Lawmakers Will Face Familiar Technology Issues Next Congress

After years of debate and discussion, the House Energy and Commerce Committee in July voted 53-2 to approve compromise bipartisan data privacy legislation. The bill would establish a national standard for data privacy and has the backing of Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., the top Republican on the Senate Commerce Committee.

The bill may have bipartisan support, but lawmakers from California, led by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said the bill doesn’t give the state, the first to pass a data privacy law, enough freedom to set its own tougher rules. Four other states have passed similar laws, and five others are considering comparable measures.

Pelosi didn’t bring the measure to the full House. She will no longer be the speaker or the Democrats’ House leader in the 118th Congress.

That measure “really proved that Congress is a lot closer to a bipartisan compromise than I think a lot of people, including myself, would have believed, say in early 2020,” said Ashley Johnson, senior policy analyst at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. “So I would expect more movement on privacy next year.”