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No, Business Roundtable CEOs Don’t Really Care About Your Privacy
In the wake of countless data security scandals, calls for federal consumer privacy protections are growing louder and louder. Recently, a surprising group of individuals lent their voices to the cause. A coalition of 51 CEOs from the Business Roundtable (BRT), including Jeff Bezos, penned a letter to Congress urging them to quickly pass America’s first comprehensive privacy law. That sounds good. But dig a little deeper, and you’ll find the Business Roundtable doesn’t really care about your privacy.
What is the Business Roundtable?
The BRT is an association of major U.S. corporations. Its members are exclusively CEO. While CEOs from all leading industries are represented in BRT, this week’s letter to Congress mostly features members from the tech, financial, and insurance sectors.
Among the 51 CEOs who signed the letter are Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Randall Stephenson from AT&T, Brian L. Roberts from Comcast, Ginni Rometty from IBM, and Doug McMillon from Walmart. Notably, Apple’s Tim Cook is a member of BRT, but did not sign the letter.
What’s in the letter?
Mitch McConnell, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Kevin McCarthy, Roger Wicker, Frank Pallone, Maria Cantwell and Greg Walden are the subjects of the letter. It begins by urging these members of Congress to “pass, as soon as possible, a comprehensive consumer data privacy law that strengthens protections for consumers and establishes a national privacy framework to enable continued innovation and growth in the digital economy.”
While that’s a positive start, further down the line, red flags appear. According to these BRT CEOs, “[n]ow is the time for Congress to act and ensure that consumers are not faced with confusion about their rights and protections based on a patchwork of inconsistent state laws.” But this proposal isn’t about eliminating consumer confusion. And it’s not about protecting consumer data with a clearly defined, consistent framework. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
What’s wrong with the Business Roundtable’s proposal?
Despite public posturing, the BRT letter is not the boost for consumer privacy it claims to be. That’s because the letter actually wants to ensure that preemption will be part of any federal privacy regulations. Preemption is a legal procedure that invalidates any state law which conflicts with federal law. By advocating for preemption, these CEOs wish to cancel out any state laws that offer better privacy protections than whatever federal regulation is eventually passed. Amazon and AT&T, for example, have been notoriously trying to circumvent the California Consumer Privacy Act. The law is set to take effect on January 1, 2020, which speaks to the urgency communicated in the letter. If Jeff Bezos and Randall Stephenson can make preemption happen, their efforts to block CCPA will be complete.
Despite claims that a lack of preemption will be difficult for consumers and regulators to navigate, this simply isn’t true. Effective federal privacy regulations should create minimum requirements that all states must adhere to, while still giving individual states the ability to offer further protections when they see fit. This guarantees all American consumers have a baseline level of privacy protections, while still allowing landmark legislation like CCPA to pass.
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