The Cambridge Analytica bill

摘要

CONGRESS FIRST tried to pass a privacy law in 1974. Lawmakers succeeded, but lobbying from financial services companies ensured that it applied only to the government, not private firms. Impetus to regulate privacy in the private sector waxed and waned over the next 30 years, building with the first tech bubble, then evaporating in the horror of the 2001 attacks. In 2012, Barack Obama tried again and failed. Almost half a century after their first effort, politicians are having a fourth go, triggered by the Cambridge Analytica scandal. Some have already offered their own bills, and work is now under way to knit all those into a bipartisan offering. Ranking Republicans and Democrats held two hearings on Capitol Hill this week with the explicit goal of informing the federal privacy bill. The discussion was familiar to privacy wonks-how transparent data collection should be, what limits there should be on it, how to avoid burdensome regulation-but the environment in which it took place suggests it might be fourth time lucky.