Congress has never been closer to passing a federal data privacy law — and the brokers that profit from information on billions of people are spending big to nudge the legislation in their favor.

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Five prominent data brokers boosted their collective spending on lobbying by roughly 11 percent in the second quarter of this year compared with the same period a year ago, according to lobbying disclosure records reviewed by POLITICO. The $180,000 lobbying bump came as House Democrats and Republicans reached a compromise on a bipartisan bill aimed at giving consumers new powers to limit the collection and sharing of their data.

The brokers, including U.K.-based data giant RELX and credit reporting agency TransUnion, want changes to the bill — such as an easing of data-sharing restrictions that RELX says would hamper investigations of crimes. Some data brokers also want clearer permission to use third-party data for advertising purposes.

Privacy advocates say these requested changes would entrench practices in the data broker industry that have raised years of concerns about information collected en masse and shared without proper consent.

Hundreds of companies have reported lobbying on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, H.R. 8152 (117), including drugmakers, nonprofits and tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon. But no industry is potentially more affected by the bill than the data brokers, which rely largely on third-party data — information collected by companies that users have no direct relationship with.

For example, location data brokers can collect information on people’s whereabouts through apps, and can gain access to data that websites collect on people’s demographics and online shopping activities.

This unregulated flow of data fuels an estimated $240 billion market, and lawmakers have raised concerns that the collections are being used to surveil protesters and influence specific groups with targeted ads.

The brokers, including U.K.-based data giant RELX and credit reporting agency TransUnion, want changes to the bill — such as an easing of data-sharing restrictions that RELX says would hamper investigations of crimes. Some data brokers also want clearer permission to use third-party data for advertising purposes.

Privacy advocates say these requested changes would entrench practices in the data broker industry that have raised years of concerns about information collected en masse and shared without proper consent.

American Data Privacy

Hundreds of companies have reported lobbying on the American Data Privacy and Protection Act, H.R. 8152 (117), including drugmakers, nonprofits and tech giants such as Microsoft and Amazon. But no industry is potentially more affected by the bill than the data brokers, which rely largely on third-party data — information collected by companies that users have no direct relationship with.

For example, location data brokers can collect information on people’s whereabouts through apps, and can gain access to data that websites collect on people’s demographics and online shopping activities.

This unregulated flow of data fuels an estimated $240 billion market, and lawmakers have raised concerns that the collections are being used to surveil protesters and influence specific groups with targeted ads.

The bill, sponsored by House Energy and Commerce chair Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), would give people the right to demand the deletion of data that companies collect about them, while imposing restrictions on data being collected and shared with third parties. It would also put special protections on sensitive data like geolocation.

Privacy advocates are already criticizing the House bill for offering loopholes for data brokers, such as an exemption for “de-identified” data and carve-outs for brokers working on behalf of law enforcement agencies.

Fourth Amendment restrictions

Brokers often say they only offer data that has been stripped of information that could be used to identify specific individuals, but privacy researchers have found that this data can easily be linked to people when combined with other sources. Law enforcement agencies have also bought data from brokers as a way to circumvent Fourth Amendment restrictions on government searches.

“ADPPA has moved farther through Congress than any privacy bill has in many years,” said Caitriona Fitzgerald, deputy director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, one of D.C.’s best-known privacy advocacy groups. “Data brokers are likely responding to the fact that Congress seems serious about passing privacy regulations.”

She said the data brokers’ requests would mean no changes to a problematic status quo, while the bill in its current form would limit the industry in significant ways.

All five data brokers that lobbied on the privacy bill spent at least as much during the second quarter as they did during the same period in 2021. RELX, the parent company of digital identity services such as ThreatMetrix and LexisNexis, spent 26 percent more — making up the bulk of the industry’s lobbying bump.

take from: https://www.politico.com/