Online Privacy Bill Passes by The U.S. House Committee After Many Hiccups

After being blocked by the lobbying of tech companies for months and months, the U.S. House of Representatives has finally passed the bipartisan online privacy bill this Thursday. This privacy bill is aimed at curtailing the unnecessary collection of personal consumer data by the tech giants when providing internet-based services.

This online privacy bill explicitly stops companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, and others of the top league to avoid collecting sensitive information, like Social Security numbers, to further protect personal consumer data.

The tech companies will only be allowed to collect personal data that is strictly needed to provide a service, without including any highly sensitive information no matter what. The U.S. House of Energy and Commerce committee easily passed the bill, and now heads to the full house committee for further analysis.

Tech Companies’ Lobby Stopped the Bill Passing in the Past

This online bipartisan privacy bill was lingering in the middle for many months before being finally passed on Thursday. Previous attempts at passing the bill have been met with staunch lobbying by the “big tech” companies. Tech companies argued that they managed to provide free web-based services to consumers by using their data for advertisement.

Another instance where the debate over the privacy bill raged was whether the federal legislation would forestall the state laws in place, where the former would be stricter than the latter. The debate continues as the bill moves on to its next step of implementation.

Uncertainty Still Prevails

Despite its appreciative progress after months of blockades from the “BigTech” opponents, the fate of the online privacy bill remains uncertain. This is not only because of the strong opponent-ship of big tech firms, but the privacy bill also draws criticism from renowned Democrat senator Maria Cantwell.

According to Ms. Cantwell, the bill currently does not have sufficient enforcement material in it.

“People who want to get a bill know that you can’t preempt states with a weak federal standard, so hopefully they’ll come back to the table,” says Ms. Cantwell, one of the opponents of the bipartisan online privacy bill.

This online privacy bill has so far the backup of both Democrat and Republican senators such as Frank Pallone, Jan Schakowsky, Cathy McMorris, and Gus Bilirakis. But despite such proponents, the online privacy bill’s fate is still far from certain as to how this bill will be implemented nationally across the United States.