Sep 252018

Movement Towards a Comprehensive U.S. Federal Privacy Law: Witnesses Prepare to Testify in Senate Hearing

Clayton G. Northouse, Alan Charles Raul, Stephen W. McInerney and Christopher Fonzone
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The last six months have been busy ones for privacy watchers, with the entry into force of the GDPR and the enactment and amendment of the California Consumer Privacy Act.

An increasing number of eyes are now turning to the U.S. Congress to see how it will react to these developments, and Data Matters – and the privacy community generally – will thus be closely watching the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation on Wednesday, September 26, 2018, when it hosts a hearing titled “Examining Safeguards for Consumer Data Privacy.”

This hearing, the first in a planned series, provides an initial opportunity for the public to see how the Members of a key Senate Committee and a number of key tech and telecom companies are thinking about the prospects of comprehensive federal privacy legislation.  To that end, we’ll post a link to the written witness statements when they become available.

Beyond the statements, we’re also guessing that the readers of this blog think the hearing is the equivalent of “can’t miss TV.”  We’ll thus end by noting that the you can watch the hearing live here and should of course check back with Data Matters for further commentary later this week.

Clayton G. Northouse

cnorthouse@sidley.com

Alan Charles Raul

Washington, D.C., New York

araul@sidley.com

Stephen W. McInerney

Chicago

smcinerney@sidley.com

Christopher Fonzone

cfonzone@sidley.com

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