Promoting Digital Privacy Technologies Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 847, the Promoting Digital Privacy Technologies Act. This legislation supports research activities to advance innovative technologies to safeguard individuals' privacy.

As Americans have moved more and more of their lives online, especially during the pandemic, it has also resulted in more digital consumer data and personal information being generated than ever before.

This personal information has long been a target for cybercriminals, and it has only worsened over the pandemic. According to the Federal Trade Commission, identify theft increased by almost 3,000 percent over the past year. This problem is exacerbated by the failure of some companies to properly safeguard consumer data.

This data is a valuable asset. In 2017 ``The Economist'' claimed data is now the world's most valuable resource. When safely utilized, it can do a great deal to spur our economy and support innovations like artificial intelligence and machine learning. Our task is to ensure this resource doesn't fall into the hands of bad actors, putting Americans' private information at risk.

Privacy Enhancing Technologies, PETs, may be part of the solution. PETs utilize cryptography and statistics to minimize the amount of personally identifiable information while ensuring the data sets are still usable. However, more research is needed to understand PETs' applicability and to encourage further development and adoption.

This bill requires the National Science Foundation to support fundamental research into PETs, the mathematics that is the foundation of PETs, and additional technologies that promote data minimization principles. The legislation also directs NIST to work with stakeholders to develop voluntary consensus standards for incorporating these technologies into Federal and commercial applications.

I thank Chairwoman Stevens and Representative Gonzalez for leading this very important legislation. I encourage my colleagues to support this bill.

In closing, Mr. Speaker, while the data revolution offers an opportunity to solve many of the world's grand challenges, we must also ensure these innovations don't put Americans' private information at risk. By supporting further research on privacy-enhancing technologies through this legislation, we are taking important steps to strengthen consumer privacy while enabling the use of consumer data.

Mr. Speaker, I encourage my colleagues to vote ``yes'' on this bill, and I yield back the balance of my time.

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