Big technology companies that hold “unfettered control over customer data” have shown they can’t regulate themselves and must be held accountable, according to Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.
In commentary posted by Fox News, Blackburn, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee’s bipartisan Tech Task Force, said “I’ve watched Big Tech evolve and extend its reach into the average American's life.”
“Today, we’re surrounded by screens and speakers and operating systems — everyone seems to want a ‘smart’ home or office,” she wrote. “Holding the entities that are placing devices in our homes accountable is just as important as ensuring transparency about what’s being done with the data those devices collect.”
She lamented that companies producing the smart devices ask for “unfettered control over customer data” that “makes those asks feel like an explicit demand.”
“Technology touches our lives in intimate ways and makes us vulnerable to the unintended consequences of surrendering our ‘virtual you’ to for-profit corporations,” she wrote. “Recent data privacy scandals, coupled with …new probes [of Google and Facebook], are proof that the industry is no longer capable of regulating itself.”
“Protecting consumers from Silicon Valley’s bad behavior will take more than one sweeping antitrust investigation,” she wrote.
According to Blackburn, legislation in the Senate that she is sponsoring would “strike a workable balance between maintaining consumer privacy, and protecting online innovation.”
“Changing privacy practices will inevitably change the way these companies do business— and could even shake up the market,” she said. “It won’t solve every point of contention in what’s sure to be a protracted investigation into Silicon Valley’s back offices, but it’s a great place to start.”
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