On March 12, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing on “GDPR & CCPA: Opt-ins, Consumer Control, and the Impact on Competition and Innovation.” The Committee heard from witnesses representing industry, consumer organizations, and academia, who discussed a broad range of issues to inform a federal privacy law: from meaningful consumer controls to the successes and failures of other privacy frameworks to beefed up enforcement by the FTC . One important topic that was not discussed was the importance of publicly available information and how it should be treated by a federal privacy law. As SIIA explained in recent comments to the Senate, the social benefits and public policy principles promoted by the processing of public data are tangible, indisputable, and balanced. Public data is used to provide choice and access to credit for personal finances, to enable credit for business expansion to grow our economy, and to promote public safety. Moreover, the free flow o ...

SIIA is a believer in blockchain’s potential as this Issue Brief makes clear and is interested in continuing the conversation we started with the Congressional Blockchain Caucus about how policy can be leveraged to promote blockchain-based solutions to real-world problems.  Broadly speaking, blockchain should be seen as one of several technologies such as Artificial Intelligence and Quantum Computing that the U.S. government should promote as part of its overall foreign digital economic policy.  Given the fact that much ink has been spilled about how blockchain can make supply chains more efficient and transparent, streamline trade finance, and help customs authorities,  SIIA offers the following ideas for how policy could help advance blockchain adoption.  Include protection for blockchain in future trade agreements  One way of perhaps including such protection could be to include in future trade agreements the below language in yellow in the cross ...

Congress approved and the President signed the government spending bill for fiscal year (FY) 2018 on Friday. The bill includes large increases for education which is a huge departure from the President’s budget submitted to Congress in early 2017.

Yesterday’s event on blockchain, which was framed by SIIA’s Issue Brief, enticed great attendance and sophisticated audience involvement.  You can view the event on Facebook here.  It is worthwhile taking a look even just at the first ten minutes with Congressmen Schweikert’s and Polis’ interventions.  Their commitment and passion for this technology’s potential is palpable.  We are lucky to have this bipartisan approach to reviewing blockchain. We were also lucky to have an all-star cast of panelists: Robert L. Strayer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Cyber and International Communications and Information Policy; Brian Trackman, Attorney Lead, Counsel, LabCFTC and CFTC Office of General Counsel; Thomas Savage, Lead Blockchain Researcher, Centers for Disease Control; David Egts, Chief Technologist, North America Public Sector, Red Hat; Jon West, Head of Platforms, Technology Department, Thomson Reuters; Angela Angelovska-Wil ...

Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted yesterday to repeal the Obama Administration’s net neutrality regulations, also known as the “Open Internet Order.”  That order, adopted by the FCC in 2015, reclassified broadband internet access providers as communication service providers for regulation under Title II of the Telecommunications Act, providing the FCC broad authority to regulate “common carriers” and created explicit prohibitions on broadband providers to block or throttle sites or apps or offer paid prioritization of any Internet content. The new rules put in place by the FCC, officially referred to as the “Restoring Internet Freedom Order,” have been touted as “light touch” regulation by Chairman Ajit Pai, whereby broadband providers will still be required to adhere to transparency requirements regarding their treatment of content, which will be regulated by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).  Earlier thi ...

On December 11, 2015, SIIA and other associations sent a letter to Vice Chairman Diane Feinstein and Chairman Richard Burr of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the Senate bill S. 2372, The Requiring Reporting of Online Terrorist Activity Act.

This first appeared in The Hill’s Congress Blog.

When the European Court of Justice (ECJ) invalidated the U.S. – EU Safe Harbor Framework last week, SIIA released a press statement calling for a managed transition and a rapid completion of negotiations on a new, modernized Safe Harbor as the ruling was a blow to transatlantic data flows.  Additionally, at a joint panel event between SIIA and DIGITALEUROPE in Geneva last week, panelists discussed outcomes, concerns, and next steps over the ruling. SIIA welcomes the bi-partisan and bi-cameral intervention by the leaders of the House and Senate Commerce Committees.  Their letter urges the Secretary of Commerce and the Chairwoman of the Federal Trade Commission to ease concerns from the business community on the legal uncertainty created by the ECJ decision:

Inactivity in Congress is not entirely new or surprising, except when there is broad bipartisan, bicameral support for legislation that also enjoy strong support from both civil society and industry.

Yesterday, the Email Privacy Act (H.R.1852) reached a major milestone:  formal support from a bipartisan majority of House member—that’s 218 of the 435 members of the House, including a “majority of the majority” with 136 Republicans and 82 Democrats signing on as sponsors of the legislation.