Media Reports White House Considering Privacy Law Changes

Axios has reported on preliminary conversations involving the White House and business leaders about how to bring data privacy protections to the United States. Given the scale of the Facebook privacy controversy and the support in Congress for a new privacy law, the fact that discussions are happening should surprise no one. But this is the first coverage of such discussions that we have seen involving the Trump administration.

The reports centered around Gail Slater, special assistant to President Trump for tech, telecom and cyber policy at the White House National Economic Council. Slater has previously served as a legal adviser at the Federal Trade Commission and general counsel of the Internet Association, a trade association representing companies like Google and Facebook.

The options discussed included an executive order directing one or more agencies to develop a privacy framework to be developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology or another federal agency, according to Axios. The executive order may be used to create a public-privacy partnership to create a set of best practices which would become the default standards for businesses operating online.

According to Axios: At a meeting of the technology committee of The Business Roundtable last week, Slater reportedly indicated that the administration is interested in developing a counterweight to GDPR so that it does not become the de facto global standard. Slater previously said last month at a National Venture Capital Association conference that the administration is discussing what they could and should be doing on privacy, but there was no desire to create a clone of the GDPR in the United States. In addition to GDPR, Axios believes that the possibility of a confusing patchwork of privacy rules led by the California Consumer Privacy Act may be driving the administration to action.

Based on the Axios reporting of her comments, more consumer control and access to data could be in order but the right to be forgotten is unlikely to be in any proposal.

The Axios article with full details is located at this link.

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Other Blog Posts on Proposed Federal Privacy Law Changes:

NIST Voluntary Privacy Framework
NTIA Global Privacy Priorities
Business Roundtable Privacy Framework
Intel Draft Privacy Law
ITI FAIR Privacy Framework
US Chamber of Commerce Privacy Principles