Senators advance data privacy bills from joint committee

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State senators outnumbered on a joint House-Senate committee pushed five data privacy bills this week into the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which is the last hurdle bills need to clear to reach the Senate floor.

The votes by members of the Committee on Advanced Information Technology, the Internet and Cybersecurity mark an example of senators exercising a rules reform designed to give senators more power over the flow of Senate bills, which over the years have at times gotten hung up in House-controlled joint committees.

The bills that secured favorable votes on May 12 call for an omnibus Data Privacy Act (S. 2516), ban the sale of cellphone location information (S. 197), address surveillance pricing in grocery stores (S. 2515), implement annual public employee cybersecurity training (S. 49), and protect personal biometric data (S. 43). The bills were heard at the joint committee’s only hearing so far on April 9.

“We reviewed all the bills that we had in committee, and we prioritized the bills that we thought should be prioritized sooner rather than later,” committee co-chair Sen. Michael Moore told State House News Service. “Some looking at the economic and maybe the political landscape here in the state and also nationally. Privacy, if you look at what’s going on across the country now — and I should specifically say, yes, in Washington — and with private companies getting access to individuals’ personal information, and then we can see the issue with cyber breaches that have been happening.”

Rules reform packages from both branches allow House and Senate committee chairs to poll bills from their respective chambers. Senate Democrats argued the change would prevent a logjam of bills from advancing out of joint committees.

The Data Privacy Act establishes the right for a consumer to “access, correct, export, and delete personal data linked to them” and gives individuals the right to opt out of the collection and processing of their personal data “for targeted advertising, the sale of their personal data, or profiling for automated decision-making purposes.”

The bill would also let consumers to designate another person to serve as their agent to exercise their rights. Other guardrails limit the type of personal data that can be collected, processed and transferred to “what is reasonably necessary” for a product or service.

“The data privacy was something that we worked on for two years last (session),” Moore said. “We had all the information from last year, we had the information that came through this year, and there really wasn’t any new information that was going to affect the draft.”

Reproductive and civil rights advocates view the location shield bill as a way to strengthen abortion protections. It blocks the sale of location data to third parties, largely prohibits the disclosure of location data to government authorities, and blocks governmental entities from monetizing location data.

“One thing that we also did look at were co-sponsors. We have two-thirds of the Senate signing on,” Moore said of the location shield bill. “There is interest from the body in that issued being moved.”

The grocery store bill would ban food stores and departments from suggesting items or adjusting the prices of any item in store directly or indirectly based on biometric data — fingerprint, a voiceprint, eye retinas, irises, or gait, according to a bill summary — of individuals collected on the food store or department premises.

The personal biometric data bill blocks private entities from selling individuals’ biometric identifiers or biometric information. Biometric identifiers are physiological or biological characteristics such as a retina or iris scan, fingerprint, voiceprint, hand scan, face geometry or “pattern of gait or movement.”