Federal agency-backed research to advance technology-based mechanisms for safeguarding individuals’ sensitive digital details is at the core of bipartisan legislation put forward in both congressional chambers this week.
The Promoting Digital Privacy Technologies Act, introduced by Reps. Haley Stevens, D-Mich., and Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, and Sens. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev., and Deb Fischer, R-Neb., would codify support for data anonymization tools, confidentiality-enabling algorithms and other privacy-enhancing technologies, or PETs, designed to help secure people’s personal data.
“My goal is to ensure that consumers have easy access to data protection while also reaping the rewards of data analysis applications,” Stevens told Nextgov Friday. “We can also use this to make governmental processes more efficient.”
Across the U.S., researchers turn to large-scale data analyses to garner big picture insights about health care, the economy, and other crucial elements of society—but the nation has yet to see the passage of a comprehensive, national data privacy policy to govern such pursuits.
“Starting with the widespread adoption of digital storage in the early 2000s, the use of data for analytics, research and other applications has skyrocketed,” Stevens said. It’s accelerated exponentially amid the modern pandemic, and has what she called “enormous upsides,” including the potential to help manage the spread of diseases like COVID-19, streamline business processes, combat criminal activities, facilitate traffic flows, and “improve countless other activities in everyday life.”
“But the widespread usage of personal information can also jeopardize the privacy of Americans through nonconsensual use of their data, extraction of private details of their lives, and cybersecurity incidents that expose their information to the public,” Stevens added, noting that PETs could help counter relevant risks.
In this bill, lawmakers wrote ..
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