The USA Toys With A Federal Privacy Law – and an ISO for Privacy

The US Congress has recently made some much-anticipated progress toward advancing a bipartisan privacy bill. The current compromise, the American Data Protection and Privacy Act (ADPPA), still has a long way to go before becoming law, but it represents considerable efforts from both sides of the aisle to come to a consensus on divisive issues that have sunk previous bills. If the ADPPA or similar legislation passes, it would finally provide the US with a single, comprehensive data privacy law that protects all Americans and simplifies compliance for businesses. At present a number of States have general data protection regulations, but on the Federal level there are only rules on financial and health personal data and the so-called “Can Spam” Law.

In February, the International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) adopted a standard for Privacy by Design (PbD) as ISO 31700. The ISO is a network of 167 national standards bodies and sets over 24,000 standards, including ISO 27001, for information security management systems. This will be a major milestone in privacy.