House Committee Advances Washington State Privacy Bill
Washington state’s House Innovation, Technology and Economic Development Committee advanced Senate-passed SB-6281 6-3 Friday (see 2002270065). An amendment establishing a private right of action passed. One that would remove a controversial facial recognition section failed.
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An amendment from Chairman Zack Hudgins (D) establishes a private right of action and removes local pre-emption. It clarifies violations are enforceable under the state Consumer Protection Act.
Washington needs rules of commerce governed by known and predictive law, Hudgins said during Friday’s executive session. He called it boilerplate Consumer Protection Act language that balances the bill “nicely.”
Ranking Republican Norma Smith also voted yes on Hudgins’ amendment. She raised concerns about how the language affects law enforcement, small businesses and job creators. She voted no on the bill.
Smith filed an amendment that would have replaced the facial recognition section with language declaring privacy rights to biometric identifiers. She urged support, citing Thursday’s report that DOJ, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and major retailers have used the Clearview facial recognition app.
Companies and government are scraping and capturing hundreds of billions of images, the lawmaker claimed. She urged the committee to declare rights to human dignity. “We cannot just be sliced and diced and our data trafficked,” she said. The amendment gives an absolute privacy right to biometric data, and the alternative is to let anyone else claim that right, she said.
Hudgins said the amendment was good, but not the right fit now because it clashes with items in the underlying bill. Meaningful human review and open application programming interfaces are good for consumers, he said. The market won’t solve problems with racism and sexism, he argued. Better to have the underlying provisions and drive the market toward the right end, he concluded.
"We're still negotiating actively," sponsor Sen. Reuven Carlyle (D) told us. Disagreement continues on enforcement and facial recognition, he said. There's time to work things out with the bill headed next to the Appropriations Committee, said the senator: "We're in the middle of the sausage."
Rep. Luanne Van Werven (R) voted no on passage after unsuccessfully offering an amendment that would have exempted higher education nonprofits for purposes of communication with students and alumni. She raised concerns about the $20 million compliance burden on schools.
Van Werven’s amendment would have opened a “Pandora’s box” for organizations to circumvent the law, said Rep. Gael Tarleton (D), former University of Washington staff member. A massive amount of data resides within nonprofits, not just higher education organizations, she said. It could open the door for exemption requests from all types of organizations, she said.
An amendment from Rep. Debra Entenman (D) passed. It requires opt-in consent before controllers may use facial recognition on a consumer’s image and requires that facial recognition training include information on error rates based on demographical differences. She sought guardrails to better understand facial recognition technology.
Hudgins agreed, saying the tech is ahead of standards. Once the National Institute of Standards and Technology sets standards, legislators will be in a better position to regulate facial recognition technology, he said. Until then, guardrails are needed, he said.
Businesses support the vast majority of the legislation, not every piece, said Hudgins. The measure could have been better, but it includes a lot of meaningful protections for consumers, he said.