In the last few years, Europe has seen a landmark law for online privacy take effect, approved sweeping regulations to curb the dominance of the tech giants and on Friday was nearing a deal on new legislation to protect its citizens from harmful online content.
Europe is three for those keeping score. The United States has zero.
The United States may be the birthplace of the iPhone and the most widely used search engine and social network, and it could also bring the world into the so-called metaverse. European leaders representing 27 nations with 24 languages have been able to agree on basic online protections for their 450 million or so citizens, despite being more than 3000 miles from Washington.
In the United States, Congress has not passed a single piece of comprehensive regulation to protect internet consumers.
It is not for lack of trying. Over 25 years, dozens of federal privacy bills have been proposed and then dropped without bipartisan support. Lawmakers have introduced data breach and security bills after every major hack of a bank or retailer. There have been a lot of speech bills that have caused a lot of disagreements. The antitrust bills to limit the power of Apple, Amazon, and others have sat in limbo amid fierce lobbying opposition.
In the past 25 years, only two narrow federal tech laws have been enacted, one for children's privacy and the other for ridding sites of sex-trafficking content.
Jeffrey Chester said that inertia is too kind of a word to describe what has happened in the United States.
The chances of any legislation passing888-607-ly are dim, though regulations at some point are almost inevitable because of the way tech touches so many aspects of life. The antitrust bill that would bar Apple, Alphabet and Amazon from boosting their own products on their marketplaces and app stores over those of their rivals has the best chance of becoming law.
A co-author of the bill, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, said Democratic leaders had promised it would go to a vote by this summer. The bill with bipartisan support faces an uphill climb in Congress and a fierce tech lobbying effort to defeat it.
The path to U.S. tech regulation will be long if history is a guide. The creation of the interstate commerce commission in 1886 took decades of public anger to regulate the railroads. It took nearly 50 years from the first reports on the dangers of cigarettes to the regulation of tobacco.
There is no single reason for the progress in Congress. The age-old partisan divide over how to protect consumers has led to proposals that encourage the growth of business. Hundreds of tech lobbyists block legislation that could affect their profits. Lawmakers have at times failed to grasp the technologies they are trying to regulate, turning their public foibles over tech into internet meme.
Tom Wheeler is a former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission.
I call it a big con, where the tech companies spin a story that they are doing magic and that if Washington touches their companies with regulations they will be responsible for breaking.
The patchwork of tech rules was created in the absence of federal regulations. California, Virginia, Utah and Colorado have their own privacy laws. Florida and Texas have passed laws to punish internet platforms for censoring conservative views.
Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft all supported federal regulations. Some of them have fought for the most liberal versions of the laws that have been under consideration. Federal privacy legislation has been pushed for by Meta.
Tech's lobbying power is on full display in Washington with the threat of the antitrust bill from Ms. The tech industry was surprised that the proposal passed the first hurdle.
The tech companies launched a campaign to defeat the bill. Amazon claimed in ads that the bill would end its Prime membership program. The legislation would prevent the company from displaying maps in search results, according to Kent Walker, the company's chief legal officer.
She said the claims were hyperbole. She warned that by fighting the proposal, tech companies might be choosing the worse of two options.
They are allowing Europe to set the agenda on internet regulation.
The lack of action may seem surprising given that Republicans and Democrats are in agreement over how tech companies have evolved into global powerhouses.
Consumers need confidence that their data is being protected, and businesses need to know they can keep innovating while complying with a strong, workable national privacy standard, said Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi.
Tech chief executives have testified before Congress many times in recent years, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Tim Cook of Apple, and Mark Zuckerberg of Meta. Lawmakers of both parties have told executives of companies with a combined $6.4 trillion in market value that they aren't above government or public accountability.
Senator John Kennedy, Republican of Louisiana, said in a January antitrust hearing that some of these companies are not companies at all.
The talk hasn't translated into new laws. The clearest case study on the record of inaction is provided by the path to privacy regulations.
Edward J. Markey has introduced a dozen privacy bills for internet service providers, drones and third-party data brokers. The General Data Protection Regulation took effect in Europe in the year he proposed the bill.
The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 was the subject of two attempts to update and strengthen it.
Lobbyists have denounced the bills as harmful to innovation. Republican lawmakers say the proposals don't balance the needs of businesses.
Big Tech has bankrolled industry lobbyists to help them evade accountability.
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