Response to House Energy & Commerce Committee Privacy Working Group Request for Information
A pdf copy of the letter is available here.
The Honorable John Joyce, M.D.
Vice Chairman
Committee on Energy & Commerce
U.S. House of Representatives
Washington, D.C. 20515
Dear Vice Chairman Joyce,
On behalf of The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, we write in response to the Request for Information (RFI) issued by the recently formed privacy working group. Last June, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights co-led a letter with over 50 other civil society groups highlighting the importance of civil rights protections in a comprehensive federal data privacy law. The relevant text of that letter follows:
“We urge you to postpone the upcoming markup of the American Privacy Rights Act (APRA) and reverse the removal of the key civil rights protections and algorithmic auditing provisions previously found in Section 113. Absent a delay in the markup and restoration of the civil rights provisions, the bill should not advance.
The deletion of these provisions is an immensely significant and unacceptable change to the bill and its scope. They should not have been removed. Even worse, they were removed without prior stakeholder consultation and without studying the impact to the bill’s ability to address data-driven discrimination in housing, employment, credit, education, health care, insurance, and other economic opportunities. Failing to include sufficient safeguards means Congress will leave all people in America unprotected from harmful AI technology.
Privacy rights and civil rights are no longer separate concepts — they are inextricably bound together and must be protected. Abuse of our data is no longer limited to targeted advertising or data breaches. Instead, our data are used in decisions about who gets a mortgage, who gets into which schools, and who gets hired — and who does not. All too often, those data-driven decisions come with discriminatory outcomes, which have been compounded as algorithmic technologies and AI have advanced at an unprecedented pace. Individuals who face discrimination on the basis of their race, ethnicity, sex, disability, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, or religion already contend with rampant harms as a result of invasive and predatory data practices. For example, companies have used AI to discriminate based on these characteristics against job applicants, deny equal access to credit, impair access to healthcare, and unfairly prejudge students’ academic prospects. A privacy bill that does not include civil rights protections will not meaningfully protect us from the most serious abuses of our data.”
Our position remains the same as stated above. Privacy rights are inherently tied to civil rights and any legislation introduced must include sufficient safeguards to protect from bias.
Thank you for your consideration of our views. Should you require further information or have any questions regarding this issue, please feel free to contact Jonathan Walter, senior policy counsel, The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights at [email protected].
Sincerely,