes a privacy law that only bolsters the largest companies with the resources to comply and stifles our start-up marketplace is the right approach,” Rubio wrote in an op-ed for The Hill, announcing his bill.
The caveat comes when one considers states’ rights to create their own privacy laws. Under Rubio’s legislation, any national regulations would preempt state laws—even if the states’ are more strict.
