Rep. Johnson Calls on White House to Look to APPS Act as Foundation for the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, Congressman Hank Johnson (GA-04) sent a letter to President Obama encouraging the president to consider H.R. 1913, the APPS Act, as the basis for comprehensive privacy legislation.

Politico reports that the White House is coordinating with the Department of Commerce to draft legislation that will “boost online privacy safeguards for consumers” by building upon the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights, the blueprint for privacy protection that the White House released last year.

In his letter, Congressman Johnson called the Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights “a watershed moment in consumer privacy.”

Calling on President Obama to “strike the right balance between innovation and responsibility,” Congressman Johnson also called on the White House and Department of Commerce to continue protecting consumers in an open and transparent approach through a multi-stakeholder process.

In August, the National Telecommunications & Information Administration (NTIA) concluded its first multi-stakeholder process to develop a code of conduct for transparency of data collection on mobile devices. Congressman Johnson applauded the process, noting that it demonstrated “the willingness of developers, stakeholders, and public-interest groups to come together with principles to inform and protect consumers.”

In 2012, Congressman Johnson launched AppRights as an open, bottom-up approach to drafting legislation that will protect the privacy of mobile device users. The result was the APPS Act. The bill was based on the thoughts and values of the people who weighed-in through AppRights, and it’s also the first bipartisan mobile privacy legislation.

At the 5th Annual State of the Mobile Net Conference this past summer, Congressman Johnson delivered a keynote address where he noted the increasingly mobile nature of our economy.

“[M]ore companies are looking to mobile as the future of media,” Congressman Johnson noted, while the “‘digital divide’ means that minorities are more likely to access the internet from a mobile device than from a stationary computer.”

The conflux of these two events means that, more than ever before, we need to build protections into the technologies we use, and we need privacy legislation that works for us.

The APPS Act answers this call. By bringing baseline privacy protections to mobile devices, the APPS Act would protect and empower consumers with transparency, notice, and control on mobile devices.

Click HERE to view the letter.

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