In the past year, members of the U.S. Congress and Senate on
both sides of the aisle have proposed data privacy bills that would
impose nationwide standards on companies who collect and/or share
consumers' personal information. Currently, all 50 states have
separate, but often overlapping, data privacy regimes—each
subjecting companies to various combinations of recordkeeping
standards, data sharing restrictions, and data breach reporting
requirements—creating a patchwork of state laws that can
generate substantial uncertainty for corporations.
Support for federal legislation has been growing, and in January
2019, the Government Accountability Office recommended that
Congress consider developing comprehensive data privacy
legislation.[1]
The bills that have been proposed differ widely, and while many
commentators feel 2019 is a critical year for enacting such
legislation, sufficient support has yet to coalesce around a single
bill. Key sticking points include
