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How the U.S. got boxed in on privacy
The federal government's failure to craft a national privacy law has left it to be squeezed on the issue by the EU on one side and California on the other.
Why it matters: Companies are stuck trying to navigate the maze of EU and state laws, while legislators in Washington have no choice but to use those laws as de facto standards.
The big picture: Three years after the EU's GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation) law went into effect and six months after California's strict privacy statute (the California Privacy Rights Act) became official, the U.S. is still nowhere close to passing nationwide privacy rules.
Yes, but: Any U.S. law would largely be shaped by rules set by the EU and California.
- Businesses have already spent big to comply with these laws, and Congress would be hard pressed to pass rules that are a weaker than those the industry is already following.
- "It lowers the required energy to pass a federal privacy law in the United States because global companies have already done most of the heavy lifting," Future of Privacy Forum senior counsel Stacey Gray told Axios. "But it also means there's a narrower world of what legislation could look like."
What's happening: California and Virginia have both passed consumer privacy laws, with Colorado's state legislature approving its own privacy bill Tuesday and sending it to the governor's desk.
- California's law gives consumers the right to access, delete and opt out of the sale of data.
- "Being able to opt out of sale is a uniquely California spin, and you can see the influence, it's now turning up in bills across the United States and may become part of a federal privacy law," Gray told Axios.
- Virginia's law, which will go into effect in 2023, allows consumers to opt out of having their data used for targeted advertising, among other measures, but is viewed as more industry-friendly.
Meanwhile, in Congress, momentum for action on privacy has stalled, despite the pile-up of state and global regulations.
- The pandemic and the new administration's proposals for addressing its fallout have taken priority.
- Even within the tech policy world, other issues — including Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer's China competition bill, antitrust and misinformation — have drawn lawmakers' focus.
- "The administration and some of the relevant leaders in Congress, and chairs in the relevant committees, are going to need to make it a priority for it to happen," Samir Jain, director of policy for the Center for Democracy & Technology, told Axios.
What to watch: House consumer protection subcommittee chairwoman Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.) has said she intends to host privacy roundtables with her Republican counterpart and interested stakeholders to try to hammer out the sticking points on legislation, with a goal of passing a bill by 2022.
- A spokesperson for ranking Republican Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.) said the congressman is optimistic about reaching a bipartisan agreement on privacy, but "he is eager to learn more" about Democrats’ plans.
The bottom line: "We tend to, especially in D.C., expect things to either happen very quickly or never happen," Aaron Cooper, head of global policy for BSA, a software industry group, told Axios.
- "The reality is getting these laws right for the constituency takes time, and we shouldn't be surprised if the process takes several years over the course of several congresses," he said.
Go deeper:
Axios AM Deep Dive: What's Next
Axios What's Next, our new weekday newsletter will be your guide to the waves of change in how we work, play and get around. This Axios AM Deep Dive gives you a taste of what we have in store...
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"An Ugly Truth" gives sneak peek as Zuckerberg becomes wartime leader
Mark Zuckerberg surprised a council of top Facebook executives in July 2018 by declaring: "Up until now, I’ve been a peacetime leader ... That’s going to change."
Driving the news: The account appears in a closely held book that'll be out Tuesday, "An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook’s Battle for Domination," by the N.Y. Times' Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang.
The group, the authors write, "had endured eighteen months of one bad news cycle after another. They had been forced to defend Facebook to their friends, family, and angry employees. Most of them had little to do with the controversies over election disinformation and Cambridge Analytica."
- The book says Zuckerberg had been influenced by ideas in "What You Do Is Who You Are," by Ben Horowitz — who's half of Andreessen Horowitz, the VC firm that invested early in Facebook, along with Marc Andreessen, Zuckerberg’s friend and a Facebook board member:
Horowitz argues that at various stages of development, tech companies demand two kinds of CEOs: wartime and peacetime leaders. In periods of peace, he writes, a company can focus on expanding and reinforcing its strengths. In times of war, the threats are existential, and the company has to hunker down to fight for survival.
