NAM to House: Pass SECURE Data Act

The SECURE Data Act would help protect consumers’ privacy while supporting manufacturing innovation, the NAM told the House this week.

What’s going on: “This important bill would, if enacted, provide manufacturers with a responsible, consumer-protective and pro-innovation legal framework for their collection and processing of personal data,” the NAM said Wednesday ahead of a House Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade Subcommittee hearing on the establishment of a comprehensive federal privacy and data security law.

• Through their relationships with suppliers, customers and consumers, manufacturers are entrusted with large amounts of personal data—and they recognize their responsibility in safeguarding it.
• That is what makes the need for a national law so pressing, the NAM continued.

Why it’s important: The SECURE Data Act, introduced by Rep. John Joyce (R-PA), would accomplish several longtime NAM goals:

• Create a single, nationwide privacy blueprint that will fully preempt a patchwork of sometimes-conflicting state laws;
• Limit the “collection of personal data to what is adequate, relevant and reasonably necessary in relation to each purpose for which the data is processed as disclosed to the consumer”;
• Support the development and use of artificial intelligence;
• Give exclusive enforcement authority of the framework to the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general; and
• Establish exemptions to help small businesses avoid costly compliance burdens.

The last word: The SECURE Data Act “recognizes that innovative and value-creative use of personal data can be done responsibly,” the NAM concluded.

• “This is what manufacturers strive for every day, and the enactment of this bill would contribute to the advancement of a regulatory model that does not sacrifice one in the pursuit of the other.”