US privacy laws most likely to be adopted and when

Justin Antonipillai, Founder and CEO, WireWheel, discusses with Helena Wootton and Stewart Dresner the privacy laws most likely to be adopted in the US. His experience of leading President Barack Obama’s attempt to have a federal privacy law adopted by the US Congress enables him to explain why he considers such a law in the next five years as unlikely. The new Chair of the Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, is more energetic on privacy issues. Stronger sanctions are likely but the FTC is constrained by its narrow scope and lack of a comprehensive federal privacy statute.

Meanwhile, the initiative is being taken by the states, with California in the lead once again as it was some 20 years ago with a data breach law, later copied by the other 49 states over the next 20 years. Virginia and Colorado are now the first states to follow California’s lead in adopting new state privacy laws but each one is different from the others, making life difficult for companies doing business across the country.

Antonipillai, having led the US negotiations with the EU on the EU-US Privacy Shield, is aware of the commonalities and differences between the two sides. Companies need to map their collection, storage and disclosure of personal data against the many different privacy laws around the world and take steps to manage the personal data in their systems is a consistent way taking into account the interests of the data subjects.