U.S. Senate and House committee chairs took a decisive step toward enacting national data privacy legislation with the release (in draft) of the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) on March 31. Sen. Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., and Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, R-Wash., collaborated on the bill, which, according to the lawmakers, “… strikes a meaningful balance on issues that are critical to moving comprehensive data privacy legislation through Congress.” The U.S. is one of the few global powers without a national data protection law, resulting in a failure to uniformly protect consumers and complicating domestic and international commerce.
