Another day, another hearing of tech giants in Congress. Wednesday’s hearing at the Senate Commerce Committee with Apple, Amazon, Google and Twitter, alongside AT&T and Charter, marked the latest in a string of hearings in the past few months into all things tech: but mostly controversies embroiling the companies, from election meddling to transparency. This time, privacy was at the top of the agenda. The problem, lawmakers say, is that consumers have little of it. The hearing said that the U.S. was lagging behind Europe’s new GDPR privacy rules and California’s recently passed privacy law, which goes into effect in 2020, and lawmakers were edging toward introducing their own federal privacy law. Here are the key takeaways. Tech giants want new federal legislation, if not just to upend California’s privacy law For once, the tech giants seemed to agree with one another. AT&T, Apple, Charter and Google used their time in the Senate to call on lawmakers to introduce new federal privacy legislation. Tech companies spent the past year pushing back against the new state regulations, but have conceded that new privacy rules are inevitable. Now the companies realize that it’s better to sit at the table to influence a federal privacy law than stand outside in the cold. In pushing for a new federal law, representatives from each company confirmed that they support the preemption of California’s new rules — something that critics oppose. AT&T’s chief lawyer Len Cali said that a patchwork of state laws would be unworkable. Apple, too, agreed to support a privacy law, but noted as a company that doesn’t hoard user data for advertising — like Facebook and Google — that any federal law would need to put a premium on protecting the consumer rather than helping companies make money. But Amazon’s chief lawyer Andrew DeVore said that complying with privacy rules has “required us to divert significant resources to administrative tasks and away from invention.” Sen. John Thune (R-SD) asked the representatives why lawmakers shouldn’t adopt the same standards seen in Europe and California at a federal level, but none of the companies could answer. “That question lingers here,” said Thune. “The opposition that you’ve expressed to these rules is one that can nonetheless accommodate the kind of rules that we’ve seen in GDPR and California.” Google made “mistakes” on privacy, but evades China search questioning Google took a rare moment to admit it hasn’t always taken the right approach to privacy — though, it wouldn’t point to any specific incident. “We acknowledge that we have made mistakes in the past, from which we have learned, and improved our robust privacy program,” Keith Enright, Google’s chief privacy officer, said in his opening statement. But that, lawmakers said, contrasted with recent reports of the company’s return to China — almost a decade after it pulled out of the country after allegations of Chinese efforts to hack into the search giant’s systems and ethical conflicts with China’s censorship policies. Google reportedly began working on “Dragonfly,” a China-focused search engine that would block certain keywords to fall in line with China’s censorship rules. The effort has been widely decried by human rights groups, and led to a high-profile resignation. Prior to the Senate hearing, a former Google engineer sent a letter to the committee asking lawmakers to pressure Enright to respond. Google to date has refused to confirm or comment on the reports, but Enright said that “there is a Project Dragonfly.” “We are not close to launching a search product in China,” he said, in response to one lawmaker. Later, he said that he didn’t think the company “could or would launch a product” without including its privacy and security policies. Startups might struggle under GDPR-ported rules, companies claim Startups and small businesses with slimmer resources than the tech giants could be a major casualty if GDPR-like rules were ported into federal law. Enright said that ensuring compliance under GDPR was complicated and costly, but wouldn’t put a figure on how much Google had spent on complying with GDPR when asked by one lawmaker. Enright suggested that it was likely in the millions of dollars. But even larger companies like Charter, which are wholly U.S.-based and have no European presence, said they wouldn’t know how they would be affected if GDPR principles were ported over stateside. Charter’s policy chief Rachel Welch said that the U.S. should “put its own stamp” and not just roll over GDPR principles. Apple added that self-employed developers and software house startups could suffer under new federal privacy rules. The company has some 20 million developers that rely on its app store to sell their software. “Small companies don’t have teams of lawyers to draft things,” said Apple’s Bud Tribble, and asked that any new federal rules should consider startups “to help make things clear and so that businesses have one set of rules than many sets of rules to follow.” It’s a line parroted by tech giants before and without much evidence to back it up. Although some companies have shuttered operations in Europe, other startups hit the deadline and continue to thrive. Sen. Jerry Moran (R-KS) called for greater representation from startups to help understand the cost breakdowns to understand it better. Thune said that the committee won’t “rush through” legislation, and will ask privacy advocates for their input in a coming hearing.