ITIF urged Wyoming lawmakers to reject a recently introduced bill that would have severely restricted the use of data by broadband Internet service providers. The proposed legislation, which was voted down in committee, was flawed for three main reasons. First, there is no justification for narrow privacy laws that apply only to broadband providers. Second, the bill appears to have been intended to simply maximize user privacy without balancing other interests, which would have had a negative impact on potential innovative uses of data. Third, the regulation of data privacy should be a uniform endeavor across all fifty states. There is room for improvement over the current oversight of privacy best practices by the Federal Trade Commission, but we should prefer a single law at the federal level and avoid a patchwork of conflicting and cost-raising rules that would result from numerous state privacy regulations.
