Washington State Privacy Bill Cleared by Key Committees

Up against deadline to vote legislation out of committee, Washington state’s House Innovation, Technology and Economic Development Committee cleared a comprehensive privacy bill. It's based on a Senate bill that’s supported by Microsoft and opposed by consumer privacy advocates. The committee wrestled with nearly 30 amendments at Friday’s meeting, adopting some changes to tweak various definitions and rejecting sweeping proposals to add a private right of action and remove a section on private use of facial recognition technology.

The House panel voted 6-2 to clear HB-2742 with some amendments. It’s based on SB-6281 that Thursday cleared the Senate Ways and Means Committee by voice. House and Senate lawmakers have been trying to reach agreement in a short session (see 2001220039). Friday was the cutoff day for most non-fiscal committees to pass bills in their house of origin, says the legislature’s calendar. The bills need floor votes from their respective chambers by Feb. 19, then must pass policy committees in the second chamber by Feb. 28 and the full body by March 6.

"Finding balance is not always easy, but we are moving in that direction,” Chairman Zack Hudgins (D) said at the meeting streamed from Olympia. He noted he has concerns about facial recognition and suspects more changes are ahead. It’s a “corporate-centric bill” with many exemptions that consumers will have trouble navigating, said the committee’s ranking Republican Norma Smith, voting no. Choking up, Smith thanked Hudgins for taking some of her amendments and working with her in a bipartisan way.

Smith proposed most of the amendments, including one rejected by committee to strike the entire bill and replace it with her “charter of personal data rights” (HB-2364). Hudgins, a co-sponsor of that bill, praised its ideas but refused to toss the main bill.

Hudgins showed openness to adjusting enforcement language but voted against a Smith amendment to add a private right of action. A private right “provides remedy and access to justice,” Smith said. Hudgins didn’t disagree but asked the committee to vote no for now to give time for more discussion. It’s “not because we disagree with the goal of making sure there's good enforcement,” he said. Shelley Kloba (D) voted yes because she said the balance in the current bill is “weighted far more so in the favor of the companies.”

A majority said no to a proposal by Luanne Van Werven (R) to remove all facial recognition provisions from the bill. Debra Entenman (D) opposed the amendment, saying removing the section would leave people unprotected. The committee also turned down several amendments to remove exemptions to the proposed law, including for internal research purposes.

“The difficulty in finding agreement, balance, and continuing legislative member discussion has slowed progress,” Hudgins emailed stakeholders Thursday. “Staff has been taxed due to our short part-time legislative cut off deadline.” Hudgins thanked Senate sponsor Reuven Carlyle (D) for listening to concerns: “I know better than most the difficulty of finding the right balance.” The House committee chair cited “agreement around letting the legislative process move along, inviting more eyeballs and input and striving for the best possible proposal.”

Senate Bill

The Senate Ways and Means panel blocked an amendment Thursday to remove facial recognition from Carlyle's privacy bill.

“There is huge concern in my constituency base" about facial recognition, and from several Asian-American and other community organizations, said Sen. Bob Hasegawa (D), who sponsored the defeated amendment, at the webcast meeting. Carlyle said the bill has adequate protections and stressed it applies only to private sector use; public use is in a separate bill (SB-6280) that cleared committees last month. S-2681 would require open, independent testing, meaningful human review and opt-in consent, Carlyle said. The committee OK’d a Carlyle amendment making some other tweaks.

The Senate panel made none of the changes sought by American Civil Liberties Union, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Consumer Reports and other consumer privacy advocates, emailed ACLU-Washington Technology & Liberty Project Advocate Jennifer Lee. “There will be more opportunities to make amendments in both the Senate and the House outside of the policy committees.”

ACLU views the House bill as improving upon the Senate version, Lee said before Friday’s House committee meeting. She applauded the body for removing pre-emptive language that would stop localities from making stronger facial recognition laws. Localities still would be barred from writing stronger data privacy laws, she said. “The substitute also improves upon the enforcement mechanism but does not explicitly provide for a private right of action.” Lee raised concerns about many exemptions.

The House moved several smaller bills on stand-alone privacy issues in recent weeks. Last week, the Labor and Workplace Standards Committee cleared a bill about employer usage of artificial intelligence (HB-2401), and the Innovation panel passed a privacy bill on biometrics (HB-2363); both went to the Rules Committee. The Innovation committee cleared a bill last month on bots (HB-2396) to the Appropriations Committee, and passed to the Rules Committee bills requiring privacy stickers on devices (HB-2365) and making the state chief privacy officer an elected position (HB-2366). The State Government and Tribal Relations Committee sent a bill requiring annual privacy reviews of state agencies (HB-2400) to the Rules Committee. Innovation held meetings but didn't act on a bill about data collection by voice recognition devices (HB-2399).