Washington State Privacy Bill Stumbles at Finish Line
Washington state’s controversial privacy bill is most likely dead for this session after the House missed a Wednesday deadline to vote it out of the chamber. “Without some extraordinary effort the bill will not be considered further by the WA legislature, until next year,” though no bill is truly dead until the legislature adjourns sine die April 28, wrote House Innovation, Technology and Economic Development Committee Chairman Zack Hudgins (D) in an email update Thursday. Consumer privacy advocates cheered demise of the bill that was backed by Microsoft and other tech companies.
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“The bill is highly unlikely to pass this year due to the House’s inability to get consensus on the legislation," Senate sponsor Reuven Carlyle (D) emailed us. Gov. Jay Inslee (D), whose office had been pushing for the bill and proposed a possible compromise earlier this week (see 1904160052), is “disappointed the bill is not advancing” but is “committed to its principles and will explore ways to continue ... the conversation with legislators, companies and other stakeholders.”
“Concerns about enforcement, facial recognition, definitions, process, and rights were too high to overcome,” despite many hours of talks, Hudgins said. “It is important to me that we not let the siren call of ‘getting a bill done’ be more attractive than good policy,” he said. “The need for regulation in the area of protecting people’s privacy is needed and important. We need to do it properly, focused on consent and consumers,” and “find a balance between privacy and innovation.”
“The Washington privacy bill was filled with loopholes,” and would have “set a dangerously weak precedent for privacy,” said Consumer Reports Director-Consumer Privacy and Technology Policy Justin Brookman. “Washington state legislators should start over in the next session with a better bill that puts consumers first, and they should seek more input from stakeholders beyond the companies that were pushing hard for this bill.”
Amazon, Microsoft and Comcast lobbyists were involved in last-minute talks to salvage the bill (see 1904150014). They didn’t comment Thursday.
It wasn’t the first time the Washington bill was declared dead (see 1904090072). “This time it's more likely than it previously was that it's dead,” said the American Civil Liberties Union’s Washington Technology and Liberty Project Director Shankar Narayan, in an interview. ACLU and several other consumer privacy groups opposed the bill. Technically there are ways to revive it, but they seem unlikely “because of the way the bill failed,” he said. “Talks really broke down.”
The House tried to reach compromise but Carlyle and Microsoft “weren’t willing to play ball” and refused to deviate from the bill that passed the Senate by nearly unanimous vote, Narayan said. Consumer groups weren’t included in last-minute talks to reach consensus, and the ACLU official disagreed with an Inslee office statement Tuesday saying it had invited consumer groups to other meetings over the past six months. ACLU met with Carlyle, but “we have not been invited to any larger table about data privacy,” he said. ACLU got no response when it asked to be invited to the most recent talks, he said. Narayan still sees “interest in proactively moving forward meaningful data privacy” and predicted talks would resume for possible action next year, he said.