FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
December 17, 2022
Press contact: wapeplesprivacy@gmail.com
WA People’s Privacy and 13 groups/organizations have signed on to a letter asking Speaker Pelosi not to bring the American Data Privacy and Protection Act (ADPPA) to the floor this session without first strengthening this bill.
With the concern that a bill this impactful is more likely to be further weakened, rather than strengthened, we do not feel the timing or conditions are right for the House to vote on this bill.
Our letter detailed how this bill would fail to protect abortion healthcare-seekers, Immigrants, Poor, BIPOC, LGBTQ2SIA+ and unfavored communities and individuals from commercial surveillance and overreaches of law enforcement via access to our data.
We’ve offered a list of eight specific improvements we are asking lawmakers to strengthen. To be clear, they are not the only improvements we’d like in a federal bill, but they are essential to creating a strong federal floor on privacy for everyone, via the ADPPA.
While key industry stakeholders have been at the negotiating table to weigh in on the ADPPA, there are plenty of voices who have not been included at that table at all. Very few groups have voiced substantive issues or feedback in a public way. But, we feel it’s vital to have these conversations about people’s privacy in a way that is transparent, public, and empowers our communities to understand our rights, and to be able to participate in the democratic process of creating laws.
People need to know what this bill includes, and what it leaves out. And, people need to understand what that means for our everyday lived realities. For many, this bill language will be life or death; the ability to be housed or employed; whether our community and personal safety in ensured; and whether we will be able to access opportunities and services equitably, and free of discrimination. We do not take that lightly at all, and we don’t want our lawmakers to either.
Privacy is an essential ingredient to a healthy participatory democracy, because it is very closely tied to freedom.
Privacy is a human and a civil right, and we believe strongly that people need to have the information necessary to fight for that right.
Our privacy in the digital age is not something that should be viewed as a bargain between corporations and government, and tightly negotiated behind closed doors. If the overturn of Roe – the federal removal of the right to bodily autonomy from roughly half of this nation’s residents – has not thoroughly exposed that truth to daylight, what will?
Privacy is, and remains, a people’s right. Our voices must be heard when our nation explores creating laws at the federal level that will affect each of us deeply, and for many years into the future.
Read our letter here: ADPPA Letter_SpeakerPelosi_12-17-22
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