Securing Privacy Rights to Advance Civil Rights

Last week, the US House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Innovation, Data, and Commerce held a hearing: “Legislative Solutions to Protect Kids Online and Ensure Americans’ Data Privacy Rights.” Between the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) and the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA), both of which have bipartisan and bicameral support, Congress may be closer to acting on the issues than it has been recent memory.

One of the witnesses at the hearing was David Brody, who is managing attorney of the Digital Justice Initiative of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. I caught up with Brody the day after the hearing, we spoke about the challenges of advancing the American Privacy Rights Act, and why he connects fundamental data to privacy rights to so many of the other issues that the Lawyers' Committee cares about, including voting rights and how to counter disinformation that targets communities of color.

"When you are writing privacy rules and data protection rules, you're establishing the infrastructure for online governance. These are going to be the building codes of the internet," said Brody. "And, we have an opportunity here to create a more fair and equitable internet that lives up to the democratic aspirations of the people that were imbued in the original theory and creation of the internet. If we miss this moment, we risk replicating the mistakes of the past. We risk allowing unfettered collection and processing of information in ways that profiles people, in ways that segregates people on the basis of race and sex and other traits, and in ways that allows algorithmic technologies to deny equal opportunity without people even knowing why they did or did not get a particular decision. It's really important that we get this right."

A transcript of the discussion is forthcoming.