CDT and Allies Call on Congress to Restore Civil Rights Protections to APRA
Today, CDT joined dozens of other civil society organizations urging the House Energy & Commerce Committee to reinstate civil rights protections to the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) before marking up the bill.
Last week, the committee announced a new version of APRA that, while making some improvements to specific sections, took a machete to the civil rights and algorithm protections. We recognize and respect that Representatives Pallone and McMorris Rodgers want to move good privacy legislation forward, and this bill would lead to some significant privacy improvements. But civil rights protections are a vital and necessary aspect of privacy and AI policy. Using data, or creating algorithms, that discriminate based on protected characteristics is one of the most abhorrent things companies do with data.
Without those protections in the bill, it will not address some of the most significant privacy harms of our time. Privacy legislation should clearly prevent discriminatory data practices. Thus, the House Energy & Commerce Committee should delay the upcoming markup until the sections are added back.
