Blackburn, Klobuchar Will Consider Comprehensive Privacy at July Hearing
The Senate Privacy Subcommittee will hold a hearing later this month on comprehensive privacy legislation, Chair Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., told us Thursday.
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However, the lawmaker declined to say whether the subcommittee is pursuing a comprehensive bill.
Connor Glisson, a tech policy advisor to Blackburn, said at a Hudson Institute event Thursday that the senator and ranking member Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., are “working closely together to address this problem once and for all.”
The hearing will focus on “the priorities surrounding comprehensive privacy legislation” and “how a national framework will protect personal data across state lines,” he said. “We have to look at what’s out there, what’s working, as states are a test bed for democracy in a lot of scenarios.”
Klobuchar declined to comment when reached Thursday.
Senate Commerce Committee ranking member Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., told us Thursday that there haven’t been any recent conversations between her and Chairman Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about comprehensive privacy legislation. She said she’s had “interesting” discussions on the topic with other members, but “I wouldn’t say anything’s really moving along.”
She noted her attention to the growing issue of surveillance pricing, which has prompted New York to pass a law and California to advance legislation (see 2507160067). Cantwell said surveillance pricing is one of the reasons Democrats didn’t want to see the proposed AI moratorium pass (see 2507010071). There are laws “on the books that are helping. Clearly we want free competition. We don’t want somebody to just set a price based on information that” a consumer will pay more, she said. “Why would you want that?”
The 99-1 vote against the AI moratorium was a rare, bipartisan win for the Senate, Glisson said during the Hudson event. Glisson was asked about reported signals from House Republican leadership that Blackburn’s Kids Online Safety Act is now dead in the lower chamber due to her role in rallying opposition against the moratorium in the senate. Glisson said Blackburn has always supported a federal framework regulating AI technology but doesn’t have “confidence” that Congress is “there yet.” Working through individual bills is creating opportunities for better protections for children, he said.