Privacy Enhancing Technology Research Act

Floor Speech

Mr. Speaker, H.R. 4755, the Privacy Enhancing Technology Research Act, is another very important bipartisan piece of legislation that we bring to the House floor this evening on the heels of the pronouncement of the Speaker and minority leader to form an AI task force that is led by Mr. Obernolte of California on the Republican side and Mr. Lieu, also of California, on the Democratic side.

What the Privacy Enhancing Technology Research Act gets us is an opportunity to further strengthen and utilize Federal agencies to regulate our artificial intelligence.

This legislation has been met with the endorsement of the Federation of American Scientists, the Carnegie Mellon University, the University of California system, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and the Future of Privacy Forum.

I thank my colleague, Congressman Kean, for joining me in this legislation. I also recognize Senator Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada and Senator Deb Fischer of Nebraska for working in the other Chamber and for their contributions to the legislation.

We have a path not only to see this pass here in the House but to see it pass in the Senate and become Federal law.

We are living, as we all know, in the time of the modern digital economy, probably a hyper-digital economy, that is fueled by an astronomical amount of personal data compounded over decades at this point in time. In this AI-powered world, personal data protection is absolutely imperative. There is certainly a struggle with the processes that can protect and enable the protection of the productive use of personal data and secure the confidentiality of information it includes.

In 2023, a survey by the Pew Research Center found that 81 percent of American adults are concerned about how companies use their personal data.

We are liking, clicking, purchasing, and browsing. What is going on with all of that?

It is certainly in conversations regarding AI in Congress, with friends of mine, and with my constituents back home in Oakland County, Michigan.

There remain lots of opportunities to capture the benefits of data, including for safer roads, improved public health, better educational outcomes, and tackling inequities and other disparities. However, in any use of personal data, we must ensure privacy and confidentiality. A critical way to achieve that is through the development of privacy enhancing technologies, or PETs.

PETs are a broad range of technologies that allow organizations to collect, share, and use data while mitigating the privacy risks that arise from those activities.

The goal is to make systems that use personal information private by default, opening up those data to a wide range of researchers who would otherwise not have access. These technologies even have the potential to enable broader use of Federal datasets, as privacy risks are often the greatest barrier to open government data efforts. Unfortunately, the technology itself is still really immature, and it is not ready for widespread use.

What we are looking to do with H.R. 4755 is to support the research, workforce development, standard setting, and government coordination for PETs. We are going to direct the National Science Foundation to conduct fundamental privacy research that can improve these technologies, assess their limitations, and broaden their applicability.

The National Science Foundation will also support workforce development activities in order to help address some of the exacerbating shortage of privacy professionals across the United States and also springboard from cybersecurity workforce developments that have taken place from years prior.

H.R. 4755 also supports activities at the National Institute of Standards and Technology to facilitate the development of those standards and best practices for integration of PETs in public and private sectors.

Mr. Speaker, these two groups, the public sector and private sector, are encouraging of this legislation. They are asking for us to act in this way.

Finally, H.R. 4755 directs the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to coordinate Federal activities to accelerate the development of PETs across government.

Congress, we all know, has been debating proposals on privacy legislation for a long time. Sometimes we are even wondering if we have legislation, but we have H.R. 4755, which takes an amazing and necessary step for ownership of this new technology that we want to own and manage here in this country.

So, yes, let us be encouraged by bipartisan activity. Let us continue to come together and ensure that we have the necessary tools to fully implement privacy legislation without stifling innovation.

Mr. Speaker, I thank, again, my colleague, Congressman Kean of New Jersey, for his bipartisan efforts.

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Ms. STEVENS. Mr. Speaker, I have no further speakers. I yield myself the balance of my time to close.

Mr. Speaker, I continue to call on my colleagues to join me, Congressman Kean, the chairman of the Science Committee, and the ranking member of the Science Committee in passing H.R. 4755. This certainly will mark a very important moment in time when the United States chooses to lead on privacy enhancing technologies for the betterment of all.

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