The Senate Should Focus on Passing Comprehensive Privacy Legislation, Says ITIF

WASHINGTON—Following the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation’s advancement of the Children’s and Teens’ Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA 2.0) and the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF), the leading think tank for science and technology policy, issued the following statement from Senior Policy Analyst Ashley Johnson:

Congress has been rightfully making data privacy a priority this session, finally addressing the increasingly fragmented data protection regulatory landscape that states are creating in the absence of a federal standard. But the two bills that the Senate advanced today distract attention from the goal of passing a comprehensive federal privacy law by putting the focus on children’s privacy.

COPPA 2.0 would build on existing children’s privacy legislation, creating additional protections for teens. It includes some provisions that would be overly burdensome to businesses that already comply in good faith with existing children’s privacy laws, such as shifting COPPA’s “actual knowledge” standard to a “constructive knowledge” standard. Meanwhile, KOSA aims to protect minors on social media platforms from content that is harmful to children but could potentially lead platforms to over-censor content in ways that would affect all users’ freedom of speech.

Safeguarding children’s online privacy is an important goal, and both these bills deserve more attention and debate, but there is already federal legislation that offers broad protections for children. But there is no comprehensive federal data privacy law for all Americans. While far from perfect, current legislation in the House represents a bipartisan effort to reach a compromise on data privacy that will protect consumers without hindering innovation. The Senate should follow the House’s lead and prioritize passing a comprehensive data privacy bill in the near term.