...
From that day forward, Zuckerberg continued, he was taking on the role of wartime CEO. He would assume more direct control over all aspects of the business. He could no longer sequester himself to focus only on new products. More decisions would fall to him.
Facebook tells Axios that Zuckerberg instructed leaders they’d have to be more decisive, and would need to move forward even when there wasn't a clear consensus. His view was that it was wartime, and he needed to run the company as a wartime CEO.
Go deeper: Read a N.Y. Times adaptation.
Tropical Storm Henri barrels into southern New England with damaging winds, flooding
Tropical Storm Henri, with maximum sustained winds down only slightly from hurricane intensity, is walloping southern New England with damaging winds, storm surge flooding, and torrential rainfall.
The big picture: The storm has slowed down slightly and taken a well-advertised turn towards the northwest as it approaches eastern Long Island, southeastern Connecticut and Rhode Island, taking a north-northwesterly path toward the coast.
The latest: At 9 a.m. ET, Tropical Storm Henri was located about 35 miles south-southeast of Montauk Point, New York, or 70 miles south of Providence. It is moving north-northwest at 16 mph. It had maximum sustained winds of 65 mph, with higher gusts.
- The storm has been weakening slightly as it approaches the coast due to cooler waters just offshore. It is forecast to move north-northwest and slow to a near crawl later Sunday and Sunday night.
- Tropical storm-force winds, sustained at 39 mph to 73 mph, with higher gusts, have moved onshore and will keep pushing inland throughout the day. Some areas may see a six-hour or more period of damaging winds which, given recent rains, are likely to take down trees and power lines.
- Tropical storm and storm surge warnings span the length of the southern New England coast as the storm's 125-mile diameter tropical storm wind swatch pushes water towards the coast.
A storm surge of 3 to 5 feet above normally dry ground is anticipated along the south coast, including Long Island's south and north shores, coastal Connecticut, Rhode Island and Cape Cod and the Islands. Nearly twenty-foot waves have been observed just off the coast.
- This would not be a record surge but is comparable to other events in the past which caused damage.
- The National Weather Service forecast office in New York City called the surge threat "major (life-threatening)" for its forecast area.
The storm's other biggest risk is heavy inland rains, with a widespread 3 to 6 inches of rain likely to fall from northeast Pennsylvania to New England. Some spots may pick up 10 inches or more, and Henri-related flash flooding is already underway in northern New Jersey.
- Five-to-six inches of rain has already fallen in parts of Connecticut, New York City, and N.J.
- The "We Love NYC: The Homecoming Concert" was disrupted on Saturday night when tropical moisture related to Henri plus another storm system swept into the city, resulting in the heaviest one-hour rainfall total on record for New York City, at 1.94 inches, according to the Weather Service.
- The authoritative climate science report released this month by the U.N. IPCC on climate science published earlier this month found that extreme precipitation events, including heavy downpours, are becoming more frequent and severe, and that tropical storms and hurricanes are producing heavier rainfall in a warming world.
The bottom line: Typically, inland flooding, rather than strong winds, is the greatest threat to lives and property out of a tropical storm or hurricane's arsenal.
- "Heavy rainfall from Henri may result in considerable flash, urban, and small stream flooding, along with the potential for widespread minor to isolated moderate river flooding," the National Hurricane Center warned.
Good morning! The rising sun is giving us a view of now Tropical Storm Henri. Henri is expected to make landfall around lunchtime. Don't sleep on this storm just because it was downgraded to a TS; the expected impacts remain the same! #mawx #riwx #ctwx pic.twitter.com/NcVke9zWf2
— NWS Boston (@NWSBoston) August 22, 2021
Storm surge building in Buzzards Bay this morning. Here's Woods Hole. Fortunately timing still looks good (coming in at low tide early afternoon) pic.twitter.com/45J0LVHuki
— Eric Fisher (@ericfisher) August 22, 2021