Consumer Reports Opposes the American Privacy Rights Act absent major improvements

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Ahead of tomorrow’s markup of the American Privacy Rights Act in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Consumer Reports is calling on Congress to significantly strengthen the bill, or abandon work on it altogether. 

Justin Brookman, director of technology policy for Consumer Reports, said, “We appreciate the attention given to privacy by Congress and their efforts to pass a comprehensive privacy bill this session, but unfortunately this iteration of APRA still falls quite short. We are concerned that, given the practical difficulties with getting a bill such as this across the finish line with such limited time remaining in the session, advancing a watered down bill through committee will only serve to set a bad precedent for future Congressional efforts to enact comprehensive privacy legislation and could hinder more robust state efforts from taking root.”

Consumer Reports circulated a letter Monday to members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee highlighting concerns with the latest version of the legislation. While the new draft makes minor improvements to its data minimization framework, it still lags behind a previous bipartisan privacy proposal — the American Data Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA) — in its treatment of invasive forms of online advertising, such as re-targeting. The new draft also removes entire sections relating to civil rights and algorithmic accountability that had been a long-standing feature of bipartisan comprehensive privacy legislation and creates new loopholes for data processed solely “on-device” that would drastically limit the reach of consumer rights under the bill. 

Contact: Cyrus Rassool, cyrus.rassool@consumer.org