Where privacy regulation stands ahead of 2023

The privacy landscape is changing swiftly, but don’t take our word for it. Ask the IAB, which recently called privacy legislation a more immediate danger for advertisers than the death of third-party cookies.

In 2018, only two state privacy laws were proposed. By the end of 2022, roughly 59 bills will have been proposed in 29 states (!!!), according to the International Association of Privacy Professionals. Still, the number of states that have actually passed consumer privacy legislation could field a basketball team.

• They are California, Virginia, Connecticut, Colorado, and Utah. All go into effect next year, aside from California, which saw its first consumer privacy legislation go into effect in 2020—and is getting a second one next year.
• In Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, privacy legislation is “in committee,” according to the IAPP’s State Privacy Legislation Tracker.

Meanwhile, the Federal Trade Commission is scrutinizing the digital advertising industry, signaling potentially new regulations intended to crack down on what it considers “harmful commercial surveillance and lax data security.” It also sued the data broker Kochava earlier this year, alleging that it sold location data that could be used to track people “to and from sensitive locations.”

• The FTC could also get a serious boost should the American Data Privacy Protection Act (ADPPA) ever make it to President Biden’s desk, which proposes the creation of an entirely new bureau under the FTC that’s focused solely on privacy.
• Another bill, called the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA), would give anyone under the age of 16 the ability to opt out of “algorithmic recommendations” that use their personal data, among other things.

Though both are currently stuck in legislative purgatory despite bipartisan support, John Verdi, SVP of policy at the nonprofit Future of Privacy Forum, told Marketing Brew that he’ll be watching to see if they’ll be resurrected in the new Congress.

“Some of it will depend on the degree to which Congress is interested in taking up bills like the ADPPA that got significant traction in the past Congress, but with new membership and new leadership, one always wonders about what the key members’ priorities will be,” he said. “We’re really keeping an eye on that to see which, if any, of the bills—like the ADPPA, like KOSA, and others—will continue to advance in a new Congress with new membership and new leadership.”