<doc-sep>The Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will hold a hearing Wednesday on “Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy,” intended as an opportunity for lawmakers to learn about “possible approaches to safeguarding privacy more effectively.” That’s great except for two small things. No consumers were invited to speak on safeguarding consumer data privacy. No consumer advocates were invited to speak on safeguarding consumer data privacy. Advertisement Who was invited? That would be representatives of some of the country’s biggest tech and telecom companies — businesses that have a highly vested interest in collecting and exploiting as much consumer data as they can get their mitts on. “If the purpose of the hearing is to educate lawmakers, you’d want a diverse set of voices,” said Ernesto Falcon, legislative counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy-rights advocacy group. “That’s not happening.” What’s on tap instead, he told me, is “allowing industry to define what would make a good privacy law.” Witnesses scheduled to address lawmakers Wednesday include senior officials from AT&T, Amazon, Google, Twitter, Apple and Charter Communications. Each one of these companies relies on consumer data for a significant portion of its revenue, either as the foundation of marketing efforts or as a commodity to be sold to others. A likely upshot of the hearing, Falcon said, is that each company will make the case for why a federal data-privacy law should preempt state laws. And there’s a good reason for that. They’re terrified of a landmark privacy law passed by California in June and set to take effect at the beginning of 2020. The California Consumer Privacy Act — AB 375 — provides state residents with sweeping rights, including the ability to find out what kinds of information a business has collected and what it plans to do with it. Advertisement It allows consumers to request that a company delete any personal information it holds, to be able to opt out of the sale of such info and to sue if reasonable security practices aren’t maintained to prevent data breaches. The law also defines “personal information” as broadly as possible to encompass personal identifiers, biometric data, internet browsing history, location and any inferences a business might make based on a consumer’s digital footprint. The California statute represents a huge shift in the balance of marketing power, recognizing that consumers have a right to control what companies know about them and what they do with all that information. The law doesn’t go as far as recently enacted European privacy rules, but it’s still the toughest, most consumer-friendly privacy regulation ever adopted in this country. Advertisement What we’ll likely see Wednesday, therefore, is Big Data telling lawmakers that they feel consumers need to be better protected and that they benevolently support federal safeguards to accomplish this. What they’ll really be saying, though, is that they want Congress to adopt rules that are far less stringent than what California has passed, and they want the federal rules to trump anything imposed by states. “We don’t know what this committee was thinking when it decided it was a good idea to hear only from powerful tech interests that are fighting against real privacy laws,” said Ed Mierzwinski, senior director of the federal consumer program for the U.S. Public Interest Research Group. “Sure, there are minor differences in their individual messages, but none of them represent consumers or citizens, and as a group would welcome a terrible federal law that lets them do what they want to collect, analyze, use and sell our information,” he said. Advertisement “They’d be happy to make state privacy leadership obsolete.” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D. ), chairman of the committee, said in a statement that “consumers deserve clear answers and standards on data privacy protection.” “This hearing will provide leading technology companies and internet service providers an opportunity to explain their approaches to privacy, how they plan to address new requirements from the European Union and California, and what Congress can do to promote clear privacy expectations without hurting innovation,” he said. That’s fine and dandy, but doesn’t Congress want to know what consumers and consumer privacy experts have to say? Advertisement Frederick Hill, a committee spokesman, said that “we expect there will be opportunities for other voices at future hearings on privacy.” Cool. When will those hearings be held? No additional hearings are scheduled, Hill replied. I contacted each of the companies set to testify this week. I asked what points they hoped to get across to lawmakers, how they felt about California’s privacy law and what they’re looking for in a possible federal law. Advertisement I didn’t learn much. AT&T said it has “long supported federal legislation to protect consumer privacy through a clear and consistent set of safeguards that apply equally to all platforms.” Google said it has “long been supportive of thoughtful privacy legislation that both protects consumers and encourages all businesses to continue innovating.” The other companies either declined to comment or ignored my questions. Falcon at the Electronic Frontier Foundation said a congressional hearing isn’t a venue for spirited debate. However, it’s important to have informed participants who can prevent lawmakers from being misled. Advertisement “If you don’t have witnesses that are able to point to assertions that are misleading, then those misleading assertions are the ones that will sink into the heads of senators,” he said. If nothing else, here’s what lawmakers need to keep in mind: The federal government can and should set regulatory base lines for businesses. But states — as conservatives keep telling us — know their citizens best and should have the last word. Enact a federal privacy law. Please. But make it clear that any such law will be superseded by stronger provisions at the state level. Advertisement Because Republicans believe in states’ rights. Right? David Lazarus’ column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com.<doc-sep>We heard earlier this month that Apple VP Guy ‘Bud’ Tribble would be testifying at a Senate hearing into the possibility of federal privacy legislation – and, as expected, he has told the Senate that Apple is fully in favor of the idea … In his written testimony, Apple ‘privacy tsar‘ Tribble said privacy was a human right that should be ‘supported both by social norms and the law.’ To Apple, privacy means much more than having the right to not share your personal information. Privacy is about putting the user in control when it comes to that information. That means that users can decide whether to share personal information and with whom. It means that they understand how that information will be used. Ultimately, privacy is about living in a world where you can trust that your decisions about how your personal information is shared and used are being respected. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which should be supported by both social norms and the law Tribble said that this attitude was fundamental to the company’s approach. This approach comes very naturally to Apple [and] has a fundamental effect on how we develop all of our products. Some would call this “privacy by design.” It means that we challenge ourselves to minimize the amount of personal information we collect. Can the information we do collect be less identifiable? Can we process information on the device instead of sending it to servers? We want your device to know everything about you; we don’t feel that we should. Tibble also made an apparent dig at Google, without naming the company. When we do collect personal information, we are specific and transparent about how it will be used. We do not combine it into a single large customer profile across all of our services. Background The Senate hearing was prompted by Europe adopting the strongest protections ever seen for customer and user data, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). These protections are so strong that even Apple had to take additional measures to comply. Americans have since been wondering why they shouldn’t enjoy similar protections. The White House first raised the idea of the US doing something similar back in June. Apple was one of a number of tech companies to meet privately and with the White House to discuss the issue, and an industry lobbying group whose members include Apple has been arguing the case for such legislation. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news: FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More. Check out 9to5Mac on YouTube for more Apple news:<doc-sep>
In a U.S. Senate committee hearing Wednesday, Apple's vice president of software technology, Guy "Bud" Tribble, stated Apple's support for legislation, while agreeing that the Federal Trade Commission should hold regulatory authority. At a hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation in Washington Wednesday, Tribble testified alongside representatives of Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Twitter, AT&T, and Charter Communications. Throughout, Tribble expressed support for the idea of privacy legislation itself, and gave either qualified or unqualified yesses to most proposals put forward by most Senators. "I am honored to be with you for this important hearing and to convey Apple's support for comprehensive federal privacy legislation that reflects Apple's longheld view that privacy is a fundamental human right," Tribble said in his opening statement. "To Apple, privacy means much more than having the right to not share your personal information. Privacy is about putting the user in control when it comes to that information," Tribble continued. "That means that users can decide whether to share personal information and with whom. It means that they understand how that information will be used. Ultimately, privacy is about living in a world where you can trust that your decisions about how your personal information is shared and used are being respected. We believe that privacy is a fundamental human right, which should be supported by both social norms and the law." "These concepts have guided our design process for years because privacy is a core value at Apple, not an obligation or an aftermarket add-on," Tribble said. Tribble also made a point of pushing for any new privacy legislation to not place undue burdens on app developers. "We have an app store with 6 million developers in the U.S., some are small and medium-sized businesses, and [we hope that] the burden will not be on them as to record-keeping, to make sure it's not overburdensome for that class of companies," Tribble said in his testimony. He added that Apple had earlier worked with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) to help create a "model privacy notice" for app developers in the health space who may not have access to a full legal team, and would interested in coming up with those sorts of solutions in the future. Tribble agreed with most of the other executives present that the FTC should handle most enforcement for the new privacy regime. "Apple agrees that the FTC should get the resources they need a part of comprehensive legislation," he said. Mentioned throughout the hearing was that both the European Union that invoked the General Data Protection Regulation, and the state of California have both passed privacy laws, both of which some tech companies believe are too stringent. The executives discussed whether the federal law will preempt the local one, as well as what disclosures will be required for data sharing. Facebook was not part of the hearing, although CEO Mark Zuckerberg had testified before the same committee in April. Broadcast on C-SPAN 3 and streaming online, the hearing was not what would be considered a high-profile proceeding. It was notably non-contentious, although some Republican senators, including Ted Cruz of Texas and Cory Gardner of Colorado, asked pointed questions about Google's China policy near the end of the hearing. Cruz also asked Google chief privacy officer Keith Enright whether Google is working to censor conservatives from search results.