Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mrs. BLACKBURN. Madam President, today I rise and seek my colleagues' support for the BROWSER Act, which is a bipartisan piece of legislation that will protect consumers' data privacy and offer tech companies the freedom they need to innovate.

This is something we are hearing so much about. How do you protect your privacy online, or do you have privacy online? The BROWSER Act is the bipartisan solution to that.

Innovation really puts the words and the wisdom of the world at our fingertips. Think about it. A click of a mouse, a touch of the screen, and everything you want to know appears right there in front of you. Now that we have all downloaded a myriad of apps and we are using search engines every single day, it is commonplace. But what we have learned and what people are aware of now more than ever is that in the process of doing this, they have given away something vitally important and precious; that is, their privacy and their information. I call it your ``virtual you'' because it is you, your presence, that is right there online.

As your transactional life has grown online--you pay your bills, you do your shopping, you order your groceries, you order dinner to be delivered--every time you do that, you are giving these apps a peek into your privacy, into your habits, and there is really quite a battle going on. Who owns the ``virtual you''? Is it you or the bank or the insurance company or the app that is providing that service?

Data is the bedrock of most tech companies' revenue streams. The higher the quality of that data, the more money they are going to get for the ad space they sell. The more money they get for the ad space they sell, the more profit they are going to put into their pocket.

When you look at all these apps--Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Google, Snapchat--all of these apps are taking your information. They mine your information, and it gets sold--sold for those that are placing ads on your screen.

There is a reason companies provide convoluted, pages-long disclosure, full disclosure and privacy policies in tiny print so small you can't read it. It is the same reason that watchdogs warn consumers that if the service is free, you are the product. If the service is free--take a look at these--you are the product. You are because it is your information that they want.

Now, I will tell you this: We have come to a season in our society where we have a different story just about every single day of some type of bad behavior from one of these companies. The current story today is about FaceApp, and I think that if I went around the room and asked those who are younger if they have used any of these face- altering apps, they would probably say: Yeah, we downloaded one. They are really a lot of fun to play with.

Here is the danger: That app--these face-altering apps and FaceApp-- is not limited to just bits of personal information that are going to be appended to a data set. It could be your image used publicly--with your consent, of course, if you agreed to the fine print by clicking ``download'' or ``get.'' With that, you give your privacy away.

Consumers have really grown accustomed to clicking the ``get'' button. They say: I don't have time to read all of this. It would take too long. I don't understand what it means. I just want to use this app. It is convenient.

A quick scroll through an average Instagram feed this morning revealed post after post of artificially-aged faces, all thanks to FaceApp, which now owns those images and can do whatever it wants with those images because you unintentionally, when you clicked ``get,'' gave them the permission to use them.

This is one of those things where you have to say: Buyer beware and know what you are getting into. Ask anybody who downloaded that app last night, and I bet you they have a little bit of buyer's remorse going on, and they probably wish they hadn't done it and opened those photos to being used by people they will never ever know.

Over the past few years, we have watched tech companies lose control of their own narrative, and that is for good reason. Customers feel invaded and are demanding a more satisfying response to the current parade of controversy--something more than just ``Oh, we are going to do better in the future.'' It is clear that the tech company can no longer regulate itself. Big Tech does not have the appetite for self- regulation.

That is why I welcome my colleagues on each side of the aisle to sign on to the BROWSER Act. This bill really has been years in the making. I first introduced it in the House of Representatives during the 115th Congress, but my work on the issue began long before that, as I chaired the Privacy Working Group in the House.

What this legislation, the BROWSER Act, would do is it would set up a Federal compliance framework that tech companies would use as a guide. It would require companies to secure a clear opt-in from you, the consumer, before collecting sensitive information about your health, your finances, or your Social Security numbers--things that are important and personal to you. They would have to get your explicit permission in order to use those. For less sensitive information, like an IP address or your browsing history or your search and your purchase history, companies would have to give customers the opportunity to opt- out so that they would not have the permission to share that.

Companies won't be able to deny service to anyone refusing to waive their privacy, but the Federal Trade Commission will keep the playing field level by applying the rules equally across the entire internet ecosystem.

To recap that, you would have opt-in for sensitive information and opt-out for nonsensitive information and one set of rules, with one regulator, for the entire internet ecosystem and a tech platform that would not be able to throw you off because you said: Hey, I want to protect myself and my family.

I think it is important, too, to realize that the BROWSER Act does not overregulate the industry, but what this does is it says: Let's have guidelines. Let's have some guardrails up here. Let's have a light-touch regulation that is going to protect the consumer and allow the consumer to protect their ``virtual you,'' their presence online.

Lately, what we have seen is some blowback from some very public mistakes that have chased some of these big tech companies into the arms of the regulators, making them all too happy to accept government- mandated rules in lieu of internal standards. You have heard it. You have heard some people like Facebook saying: Oh, my goodness. We will accept regulation now. We want the Federal Government more involved. What they are trying to do is block out innovation and competition and new startups because they control the marketplace.

Google. Ninety percent of search is done by Google.

Recently, Facebook got a $5 billion fine from the Federal Trade Commission. I said that actually wasn't enough. It should have been more like $50 billion when you look at the business Facebook has built and the valuation they have built. They are a big advertising company. They have this platform. They get you on that platform. They build their valuation off the number of eyeballs they capture to that, the users they have and, remember what I said earlier, the high quality of the data. That is money in their revenue stream, and it is profit in their pockets. Their bad behavior will not change unless we change the way they are going to be able to do business.

Understanding the business of Big Tech is half the battle. I have been at this for years, going back to my days in Tennessee, my home State, as we looked at film and entertainment and music and moving from analog to digital in the economy, coming to Congress, working in the House on this issue.

I will state that the ins and outs of this industry is not something that can be learned in a day or something you can be briefed on and then all of a sudden you are an expert in that area. If you think you know it all--what I have learned in tech is, the more you learn the less you know, and you have to keep working on it if you are going to properly regulate the industry.

I thank my colleague Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham for recognizing the need for institutional knowledge by this body and for asking me to lead the committee's new technology task force. This is a bipartisan group. We will meet regularly with leaders in the tech industry, and we will talk a good bit about data, privacy, competition, prioritization, censorship, and other issues that will arise. Our first meeting is actually going to be later today. I would encourage my friends in the Senate to use this time and use this task force as a resource and study up because these issues are not going to go away. It is time for us to do something on the issues of privacy, data security, censorship, and prioritization.

To my colleagues who are really very skeptical that we can use a lighter touch in regulating Big Tech, I want to say this: Washington is historically very bad at culture change. They are very bad at it. What we do know is, when looking at the technology that now underpins every single industrial sector in this country, that technology goes through a life cycle, if you will, in about 18 months. We know there cannot be heavy-handed regulation. We know we cannot regulate to a technology. We know that the guidelines need to be put in place, and the guardrails need to be laid down.

We need to make certain businesses are looking at their consumers, and they are saying: You can trust us to be a good steward of your information. Consumers, citizens--Tennesseeans, in my case--need to know I have asked the tech companies to work to restore the trust and confidence that is needed by the online consumer and to move away from having it understood by people--understood in the negative--that if the service is free, you are the product.

Let's join together, in a bipartisan fashion, and give the American online consumer the ability to control and to own their virtual ``you,'' which is them and their presence online.

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