Texas Council Releases Report on State Privacy Legislation

A council convened by a 2019 Texas law recently recommended how to pursue a state data privacy law.

Following an overview of current state and federal laws and regulations, and a brief look at what’s been happening in other states (e.g., CCPA), the report from the Texas Privacy Protection Advisory Council issued six recommendations:

1. “Process for ensuring that all state agencies are adhering to privacy standards, and policies are continually updated to reflect new technologies, business practices, and risks.”
2. “Proposals should consider a new and appropriate balance between additional consumer privacy protections and data security within a fair regulatory/compliance privacy framework.”
3. “Proposals should consider the impact to highly regulated data, like health information or banking data, and how those proposals compliment applicable federal law.”
4. “Legislation should be written broadly enough to allow the adoption of new technology and business standards.”
5. “Proposals should consider existing laws in Texas and other states in order to not conflict.”
6. “Texans have the right to know how their personal information is being used and the Legislature should consider ways to strengthen that right.”

While the overview may prove useful for legislators, the relatively simplistic and limited recommendations neither provide significant direction nor much insight into what we should expect to happen as a result. The recommendations do highlight the “right to know,” like in CCPA, so that will presumably be a part of any resulting bill.

Still, the legislature reconvenes in 2021, and more comprehensive privacy legislation is sure to arise (perhaps imitating the poor bills that were sidelined originally in favor of this study).

NewsGovernment AffairsHoward Fienberg, CAE – The Insights Association

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• data privacy
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