The hearing said that the U.S. was lagging behind Europe's new GDPR privacy rules and California's recently passed privacy law, which goes into effect in 2020, and lawmakers were edging toward introducing their own federal privacy law. AT&T, Apple, Charter and Google used their time in the Senate to call on lawmakers to introduce new federal privacy legislation. Tech companies spent the past year pushing back against the new state regulations, but have conceded that new privacy rules are inevitable. Now the companies realize that it's better to sit at the table to influence a federal privacy law than stand outside in the cold. In pushing for a new federal law, representatives from each company confirmed that they support the preemption of California's new rules -- something that critics oppose. AT&T's chief lawyer Len Cali said that a patchwork of state laws would be unworkable. Apple, too, agreed to support a privacy law, but noted as a company that doesn't hoard user data for advertising -- like Facebook and Google -- that any federal law would need to put a premium on protecting the consumer rather than helping companies make money. But Amazon's chief lawyer Andrew DeVore said that complying with privacy rules has "required us to divert significant resources to administrative tasks and away from invention."
In Senate hearing, tech giants push lawmakers for federal privacy rules
In Senate hearing, tech giants push lawmakers for federal privacy rules