The Hill News

Last week, the House Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade held a markup on H.R. 2577, the SAFE Data Act.  

Unfortunately, the name of the bill is quite deceiving. Passage of the bill will not make consumer data safer. Instead, it preempts important state laws in this area and leaves a weak federal one in their place.

This bill does not even address the recent data breaches at Sony and Epsilon, the very data breaches that prompted the Committee to act in the first place. Both of those breaches involved email addresses; H.R. 2577 does not require companies to secure consumers’ email addresses or to inform them if they’re taken by hackers.

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